Pocket Island

C >> Charles Clark Munn >> Pocket Island

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"Tell me now," she said hurriedly, "tell me the worst, only tell me
quickly! I've suffered long enough!"

He looked at her a moment pityingly, dreading to deal the blow, and
trying to frame it into suitable words--and then it came.

"Liddy," he said in a husky whisper, "I love you, and I've enlisted!"

A brief sentence, but what a message!

A woman's heaven and a woman's hell in six words!

For one instant she looked at him, until its full force came to her and
then she burst into tears, and the next moment she was in a heap on the
robe-covered rock and sobbing like a child. Instantly he was beside her,
gathering her in his arms and kissing her hair, her tear-wet face and
lips. Not a word was spoken; not one was needed! He knew now that her
heart was his, and for weal or woe; for joy or sorrow, their lives must
be as one.

"Don't cry any more, my darling," he whispered at last. "I shall come
back all safe, and then you will be my wife, won't you, Liddy?"

She made no answer, but a small, soft hand crept into one of his, and he
knew his prize was won.

When they were ready to leave the hallowed spot she gathered a bunch of
the spring violets growing there, and kissing them, handed the cluster
to him in silence.

Late that evening when they parted she put one arm caressingly about his
neck and whispered: "Give me all the hours you can, Charlie, before you
must go; they may be all we shall ever have together."

CHAPTER XII.

A DAY IN THE WOODS.

When schoolmates who have studied and played together until almost
maturity reach the parting of their ways a feeling of sadness comes to
them; but when out of such a band there are eighteen of the best young
men about to take part in the horror of war, the occasion becomes doubly
so. The last few weeks passed together by the graduating pupils of
Southton Academy came back to them in after years much like the memory
of a funeral. There were no frolics at noontime or after school; no
mirth and scant laughter.

A few of the girls were known to be carrying aching hearts, and it was
whispered that two or three were engaged to be married to young
soldier-boys now in the academy. Liddy wore a new and heavy plain gold
ring, and when questioned as to its significance quietly answered, as
was her wont: "I have no confessions to make," but those who were
nearest to her and knew her best detected a proud look in her eyes and
drew their own conclusions. It was noticed also that she and Manson were
seldom apart during the noon hour, and invariably walked away from the
academy together. As there were other couples who thus paired off it
caused no comment.

When the last day came the academy was packed with the parents and
friends of pupils, and on Liddy's desk was a bunch of June roses. She
knew whose hand had placed them there. When the final exercises began
she felt herself growing nervous. She had never felt so before, but now
the mingled joy and sorrow of the past four weeks were telling upon her.
There were several patriotic and warlike recitations by the young men,
and readings of an unusually melancholy nature by young ladies, all of
which tended to make matters worse, so that when her turn came she felt
ready to cry. But she caught a look from Manson that was like wine. "He
has been brave," she thought; "I will be as much so"--and she was.

When the exercises were over the principal made a brief but feeling
address which raised him several degrees in Manson's estimation, and
that was the end. Most of the pupils lingered, loth to utter the last
farewells, but finally they were spoken, and with many moist eyes among
that gathering of young friends they separated. Some of them never met
in life again.

The few remaining evenings ere Liddy and her lover were to part were not
wasted by them, and the last Sunday was one long to be remembered.

"Come early," she had said the night before; "I have a little surprise
for you." When he arrived at her house that day, just as the distant
church bells were faintly calling, he found her dressed for a ride, and
was a little puzzled.

"I want you to take me to church to-day," she said, smiling, and then
added, in a low voice, "to our church on the top of Blue Hill, where
there will be no one but God and ourselves."

It was an odd thought, and yet, knowing her as he did, it was not
surprising. The simple reverence of it touched him, however.

"Now," she continued more cheerfully, "no more sober thoughts. Let us
try and be happy, and like children once more. Here is a basket I have
packed, and you are to put it in the carriage. We are to dine in the
woods."

The day was one of those rare ones that come only in June, and when they
reached the spot, now, henceforth and forever sacred to them, the
sheltering trees were fresh with new foliage, the birds singing while
building their nests, the summer breeze softly whispering in the
scattered hemlocks, and over all shone the mellow sunshine.

For a long time they sat on the rock, now hallowed by her tears, viewing
the beautiful landscape spreading out below and living over, as they had
many times before, and as young lovers will, all the little incidents of
their lives, and what a marvelous thing it was that they had come to
love each other. It was all a story as old as the rock upon which they
sat, and pure and sweet as the blue violets blooming at their feet. In
the midst of it Manson pointed to a spot in the valley below--a cedar
pasture with an immense boulder in the middle--and said: "Once upon a
time, several years ago, when I was a boy, I was picking berries in that
field, when a little girl in short dress and calico sun-bonnet came
running down a path near me until, almost at my feet, she stumbled, and
girl, berries and bonnet went sprawling upon the ground! Can you guess
who it was?"

Liddy turned her face toward him and smilingly answered: "Was that the
way I entered your heart, Charlie? It wasn't a dignified way, was it?"

"It was at least effective," he replied, "for you have remained in it
ever since."

When the sun was high overhead she arose and said, with bewitching
imperiousness: "Now, sir, you have been idle long enough; you must help
me set the table. Bring me that basket in the carriage."

"If we are to begin keeping house up here," he answered cheerfully,
"perhaps you had better wait till I build you a table."

"I shall be glad if you can," she said, and watched him curiously while
he cut small, straight sticks, and then larger ones with forked ends.
These he drove into the ground under a tree, and placing one stout stick
to connect each of the forked ones and form supporting ends, laid the
others across and close together to make the table. He then placed flat
stones for seats, covering them with the carriage cushions, and when all
was done he said: "My dear, your table is ready; now I will help you to
set it."

"I am glad I brought a tablecloth," she remarked smiling.

When the dainty little banquet board, just large enough for two, was
covered with a snow-white spread and napkins, plates, knives and forks,
and all the attractive results of her culinary art, he smiled, for the
tempting food would make any hungry man smile.

"It's not an elaborate dinner," she remarked, as they sat down, "but you
must get used to my cooking some time, and you might as well begin now."

When the sun was low in the west and she sat near him idly weaving
flowers into the band of his hat, he said: "Liddy, have you never
wondered how I am going to solve the vocation problem I used to worry
about?"

"No," she answered quietly, "and I do not wish to discuss it, either.
Remember, we are children to-day." Then she continued, in a lower tone:
"I have trusted you with my heart, my life, and all the happiness I can
ever hope for, and when the time comes I know you will not fail me."

"I realize what it all means," he answered, after a long pause, "and you
can trust me, for so long as God gives me strength you shall have all
the blessings I can win in life."

They sat in silence until the lowering sun had left the valley in shadow
and smiled only on the hilltop where they lingered. Perhaps the dread
parting that was near seemed creeping toward them with the shades of
night, for his arm stole softly about her waist, and her hand crept
into his. They watched until the last ray of sunlight had vanished, and
when they arose he once more gathered her close in his arms and
whispered:

"Promise me, my darling, that if I never come back you will visit this
spot alone, once a year, in June, and if there be such a thing as a life
beyond the grave, I will be here in spirit."

"I promise," she answered solemnly, "and no man shall ever have the
right to stop me."

When they were ready to leave the place he had to lead her to the
carriage, for her eyes were blinded by tears.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.

With bayonets flashing in the sunlight, with flags flying and keeping
step to the martial music, Southton's brave Company E marched full one
hundred strong to the depot the next day, ready to leave for the war.

Almost the entire town was there to see them off, and hundreds of men,
old and young, filled the air with cheers. Mingling in that throng were
as many mothers, wives, sweethearts and sisters with aching hearts,
whose sobs of anguish were woven into the cheering. Strong men wept as
well. As the train rolled away, Manson fought the tears back that he
might not lose the last sight of one fair girl whose heart he knew was
breaking. When it was all over, and he realized that for months or
years, or perhaps never, would he behold her again, he knew what war and
parting meant. He had obeyed his conscience and sense of duty, and now
he must pay the price, and the payment was very bitter. Of his future
he knew not, or what it might hold for him. He could only hope that when
his hour of trial came that he would not falter, and if the worst must
come that he would find strength to meet it as a soldier should.

War is such a ghastly, hideous horror, and so utterly at variance with
this simple narrative, that I hesitate to speak of it. There can be no
moments of happiness, no rifts of sunshine, and but few gleams of hope
woven into the picture. All must be as war is--a varying but continued
succession of dreaded horror and the fear of death. The first month of
Manson's experience at the training camp was hard only in anticipation,
and but a daily round of duty easily performed and soon passed. Liddy's
frequent letters, each filled with all the sweet and loving words that,
like flowers, naturally spring from a woman's heart, cheered him
greatly; but when the order came to go to the front, the scene changed,
and the reality of war came. He dreaded the first shock, not so much
from fear of death; but lest his courage fail. When it came at
Chancellorsville it was all over before he knew it. Although under fire
for eight hours, he was not conscious of the lapse of time or aught
else, except that he obeyed orders and loaded and fired with the rest;
forgetting that he might fall, or whether he was brute or human. That
night he wrote to Liddy: "We have had our first battle, and for many
hours I forgot even you. I know now that I shall not falter. Poor
Luzerne Norton, one of our academy boys, was killed, also three others
from our company; and seven were wounded."

When the letter reached Liddy her heart sank. To know that one of her
bright and happy schoolmates of a few months before had been shot and
killed, and others wounded, was to have the dread reality of war brought
very near home. "Thank God my boy was spared," she thought. That night
she wrote him the most loving letter he had ever received, concluding
with: "Be brave, my darling, and always remember that come what may I
shall keep my promise."

Then came the battle of Gettysburg, and although his company escaped
with only a few wounded, it was here he first realized the ghastly
horror of a battlefield after the fight is over, and how the dead are
buried.

When his next letter reached the sad-hearted one at home, no mention was
made of this experience, and when she wrote asking why he had never
told her how a battleground looked, or anything about it, he replied:
"Not for worlds would I tell you how we bury the dead, or how they
looked, or anything of the sickening details. Please do not read them in
the papers, for it will do you no good, and cause you needless
suffering. I wish to keep misery from you. Think of me only as doing my
duty, and try to believe (as I do) that I shall come back to you alive
and well."

For the next six months he had no battles to face--only skirmishing and
picket duty. When Christmas came it brought him two boxes of good things
to gladden his heart. One was from his dear old mother, and one was from
Liddy, and tucked away in that, between four pairs of blue socks knit by
her fair hands, was a loving letter and a picture of herself.

Almost a month after came the battle of Tracy City and the fall of brave
Captain Upson. There were others wounded, but none of his company were
killed. It was here Manson received his first promotion to a corporal's
position, and he was afterward made sergeant. In the spring that
followed, and almost one year from the day he first told Liddy of his
love, came the battle of Boyd's Trail. Five days after, when the moon
was full one night, he wrote by the light of a camp fire: "Do you
remember one year ago to-day, and where we were and what I said? I little
realized that day what was in store for me. One thing I must tell you,
however, and that is you can never know how much comfort it has been to
me to live over all the happy hours we have had together. Every little
word and look of love from you has come back to me again and again in my
long, lonesome hours of picket duty, and to-night as I sit by the camp
fire and see the moon shining through the trees I can recall just how I
felt the first time I kissed you, when the same moon seemed to be
laughing at me. Do you remember one night when we were driving across
the plains on our way back from a little party over to Marion, and you
sang that 'Meet Me by Moonlight' ballad? That was three years ago, and
yet I can almost hear your voice now."

When this letter reached Liddy she read it in tears.

For the next year it was with Manson as with all that slowly decreasing
company--one unending round of nervous strain, long marches, sharp
fighting, or, worse yet--carrying the wounded from the battlefield and
burying the dead. They lived poorly, slept on the ground or in the mud
at times, and became accustomed to filth and stench, indifferent to
danger and hardened to death. When a comrade fell those who knew him
best said: "Poor fellow, he's gone," and buried him without a prayer;
but the dead who were personally unknown awakened no more feeling than
so many leaves fallen by the wayside. It could not well be otherwise,
for such is war. Individual cases of heroism were common enough, and
passed almost unnoticed; for they were all brave men who came to fight
and die if need be, and no less was expected.

War makes strange bedfellows, and forms unexpected friendships. It was
after the battle of Gettysburg, when the Tenth Army Corps remained in
camp for several months, and one night while on picket duty, that Manson
met with a curious adventure, and made the acquaintance of a
fellow-soldier by the name of Pullen, belonging to a Maine regiment,
whose existence, and the tie thus formed, eventually led to a sequence
of events of serious import. The enemy were encamped but a few miles
away, and that most dastardly part of warfare, the firing upon pickets
from ambush, was of nightly occurrence. Manson's beat that night was
over a low hill covered with scrub oak, and across part of a narrow
valley, through which wound a small, marsh-bordered stream. The night
was sultry, and the dampness of the swamp formed in a shallow strata of
fog, filling this valley, but not rising above the level of the uplands.
To add to the weirdness of his surroundings, the thin crescent of a new
moon threw a faint light over all and outlined the winding turns of this
mist-filled gorge. Away to the northward a belt of dark clouds emitted
frequent flashes of heat lightning, and occasional sharp reports along
the line bespoke possible death lurking in every thicket. Keeping always
in shadow, and oft pausing to listen, Manson slowly traversed his beat,
waiting only at either end to exchange a whispered "All's well!" with
the next sentry.

What a vigil! And what a menace seemed hidden behind every bush or spoke
in every sound! The faint creak of a tree as the night wind stirred the
branches; the rustle of leaves on the ground or the breaking of a twig
as some prowling animal moved about; the flight of a bird, disturbed at
its rest; the hoot of an owl on the hillside or the croak of a frog in
the swamp were all magnified tenfold by the half-darkness and the sense
of danger near. One end of his beat ended at the brook and here he
waited longest, for the sentry he met there was, like himself, hardly
out of his teens, and unused to war. A bond of fellowship sprang into
existence almost at sight, and made them brothers in feeling at once.

It was while whispering together beside this brook, and oppressed by the
suspense of night and danger near, that they detected a sound of more
than usual ill-omen, and that, the certain one that some creature had
stepped into the stream above, and was cautiously and slowly wading in
it. Hardly breathing, and bending low, the better to catch every sound
that came, they listened with beating hearts until it ceased. Once they
had detected the click of stones striking together as if moved by a
human foot and twice caught the faint plash of a bush or limb of tree
dropping into the water. Then the sounds ceased, and only the faint
murmur of that slow-running stream disturbed the silence.

For a few moments they waited there, and then together crept up out of
the gorge. Just as they emerged from the pall of the fog, and where the
moon's thin disk still outlined that narrow white-blanketed valley, they
paused, looking across, above, below and all around, and listening as
intently as two human beings so environed would when believing danger
near. And as they looked and listened for moments that seemed hours,
suddenly, scarce five rods away, they saw a man slowly emerged from the
bush-covered bank, rapidly cross this narrow gorge, apparently walking
on the fog, and disappear in the dark thicket on the other side!

Forgetting in the first shock of supernatural added to natural fear that
they stood fully exposed in the faint moonlight, they looked at each
other, while a cold chill of dread seemed to check even the power to
think. Manson was the first to recover, and with a quick, "We must
hide," almost hissed, dropped on all fours behind a bush, followed by
his comrade. That the motion betrayed them to watchful eyes is certain,
for the next instant, out from the dark thicket across the gorge there
leaped a flash of red fire, and the ping of a bullet, cutting leaves and
twigs above them, told its own tale. Too scared to think of returning
the fire, or conscious that to do so was unwise, they slowly crawled
deeper into the scrub and along the top of the hillock. All that night
they kept together, and how long it was until the gray light of coming
dawn lifted a little of their burden of fear, no one who has never
skulked along a picket line in darkness and dread can imagine!

When the relief guard came, Manson and his mate tried to discover where
their night-prowling enemy had crossed that narrow gorge, if he had
crossed at all, but could not. Whether ghost, or shadow, or
flesh-and-blood enemy had walked on fog in the faint moonlight before
them, they could not tell, and never afterward were they able to
determine. The only certain fact was that some one had fired at them,
and fired meaning to kill! Wisely, too, they agreed to keep the ghost
part of that experience a secret, and none of their comrades ever knew
they had seen a man walking upon the fog.

CHAPTER XIV.

BESIDE THE CAMP FIRE.

Both Manson's and Pullen's regiments were encamped along the edge of a
belt of pine woods, and after their creepy experience together on picket
duty, they naturally sought each other as often as possible. There is a
'witching romance lingering about a camp fire in the woods that
stimulates the imagination, and when these two newly made friends could
meet for an evening's visit beside theirs, many a tale of youthful
experience and boyish escapade was exchanged.

"Speaking of ghosts," said Manson, one evening, "I do not believe in
their existence exactly, and yet there is a strange fascination about
the idea that I can't understand. Now I do not believe we saw a man
walking on fog the other night, and yet I can't resist the desire to
hunt the matter out and discover what sort of an optical illusion it
was. I am not at all certain the man who took a shot at us was the one
we saw across the ravine, either. I had an experience once when I was
about nine years old, that, in a way, tainted my mind with the ghost
idea, and perhaps that is the reason why the possibility of seeing one
affects me in the way it does. A couple of miles from the farm where I
was reared there stood an old deserted ruin of a house known as the Tim
Buck place. It was hidden away behind hills and woods and reached from
the highway through a half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here,
years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck,
who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It
was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from
a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever
lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to
the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being
haunted, and no one ever went near it after dark. A couple of 'coon
hunters told how they had taken refuge in it from a sudden shower at
night, but left in a hurry when they heard some one walking on the
chamber floor above. Some one else said they had seen a white figure
walking on the ridge-pole just at dusk. All this was current gossip in
the town, and believed by many.

"My parents had sense enough not to tell me, but when I was old enough
to be sent to the district school, I heard all this, and more, too; and
the worst of it was I believed all I heard. I had never been near the
house, but when I heard the stories, I got another boy for company and
went to look at it from the top of a near-by hill. As I grew older the
fascination of the place kept increasing, and one day it overcame my
fear and all alone I paid it a visit.

"The house was a ruin--roof fallen in, floor rotted away and pitched
into the cellar: only the walls were standing, and the beams and
rafters, like the ribs of a skeleton, still in place. I remember the
well-sweep was in the usual position, and seemed to me like a warning
finger pointing at the bleaching rafters. It took me a good half hour to
muster courage enough to go within ten rods of the ruin, but I finally
did, and at last, scared half to death, and trembling, found myself
peeping in at one window. It was dark in there and smelt queer, and I, a
nine-year-old boy, fully expected to see some new and horrible spook
appear at any moment. How long I stood there I never knew, for I forgot
all else except the belief that if I waited long enough I should see
something queer. I did, too, for all at once I saw in an inner room,
where a closet door stood half open, a white, bony hand reach out from
behind it, take hold, and seemingly shut that door from the inside! I
didn't wait any longer, you may be sure, and never stopped running until
I came in sight of home, two miles away!"

"And didn't you ever go back there?" said Pullen, "when you got older?"

"Oh, yes, I did, but not for a year after, and during that year I
dreamed of that house and one or a dozen skeleton hands, countless
times. Finally I mustered up spunk, went there one day all alone, set
the old ruin on fire, and then ran as fast as my legs would carry me to
a hilltop half a mile away, and stood and watched the fire. The place
was so hidden away no one saw it burn except me, and I never told for
fear of consequences."

"And did you ever outgrow the belief that you really saw a skeleton hand
open that door?" said Pullen, reaching forward to pick up an ember and
light the pipe he had just refilled.

Manson was silent for a few moments, as he lay resting his head on one
hand and watching the firelight play hide-and-seek among the pine boughs
overhead.

"No, to tell you the truth, Frank," he replied at last, slowly, "I do
not think I ever did. Of course, I know I did not see what I thought I
did, and yet I have not quite outgrown the scare. I won't admit that I
believe in ghosts, and yet the thought of them, owing perhaps to that
boyhood fright, has a sort of deadly fascination for me. I believe and
yet I do not believe, and if I were told I could see one by going
anywhere, no matter how grewsome the spook was, I could not resist
going."

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