For Love of Country - Cyrus Townsend Brady (great book club books txt) 📗

was the place where Washington had led the charge.

In one brief quarter of an hour nearly three hundred men had given up their lives, on this little farm, and there they lay attesting in mute silence their fidelity to their principles, warm red coat and tattered blue coat side by side, peace between them at last; indifferent each to the severities of nature or the passions of men; unheeding alike the ambitions of kings, the obstinacy of parliaments, or the desire of liberty on the part of peoples. Some were lying calmly, as if their last moments had been as peaceful as when little children they laid themselves down to sleep; others twisted and contorted with looks of horror and anguish fixed upon their mournful faces, which bespoke agonies attending the departure of life like to the travail pains with which it had been ushered into existence. Seymour with a sad heart stooped and turned over the body of his friend, lifting his face once more to that heaven he had gazed upon so bravely a few hours since--for it was morning again, but oh, how different! The face was covered with blood from the wound in the forehead, by which he had been beaten down. Sadly, tenderly, gratefully, remembering an hour when Talbot had knelt by his side and performed a similar service, he endeavored to wipe the lurid stains from off his marble brow. Then a thought came to him. Taking from his breast Katharine's handkerchief, which had never left him, he moistened it in the snow, and finding an unstained place where her dainty hand had embroidered her initials "K. W.," he carefully wiped clean the white face of his dead friend. There was a little smile upon Talbot's lips, and a look of peace and calm upon his face, which Seymour had not seen him wear since the sinking of the frigate. His right hand, whiter than the lace which drooped over it, was pressed against his heart, evidently as the result of his last conscious movement. Seymour bent down and lifted it up gently; there was something beneath it inside his waistcoat. The young sailor reverently inserted his hand and drew it forth. It was a plain gold locket. Touching the spring, it opened, and there were pictured the faces of the two women Talbot had loved,--on the one side the mother, stately, proud, handsome, resolute, the image of the man himself; on the other, the brown eyes and the fair hair and the red lips of beautiful Katharine Wilton. There was a letter too in the pocket. The bayonet thrust which had reached his heart had gone through it, and it, and the locket also, was stained with blood. The letter was addressed to Seymour; wondering, he broke the seal and read it. It was a brief note, written in camp the night of the march. It would seem that Talbot had a presentiment that he might die in the coming conflict; indeed the letter plainly showed that he meant to seek death, to court it in the field. His mother was to be told that he had done his duty, and had not failed in sustaining the traditions of his honorable house; and the honest soldierly little note ended with these words,--

As for you, my dear Seymour, would that fate had been kinder to you! Were Katharine alive, I would crave your permission to say these words to her: 'I love you, Kate,--I've always loved you--but the better man has won you.' My best love to the old mother. Won't you take it to her? And good-by, and God bless you!----Hilary Talbot.

The brilliance went out of the sunshine, the brightness faded out of the morning, and Seymour stood there with the tears running down his cheeks,--not ashamed to weep for his friend. And yet the man was with Kate, he thought, and happy,--he could almost envy him his quiet sleep. The course of his thoughts was rudely broken by the approach of a party of horsemen, who rode up to where he stood. Their leader, a bold handsome young man, of distinguished appearance, in the brilliant dress of a British general officer, reined in his steed close by him, and addressed him.

"How now, sir! Weeping? Tears do not become a soldier!"

"Ah, sir," said Seymour, saluting, and pointing down to Talbot's body at the same time, "not even when one mourns the death of a friend?"

"Your friend, sir?" replied the general officer, courteously, uncovering and looking down at the bodies with interest; his practised eye immediately taking in the details of the little conflict.

"He did not go to his death alone," he said meaningly. "'Fore Gad, sir, here has been a pretty fight! Your name and rank, sir?"

"Lieutenant John Seymour, of the American Continental navy, volunteer aid on his excellency General Washington's staff."

"And what do you here? Are you a prisoner?"

"No, sir, I came with Major Lewis to visit General Mercer, and to look for my friend, under cover of a flag of truce."

"Ha! How is General Mercer?"

"Frightfully wounded; he cannot live very long now."

"He was a gallant fellow, so I am told, sir, and fought the father of his majesty in the '45."

"Yes," said Seymour, simply; "this is where he fell."

The general looked curiously about him.

"And who was your dead friend?" he continued.

"Captain Hilary Talbot, of Virginia, of General Washington's staff."

"What! Not Talbot of Fairview Hall on the Potomac?" said one of the officers.

"The same, sir."

"Gad, my lord, Madam Talbot's a red-hot Tory! She swears by the king. I 've been entertained at the house,--not when the young man was there, but while he was away,--and a fine place it is. Well, here 's a house divided truly!"

"Is it indeed so, Mr. Seymour?"

The young man nodded affirmatively.

"What were you proposing to do with the body?"

"Bury it near here, sir, in the cemetery on the hill by the college. We have no means of transporting it hence."

"Well, you shall do so, and we will bury him like a soldier. I remember the family now, in England, very well. Don't they call them the Loyal Talbots? Yes, I thought so. He was a rebel, and so far false to his creed, but a gentleman nevertheless, and a brave one too. Look at the fight he made here, gentlemen! Damme, he shall have an escort of the king's own troops, and Lord Cornwallis himself and his staff for his chief mourners! eh, Erskine?" said the gallant earl, turning to the officer who rode near him.

"How will that suit you, Mr. Seymour? You can tell that to his poor old mother too, when you see her once again. Some of you bring up a company of troops and get a gun carriage,--there's an abandoned one of Mawhood's over there,--and we 'll take him up properly. Have you a horse, sir? Ah, that's well, and bring a Prayer Book if you can find one,--I doubt if there be any in my staff. I presume the man was a Churchman, and he shall have prayers too. We have no coffin for him, either; but stay--here 's my own cloak, a proper shroud for a soldier, surely that will do nicely; and now let us go on, gentlemen."

In a short time the martial cortége reached the little Presbyterian cemetery. The young man wrapped in the general's cloak was soon laid away in the shallow grave, which had hastily been made ready for him. Seymour, attended by the two other American officers, Armstrong and Lewis, after cutting off a lock of Talbot's dark hair for his mother, read the burial service out of the young soldier's own little Prayer Book, which he had found in the pocket of his coat; as the earth was put upon him, Cornwallis and his officers stood about reverently uncovered, while the sailor read with faltering lips the old familiar words, which for twenty centuries have whispered of comfort to the heart-broken children of men, and illumined the dark future by an eternal hope--nay, rather, fixed assurance--of life everlasting.

There was one tender-hearted woman there too, one of the sweet-faced daughters of the kindly Quaker, Miss Clark. She had taken time to twine a hasty wreath from the fragrant ever-verdant pine; when the little mound of earth was finished, softly she laid it down, breathing a prayer for the mother in far-off Virginia as she did so.

Then they all drew back while the well-trained soldiers fired the last three volleys, and the drummers beat the last call. 'T was the same simple ending which closes the career of all soldiers, of whatever degree, when they come to occupy those narrow quarters, where earthly considerations of rank and station are forgot.

"Sir, I beg to thank you for this distinguished courtesy," said Seymour, with deep feeling, extending his hand to the knightly Briton.

"Do not mention it, sir, I beg of you," replied Cornwallis, shaking his hand warmly. "You will do the same for one of us, I am sure, should occasion ever demand a like service at your hands. I will see that your other men and officers are properly buried. Do you return now?"

"Immediately, my lord."

"Pray present my compliments to Mr.--nay, General--Washington," said the generous commander, "and congratulate him upon his brilliant campaign. Ay, and tell him we look forward eagerly to trying conclusions with him again. Good-by, sir. Come, gentlemen," he cried, raising his hat gracefully as he mounted his horse and rode away, followed by his staff.


CHAPTER XXIX


The Last of the Talbots

It was with a sinking heart that Seymour rode up the hill toward Fairview Hall a few days later. There had been a light fall of snow during the preceding night, and the brilliant sun of the early morning had not yet gained sufficient strength to melt it away. There was a softening touch therefore about the familiar scene, and Seymour, who had never viewed it in the glory of its summer, thought he had never known it to look so beautiful. Heartily greeted as he passed on by the various servants of the family, with whom he was a great favorite, he finally drew rein and dismounted before the great flight of steps which led up to the terrace upon which the house stood. His arrival had not been unnoticed, and Madam Talbot was standing in the doorway to greet him. He noticed that she looked paler and thinner and older, but she held herself as erect and carried herself as proudly as she had always done. Grief and disappointment and broken hope might change and destroy the natural tissues and fibres of her being, but they could not alter her iron will. Tossing the bridle to one of the attendant servants, Seymour, hat in hand, walked slowly up the steps and across the grass plat, and stepped upon the porch. She watched him in silence, with a frightful sinking of the heart; the gravity of his demeanor and the pallor of his face, in which she seemed to detect a shade of pity which her pride resented, apprised her that whatever news he had brought would be ill for her to hear, but her rigid face and composed manner gave no indication of