FullReads

“Off, who are off?”

“The whole post, Miss, except the relief for to-day. There are not fifty men in the village besides us here. The orderly thought they were to go down to Braxton’s; but he did not know.”

Here was news indeed! news so exciting that Huldah went back at once, and called the other women; and then all of them together began on that wretched business of waiting. They had never yet known what it was to wait for a real battle. They had had their beds filled with this and that patient from one or another post, and had some gun-shot wounds of old standing among the rest; but this was their first battle if it were a battle. So the covers were taken off that long line of beds, down on the west aisle, and from those under the singers’ seat; and the sheets and pillow-cases were brought out from the linen room, and aired, and put on. Our biggest kettles are filled up with strong soup; and we have our milk-punch, and our beef-tea all in readiness; and everybody we can command is on hand to help lift patients and distribute food. But there is only too much time. Will there never be any news? Anna Thwart and Doctor Sprigg have walked down to the bend of the hill, to see if any messenger is coming. As for the other women, they sit at their table; they look at their watches; they walk down to the door; they come back to the table. I notice they have all put on fresh aprons, for the sake of doing something more in getting ready.

Here is Anna Thwart. “They are coming! they are coming! somebody is coming. A mounted man is crossing the flat, coming towards us; and the doctor told me to come back and tell.” Five minutes more, ten minutes more, an eternity more, and then, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, the mounted man is here. “Wagons right behind. We bagged every man of them at Wyatt’s. Got there before daylight. Colonel White’s men from the Yellows came up just at the same time, and we pitched in before they knew it,–three or four regiments, thirteen hundred men, and all their guns.”

“And with no fighting?”

“Oh, yes! fighting of course. The colonel has got a train of wagons down here with the men that are hurt. That’s why I am here. Here is his note.” Thus does the mounted man discharge his errand backward.

DEAR DOCTOR,–We have had great success. We have surprised the whole post. The company across the brook tried hard to get away; and a good many of them, and of Sykes’s men, are hit; but I cannot find that we have lost more than seven men. I have nineteen wagons here of wounded men,–some hurt pretty badly.

Ever yours, H.

So there must be more waiting. But now we know what we are waiting for; and the end will come in a finite world. Thank God, at half-past three, here they are! Tenderly, gently. “Hush, Sam! Hush, Caesar! You talk too much.” Gently, tenderly. Twenty-seven of the poor fellows, with everything the matter, from a burnt face to a heart stopping its beats for want of more blood.

“Huldah, come here. This is my old classmate, Barthow; sat next me at prayers four years. He is a major in their army, you see. His horse stumbled, and pitched him against a stone wall; and he has not spoken since. Don’t tell me he is dying; but do as well for him, Huldah,”–and the handsome boy smiled,–“do as well for him as you did for me.” So they carried Barthow, senseless as he was, tenderly into the church; and he became E, 27, on an iron bedstead. Not half our soup was wanted, nor our beef-tea, nor our punch. So much the better.

Then came day and night, week in and out, of army system, and womanly sensibility; that quiet, cheerful, homish, hospital life, in the quaint surroundings of the white-washed church; the pointed arches of the windows and the faded moreen of the pulpit telling that it is a church, in a reminder not unpleasant. Two or three weeks of hopes and fears, failures and success, bring us to Christmas eve.