Copperhead Gore: Benjamin Wood's Fort Lafayette and Civil War America

CHAPTER XXII

[ 214 ] CHAPTER XXII. At the doorway of the building on the hill, where the aged invalid was yielding her last breath amid the roar of battle, a wounded of¤cer sat among the dying and the dead, while the con¶ict swept a little away from that quarter of the ¤eld. The blood was streaming from the shattered bosom, and feebly he strove to staunch it with his silken scarf. He had dragged himself through gore and dust until he reached that spot, and now, rising again with a convulsive effort, he leaned his red hands against the wall, and entered over the fragments of the door, which had been shivered by a shell. With tottering steps he passed along the hall and up the little stairway, as one who had been familiar with the place. Before the door of the aged lady’s chamber he paused a moment and listened; all was still there, although the terrible tumult of the battle was sounding all around. He entered; he advanced to the bedside; the dying woman was murmuring a prayer. A random shot had torn the shriveled ¶esh upon her bosom and the white counterpane was stained with blood. She did not see him—her thoughts were away from earth, she was already seeking communion with the spirits of the blest. The soldier knelt by that strange deathbed and leaned his pale brow upon the pillow. “Mother!” How strangely the word sounded amid the shouts of combatants and the din of war. It was like a good angel’s voice drowning the discords of hell. Fort Lafayette by Benjamin Wood [ 215 ] “Mother!” She heard not the cannon’s roar, but that one word, scarce louder than the murmur of a dreaming infant, reached her ear. The palsied head was turned upon the pillow and the light of life returned to her glazing eyes. “Who speaks?” she gasped, while her thin hands were tremulously clasped together with motion. “’Tis I, mother. Philip, your son.” “Philip, my son!” and the nerveless form, that had scarce moved for years, was raised upon the bed by the last yearning effort of a mother’s love. “Is it you, Philip, is it you, indeed? I can scarce see your form, but surely I have heard the voice of my boy—my long absent boy. Oh! Philip! why have I not heard it oftener to comfort my old age?” “I am dying, mother. I have been a bad son and a guilty man. But I am dying, mother. Oh! I am punished for my sin! The avenging bullet struck me down at the gate of the home I had deserted— the home I have made desolate to you. Mother, I have crawled here to die.” “To die! O God! your hand is cold—or is it but the chill of death upon my own? Oh! I had thought to have said farewell to earth forever , but yet let me linger but a little while, O Lord! if but to bless my son.” She sank exhausted upon the pillow, but yet clasped the gory¤ngers of the dying man. “Philip, are you there? Let me hear your voice. I hear strange murmurs afar off; but not the voice of my son. Are you there, Philip, are you there?” Philip Searle was crouching lower and lower by the bedside, and his forehead, upon which the dews of death were starting, lay languidly beside the thin, white locks that rested on the pillow. “Look, mother!” he said, raising his head and glaring into the corner of the room. “Do you see that form in white?—there—she with the pale cheeks and golden hair! I saw her once before today, Copperhead Gore [ 216 ] when she lay stretched upon the bed, with a lily in her white ¤ngers. And once again I saw her in that last desperate charge, when the bullet struck my side. And now she is there again, pale, motionless, but smiling. Does she smile in mockery or forgiveness? I could rather bear a frown than that terrible—that frozen smile. O God! she is coming to me, mother, she is coming to me—she will lay her cold hand upon me. No—it is not she it is Moll—look, mother, it is Moll, all blackened with smoke and seared with living ¤re. O God! how terrible! But, mother, I did not do that...