LITERATURE.
WEDDED IN DEATH. A TALE OP THE LATE AMERICAN WAR. [From Belgravia- J One evening, soon after the sanguinary battle of Antietam, I was sitting alone at the open window of my room in Broad street, Richmond. Virginia, gazing listlessly at the passers by in the busy street beneath. I had been smoking, and endeavoring to amuse myself by reading ; but I had unconsciously smoked out all the tobacco from my pipe, and the hand which held my book had fallen to my knee. In fact I had sunk into a deep reverie. The stirring events of the past year —in many of which T had taken an active part—passed in rapid succession before my mental vision, like the scenes in a panorama. or rather, I may say like a series of dissolving views, and now seemed more like the creations of fancy than the stern realities they had really been. Then my thoughts reverted to my far distant home, and I wondered by what strange fatality I had come to be a participator in a struggle in which I had no real interest. I thought how wildly improbable, nay, how impossible such a contest as was now raging would have been deemed by me, had it been foretold to me a few years back. I had accompanied a division of the Confederate army to the field in the capacity of of a newspaper correspondent, with the nominal rank of lieutenant, and had been severely wounded in a night-raid made upon our camp by a party of Federal troops, and after having spent a weary period of four months in a Richmond hospital, I fell that I had experienced enough of the perils and vicissitudes of glorious war, and was awaiting a favorable opportunity to quit the scene of strife, and make my way through the Western States into Canada, thence to take passage for England. I was still deeply absorbed in my reverie, when there came such a loud and continuous tapping at the door of my room that I sprung up from my chair, and in so doing let fall my book and my pipe, the latter breaking into half-a-dozen pieces. ‘Come in!’ I shouted loudly; and my negro boy opened the door and presented himself with a grin upon his shining black visage, which caused his mouth to extend almost from ear to ear, and afforded a brilliant display of glittering white teeth. ‘ What on earth made you thunder at the door in that fashion, you rascal ?’ I said angrily, as the negro stood, still grinning, at the door. ‘ Look at the mischief you’ve done, you scoundrel !’ I added, pointing towards’ the fragments of my favourite meerschaum.
‘ I bring um letter fo’ massa,’ replied the negro. ‘ I knock two, tree, five time at de door. No come answer. Fo’ sbo’, I tink, massa gone dead. Den I knock um loud fo’ rouse him.’
‘ Loud enough in all conscience. Why couldn’t you open the door instead of alarming the house ? Where is the letter ?’ ‘ Him yere, massa. So’jer bring um. Say him wait for answer,’ said the negro, now advancing and placing the letter on the table.
The letter was awkwardly folded square, closed with paste, and the superscription was in pencil. ‘ Who can have sent me this ?’ I thought to myself, as I turned the clumsy missive about, and, as people are apt to do under such circumstances, foolishly sought to recognise the handwriting of the address instead of satisfying my curiosity at once by opening the letter and glancing at the signature.
However, my endeavors to recognise the pencil scrawl were vain ; so at last I tore the letter open and read the contents. They were brief, and, like the address, written in pencil, evidently by a feeble trembling hand.
‘ Dear Marshall,’ said the writer. ‘ come to the St. Charles Hospital to-morrow at tlm visiting hour—ten o’clock a.m. I am a nri soncr, and desperately wounded. Come early as possible, and do not fail me, for the memory of old times. ‘ James Burke,
‘ Lieutenant—th New York Regiment.’
‘James Burke!' 1 exclaimed, and the letter almost fell from my loosened grasp as I read the well-known signature, and a flood of youthful and later-day recollections rushed to my memory.
‘ Is the messenger waiting, did you say, Pete ?’ I asked of the negro servant.
‘ Iss, massa. Dough him in a mighty hurry, him say.’ ‘Ask him to come upstairs. No, stay ; I’ll go to him;’ and I preceded Pete downstairs into the hall, where I found a Confederate trooper in uniform. ‘You brought this letter from the St Charles Hospital ?’ I said interrogatively. ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the trooper, making a military salute. ‘ Do you know the writer V ‘ No, sir. I was relieved from guard at the hospital half an hour ago, and one of the nuss-ladies—a terr’ble frosty young woman —arxed me to carry the letter to the address and to be sure and deliver it and wait for an answer. She wor awful pale, poor thing, and seemed terr’ble cut up; so I said I would for her, and that I’d take back the answer,’ ‘You don’t know the gentleman who wrote the letter ? You have not seen him ?’ ‘ Waal, no, sir, 1 hain’t. He’s one of the wounded officers as wor taken prisoners arter Anti-atam, I kalkerlate, and I’ve heern bow he’s wounded terr’ble bad. That’s all I knows on.’ I tore a leaf from my pocket-book, and wrote in pencil—- ‘ Dear James —I am sorry to learn that you are wounded and a prisoner. I hope, with all my heart, that your wounds are not serious. If I live, I will be at the Hospital at ten o’clock to-morrow. I would go tonight if I could get admission. Depend upon me.—Your old friend, Edward Marshall.’ ‘ Please to deliver that,’ said I, handing the paper and a paper quarter-dollar to the trooper at the same time. ‘ And say also that I will be sure to see the wounded officer to-morrow.’ The soldier made his military salute and exit, and I returned to the solitude of my no longer to indulge in reverie, but to think sorrowfully of my former friend, now nominally —my foe, lying sick, wounded, and a prisoner in a crowded unwholesome hospital. My astonishment, however, passed away, when I came coolly to think the matter over. James Burke was a young Irishman of highly respectable and wealthy family, though he himself was poor, his father having been a younger son. He and I had been schoolfellows together for a few years in England, and after that I lost sight of him until about four years previous to the outbreak of the American War when I met him by chance in Broadway, New York. Our former acquaintanceship was immediately renewed, and we became intimate friends almost constant companions. Our avocations, in fact, threw us much together ; for I was engaged on the New York newspaper press, and he was gaining a respectable income by writing for the American periodicals, and also as an author on his own account. His abilities, which were certainly good, had already brought him into notice, and he had a fair if not a brilliant prospect in the future. His remarkably handsome person and his gentlemanly manners were also passports in his favour, and he mingled freely with the best society of New York. His chief faults were a lack of steady industry, though he was energetic enough when the whim seized him ; a proneness to extravagance; and an unconquerable pride of birth and descent, which led him frequently to treat with hauteur those whom he disliked, or whom he affected to consider beneath him. I regarded him almost in the light of a brother. We confided almost everything to each other, though there was one subject upon which James Burke was silent and secret even with me. He never would say what was his reason for emigrating to America.
To be continued.
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Globe, Volume I, Issue 81, 3 September 1874, Page 3
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1,335LITERATURE. Globe, Volume I, Issue 81, 3 September 1874, Page 3
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