The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

"Then you are free to be mine,"—coming a step nearer.

She drew back.

"I don't think He taught that. I cannot go behind His words."

"Grey, I will not drag you one step where your free will does not lead you. Last night I said, 'I love this woman so well that I will leave her sooner than drag her into crime.' You shall do what you think right. I will be silent."

"Good bye, then, Paul."

Yet he did not take the offered hand: stood moodily looking down into the water, crushing back something in his heart,—the only thing in his life dear or pleasant, it may be.

"Oh, if women knew what it is to sell themselves! They will marry more purely, maybe, soon. I believe that Christ made the marriage-vow binding, Paul, because, though some might break it with pure intent, yet, if it were of no avail, as it is in those Homes you talk of, and in Indiana, women would become more degraded by brutal men, live falser lives, than even now. I'm afraid, Paul,"—with a sorrowful smile,—"men will have to educate the inner law of their natures more, before they can live out from it: until then we'll have to obey an outer law. You know how your Phalansteries have ended."

While she spoke, she gathered her mantle about her. It was a good thing to talk, fast and lightly, so that he would leave her without more pain. God had helped her do right. It was bravest, most Christ-like, for her to bear the loss she had brought on herself, and to renounce a happiness she had made guilty. But, if women knew—Sitting on the rock by the water's edge, she thrust her fingers into the damp mould with a thought of the time when she could lie under it,—grow clean, through the strange processes of death, from all impurity. If she could but creep down there now, a false-sworn, unloving wife, out of this man's sight, out of God's sight!

"Will you go?"—looking up with blanched cheek. "You were never so noble as now, Paul Blecker, when you left me to myself to judge. If you had only touched my love"—

"You would have yielded. I know. I'm not utterly base, Grey. I am glad," his face growing red, "you think I have been honorable. I tried to be. I want to act as a man of gentle blood and a Christian would do,—though I'm not either."

It was a chivalric face that looked down on her, though nervous and haggard. She saw that. How bare and mean her life yawned before her that moment! how all quiet and joy waited for her in the arms hanging listlessly by his side, as if their work in life were done! Must she sacrifice her life to an eternal law of God? Was this Free Love so vile a thing?

"Will you go?"—rising suddenly. "While you stand there, the Devil comes very near me, Paul." She held out her hand. "You would despise me, if I yielded now."

"I might, but I would love you all the same, Grey,"—with a miserable attempt at a smile. He took the hand, holding it in his a moment. "Good bye,"—all feeling frozen out of his voice. "You've done right, Grey. It will be better for us some day. We'll think of that,—always."

"You suffer. I have made your life wretched,"—clinging suddenly to him,

"No."—turning his head away. "Never mind. I am not a child, Grey. Men do not die of grief. They take up hard work, and that strengthens them. And my little girl will be happy. Her God will bless her; for she is a true, good girl. Yes, true. You judged rightly."

For Blecker had taken up the alien Socialist dogma that day sincerely, but driven to it by passion: now he swayed back to his old-fashioned faith in marriage, as one comes to solid land after a plunge in the upheaving surf.

"Good bye, Paul."

The sunlight fell on their faces with a white brilliance, as they stood, their hands clasped, for a moment. The girl never saw it afterwards without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal pain. Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull sense that the day was bright and unfeeling, and that something was gone from the world, never to come back. The life before he had known her offered itself to him again in a bare remembrance: the heat to get on,—the keen bargains,—friendships with fellows that shook him off when they married, not caring that it hurt him,—he, without a home or religion, keeping out of vice only from an inborn choice to be clean. That was all. Pah! God help us! What was this life worth, after all? He glanced at the town, laid in ashes. The war was foul indeed, yet in it there was room for high chivalric purpose. Could he so end his life? She would know it, and love him more that he died an honorable death. Shame! and cowardly too!—was there nothing worth finding in the world besides a woman's love?—he was no puling boy. If there were, what was it—for him?

He looked down at the dull sweep of the valley, heard the whistle of the train that was carrying her away, and saw the black trail of smoke against the sky,—stood silently watching it until the last bit of smoke even had disappeared. A woman would have worked off in tears or hysteric cries what pain came then; but the man only swallowed once or twice, lighted his cigar, and with a grim smile went down the road.

My story is nearly ended. I have no time nor wish, these war-days, to study dramatic effects, or to shift large and cautiously painted scenes or the actors, for the mere tickling of your eyes and ears. One or two facts in the history of these people are enough to give for my purpose: they are for women,—nervous, greedy, discontented women: to learn from them (if I could put the truth into forcible enough English) that truth of Christ's teaching, which has unaccountably been let slip out of our modern theology, that his help is temporal as well as spiritual, deals with coarsest, most practical needs, and is sworn to her who struggles to be true to her best self, that what she asks, believing, she shall receive. That is the point,—believing. "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

How many tragedies of life besides finespun novels would suddenly be brought to an end, if the heroine were only a common-sense, believing Christian of the old-fashioned pattern! Doctor Blecker, going into the war after the day he parted from the girl at Harper's Ferry, with a sense of as many fighting influences in his life as there were in the army, had no under-sight of the clear mapping-out of the years for him, controlled by the simple request of the woman yonder who loved him. She dared not repeat that prayer now; but it had gone up once out of a childish trust, and was safely written down above.

Let us pass over five or six months, and follow Paul Blecker to Fredericksburg, the night after that bloodiest day for the Federal forces, in December. It was the fourth battle in which he had taken part. Now a man grows blasé, in a manner, even of wholesale slaughter; he plodded his way quietly, indifferently almost, therefore, over the plateau below the first range of hills, his instrument-case in hand, drinking from his brandy-flask now and then, to keep down nausea. The night was clear,—a low, wan moon peering from the west, a warm wind from the river drifting the heavy billows of smoke away from the battle-field. He picked his steps with difficulty, unwilling to tread upon even the dead: they lay in heaps here, thrown aside by the men who were removing the wounded. The day was lost: he fancied he could read on even the white upturned faces a bitter defeat. Firing had ceased an hour ago; only at long intervals on the far left a dull throb was heard, as though the heart of the Night pulsed heavily and feverishly in her sleep: no other sound, save the constant, deadening roll of ambulances going out from this Valley of Death. The field where he stood was below the ridge on which were placed Lee's batteries; for ten hours the grand division of Sumner had charged the heights here, the fog shutting out from them all but the impregnable foe in front, and the bit of blue sky above, the last glimpse of life they were to see,—charging with the slow, cumulative energy of an ocean-surf upon a rock, and ebbing back at last, spent, leaving behind the drift of a horrible wetness on the grass, and uncounted murdered souls to go back to God.

The night now was bright and colorless, as I said, except where a burning house down by the canal made a faded saffron glare. The Doctor had entered a small thicket of locust-trees; the moonlight penetrated clearly through their thin trunks, but the dead on the grass lay in shadow. He carried a lantern, therefore, as he gently turned them over, searching for some one. It was a Pennsylvania regiment which had held that wood longest,—McKinstry's. Half a dozen other men were employed like the Doctor,—Irish, generally: they don't forget the fellows that messed with them as quickly as our countrymen do.

"We're in luck, Dan Reilly," said one. "Here's the Docthor himself. Av we hed the b'ys now, we'd be complate,"—turning over one face after another, unmistakably Dutch or Puritan.

"Ev it's Pat O'Shaughnessy yez want," said another, "he'd be afther gittin' ayont the McManuses, an' here they are. They're Fardowners on'y. Pat's Corkonian, he is; he'll be nearer th' inemy by a fut, I'll ingage yez."

"He's my cousin,"—hard tugging at the dead bodies with one arm;—the other hung powerless. "I can't face Mary an' her childher agin an' say I lift her man widout Christian burial.—Howld yer sowl! Dan Reilly, give us a lift; here he is. Are ye dead, Pat?"

One eye in the blackened face opened.

"On'y my leg. 'O'Shaughnessy agin th' warld, an' the warld agin th' Divil!'"—which was received with a cheer from the Corkonians.

"Av yer Honor," insinuated Dan, "wud attind to this poor man, we'd be proud to diskiver the frind you're in sarch of."

Blecker glanced at the stout Irishmen about him, with kind faces under all the whiskey, and stronger arms than his own."

"I will, boys. You know him,—he's in your regiment,—Captain McKinstry. He fell in this wood, they tell me."

"I think I know him,"—his head to one side. "Woodenish-looking chap, all run up into shoulders, with yellow hair?"

Blecker nodded, and motioned them to carry O'Shaughnessy into a low tool-house near, a mere shed, half tumbling down from a shell that had shattered its side. There was a bench there, where they could lay the wounded man, however. He stooped over the big mangled body, joking with him,—it was the best comfort to Pat to give him a chance to show how little he cared for the surgeon's knife,—glancing now and then at the pearly embankment of clouds in the south, or at the delicate locust-boughs in black and shivering tracery against the moonlight, trying to shut his ears to the unceasing under-current of moans that reached him in the silence.

Seeing him there with his lantern and instruments, they brought him one wounded man after another, to whom he gave what aid he could, and then despatched them in the army-wagons, looking impatiently after Dan, in his search for the Captain. He had not known before how much he cared for McKinstry, with a curious protecting care. Other men in the army were more his chums than Mac, but they were coarse, able to take care of themselves. Mac was like that simple-hearted old Israelite in whom there was no guile. In the camp he had been perpetually imposed on by his men,—giving them treats of fresh beef and bread, and tracts at the same time. They laughed at him, but were oddly fond of him; he was a sharp disciplinarian, but was too quiet, they always had thought, to have much pluck.

Blecker, glancing at his watch, saw that it was eleven; the moon was sinking fast, her level rays fainter and bluer, as from some farther depth of rest and quiet than before. His keenly set ears distinguished just then an even tramp among the abrupt sounds without,—the feet of two or three men carrying weight.

"He's here, Zur," said Dan, who held the feet, tenderly enough. "Aisy now, b'ys. It's not bar'ls ye're liftin'." They laid him down. "Fur up th' ridge he was: not many blue-coats furder an. That's true,"—in a loud, hearty tone. "I'm doubtin'," in an aside, "it's all over wid him. I'll howld the lantern, Zur."

"You, Blecker?" McKinstry muttered, as he opened his eyes with his usual pleased smile. "We've lost the day?"

"Yes. No matter now, Mac. Quiet one moment,"—cutting the boot from his leg.

"Not fifty of my boys escaped,"—a sort of spasm passing over his face. "Tell them at home they fought nobly,—nobly."

His voice died down. Blecker finished his examination,—it needed but a minute,—then softly replaced the leg, and, coming up, stood quiet, only wiping the dampness off his forehead. Dan set down the lantern.

"I'll go, Zur," he whispered. "Ther' 's work outside, belike."

The Doctor nodded. McKinstry opened his eyes.

"Good bye, my friend,"—stretching out his hand to Dan. "My brother couldn't have been kinder to me than you were to-night."

"Good bye, Zur." The rough thrust out his great fist eagerly. "God open the gate wide for yer Honor, the night,"—clearing his voice, as he went out.

"I'm going, then, Blecker?"

Paul could not meet the womanish blue eyes turned towards him: he turned abruptly away.

"Why! why! Tut! I did not think you cared, Paul,"—tightening his grasp of the hand in his. Then, closing his eyes, he covered his face with his left hand, and was silent awhile.

"Go, Doctor," he said, at last. "I forgot that others need you. Go at once. I'm very comfortable here."

"I will not go. Do you see this?"—pointing to the stream of bright arterial blood. "It was madness to throw your life away thus; a handkerchief tightened here would have sufficed until they carried you off the field."

"Yes, yes, I knew. But the wound came just as we were charging. Sabre-cut, it was. If I had said I was wounded, the men would have fallen back. I thought we could take that battery; but we did not. No matter. All right. You ought to go?"