Aladdin O'Brien Part 27

A little before three o'clock Hannibal St. John had his right knee smashed by the exploding of a caisson, and fell behind one of the guns of his battery. He was so sure that he was to be killed on this day that it had never occurred to him that he might be trivially wounded and carried to the rear in safety. An expression of almost comical chagrin came over his face, for life was nothing to him, and somewhere far above the smoke a goodly welcome awaited him: that he knew. Men came with a stretcher to carry him off, but he cursed them roundly and struggled to his well knee. The cannon behind which he had fallen was about to be discharged.

"Give 'em h.e.l.l!" cried Hannibal.

As he spoke, the piece was fired, and leaping back on the recoil, as a frenzied horse that breaks its halter, one of the wheels struck him a terrible blow on the body, breaking all the ribs on that side and killing him instantly. His face wore a glad smile, and afterward, when Aladdin found him and took the gold locket from his pocket, and read the inscription written, a great wonder seized men:

July 3, 1863.

Nunc dimittis.

Te Deum laudamus.

Thus in one battle fell the three strong hostages which an old man had given to fortune.

x.x.xV

Three o'clock the Union batteries were ordered to be silent, for it was well known to those in command that presently there would be a powerful attack by infantry, for which the cannonade was supposed to have paved the way with death and disorder, and it was necessary that the pieces should be kept cool in order to be in efficient condition to grapple with and suppress this attack. Sometimes a regiment, stung to a frenzy of courage by bullets and the death of comrades, will rise from its trench without the volition of its officers, and go frantically forward against overwhelming odds. A different effect of an almost identical psychological process is patience. Men will sometimes lie as quietly under a rain of bullets, in order to get in one effective shot at an enemy, as cattle in the hot months will lie under a rain of water to get cool. It was so now. The whole Union army was seized by a kind of b.l.o.o.d.y deliberation and lay like statues of men, while, for quarter of an hour more, the Confederates continued to thunder from their guns. Now and again a man felt lovingly the long black tube of a cannon to see if its temperature was falling. Others came hurrying from the rear with relays of powder, shot, sh.e.l.l, and canister.

It seemed now to the Confederate leaders that the Union batteries had been silenced, and that the time had come for Pickett, the Ney of the South, to go forward with all his forces. Only Longstreet demurred and protested against the charge. When Pickett asked him for the order to advance he turned away his head sorrowfully and would not speak. Then Pickett, that great leader of men, who was one half daring and one half magnetism and all hero, said proudly: "I shall go forward, sir." And turned to his lovers.

Silence and smoke hung over Gettysburg.

Presently out of the smoke on the Confederate side came three lines of gray a mile long. Battle-flags nodded at intervals, and swords blazed in the sun.

Very deliberately and with pains about aiming, the Union batteries began to hurl solid shot against the gray advance. Soon holes were bitten here and there, and occasionally a flag went down, to be instantly s.n.a.t.c.hed up and waved defiantly. When Pickett, Pettigrew, and the splendid brigade of Cadmus Wilc.o.x had reached the bottom of the valley, their organization was as unbroken as a parade. But there sh.e.l.l, instead of round shot, met them, and men tasted death by fives and tens. But the lines, drawing together, closed the s.p.a.ces left by mortality, and the flags began to approach each other. Then the gray men began to come up the slope, and there were thousands of them. But sh.e.l.l yielded to canister, and the muskets of the infantry sent out death in leaden showers, so that the great charge began to melt like wax over heat, and the flags hung close together like a trophy of battle in a chapel. But still the gray men came. And now, in a storm of flame and smoke, they reached the foremost cannons of the Union line, and planted their flags.

So much were they permitted for the glory of a lost cause. For a little, men killed one another with the b.u.t.ts of guns, with bayonets, and with stones, and then, as the overdrip of a wave broken upon an iron coast trickles back through the stones of the beach to the ocean, so all that was left of Pickett's great charge trickled back down the slope, driblets of gray, running blood. For a little while longer the firing continued. Battle-flags were gathered, and thrown together in sheaves.

There was a little broken cheering, and to all intents and purposes the great war was at an end.

Aladdin, broken with grief and fatigue, went picking his way among the dead and wounded. He had lost Peter and Hannibal in that battle, and Hamilton and John were dead; he alone remained, and it was not just. He felt that the Great Reaper had spared the weed among the flowers, and he was bitter against the Great Reaper. But there was one more sorrow reserved for Aladdin, and he was to blaspheme against the G.o.d that made him.

There was still desultory firing from both armies. As when, on the Fourth of July, you set off a whole bunch of firecrackers, there is at first a crackling roar, and afterward a little explosion here and a little explosion there, so Gettysburg must have sounded to the G.o.ds in Olympus. Thunder-clouds begotten of the intense heat rolled across the heavens from east to west, accentuating the streaming glory of the setting sun, and now distant thunder rumbled, with a sound as of artillery crossing a bridge. Drops of rain fell here and there.

Aladdin heard himself called by name, "'Laddin, 'Laddin."

As quickly as the brain is advertised of an insect's sting, so quickly did Aladdin recognize the voice and know that his brother. Jack was calling to him. He turned, and saw a little freckled boy, in a uniform much too big for him, trailing a large musket.

"Jack!" he cried, and rushed toward him with outstretched arms. "You little beggar, what are you doin' here?"

Jack grinned like one confessing to a successful theft of apples belonging to a cross farmer. And then G.o.d saw fit to take away his life.

He dropped suddenly, and there came a rapid pool of blood where his face had been. With his arms wrapped about the little figure that a moment before had been so warlike and gay, Aladdin turned toward the heavens a face of white flint.

"I believe in one G.o.d, Maker of h.e.l.l!" he cried.

Thunder rumbled and rolled slowly across the battle-field from east, to west.

"I believe in one G.o.d, Maker of h.e.l.l!" cried Aladdin, "Father of injustice and doer of h.e.l.lish deeds! I believe in two d.a.m.nations, the d.a.m.nation of the living and the d.a.m.nation of the dead."

He turned to the little boy in his arms, and terrible sobs shook his body, so that it appeared as if he was vomiting. After a while he turned his convulsed face again to the sky.

"Come down," he cried, "come down, you--"

Far down the hill there was a puff of white smoke, and a merciful bullet, glancing from a rock, struck Aladdin on the head with sufficient force to stretch him senseless upon the ground.

When the news of Gettysburg reached the Northern cities, lights were placed in every window, and horns were blown as at the coming of a new year. Senator Hannibal St. John had lost his three boys and the hopes of his old age in that terrible fight, but he caused his Was.h.i.+ngton house to be illuminated from bas.e.m.e.nt to garret.

And then he walked out in the streets alone, and the tears ran down his old cheeks.

x.x.xVI

There had been a wedding in the hospital tent. Margaret bent over Peter and kissed him goodby. She was in deep black, and by her side loomed a great, dark figure, whose eyes were like caverns in the depths of which burned coals. The great, dark man leaned heavily upon a stick, and did not seem conscious of what was going on. The minister who had performed the ceremony stood with averted face. Every now and then he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. The wounded in neighboring cots turned pitiful eyes upon the girl in black, for she was most lovely--and very sad. Occasionally a throat was cleared.

"When you come, darling," said the dying man, "there will be an end of sorrow."

"There will be an end of sorrow," echoed the girl. She bent closer to him, and kissed him again.

"It is very wonderful to have been loved," said Peter. Then his face became still and very beautiful. A smile, innocent like that of a little child, lingered upon his lips, and his blind eyes closed.

St. John laid his hand upon Margaret's shoulder.

A man, very tall and lean and homely, entered the tent. He was clad in an exceedingly long and ill-fitting frock-coat. Upon his head was a high black hat, somewhat the worse for wear. He turned a pair of very gentle and pitying eyes slowly over those in the tent.

Aladdin, his head almost concealed by bandages, sat suddenly upright in a neighboring cot. A wild, unreasoning light was in his eyes, and marking time with his hand, he burst suddenly into the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our G.o.d is marching on.

He sang on, and the wounded joined him with weak voices:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While G.o.d is marching on.

The tall man who had entered, to whom every death was nearer than his own, and to whom the suffering of others was as a crucifixion, removed the silk hat from his head, and wiped his forehead with a colored handkerchief.

Margaret knelt by Aladdin and held his unconscious form in her arms.

Outside, the earth was bathing in exquisite suns.h.i.+ne.

x.x.xVII

It was not long before Aladdin got back the strength of his body, but the gray bullet which had come in answer to his cry against G.o.d, even as the lightning came to Amyas Leigh, in that romance to which it is so good to bow, had injured the delicate mechanism of his brain, so that it seemed as if he would go down to the grave without memory of things past, or power upon the hour. Indeed, the war ended before the surgeons spoke of an operation which might restore his mind. He went under the knife a little child, his head full of pictures, playthings, and fear of the alphabet; he came forth made over, and turned clear, wondering eyes to the girl at his side. And he held her hand while she bridged over the years for him in her sweet voice.