Загрузка...

AI-разбор доступен после входа

Суть книги, пересказ, главный конфликт, ключевые идеи, вывод, кому полезна, главные темы, персонажи и цитаты можно получить после входа в BookRa.

auto_awesomeПолучить AI-разбор

О книге

Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
Возрастное ограничение0+
Жанры
зарубежная классиказарубежная старинная литературалитература 19 века

Читать онлайн

Страница 4 из 5

“I had no right to go and love Mary. I was twice her age, an awkward, unsocial man, that would have blighted her youth. I was as wrong as wrong can be. But I never meant to tell her. I locked the grammar in my desk and the secret in my heart for a year. I could n’t bear to meet her in the village, and kept away from every place where she was likely to be. Then she came to me, and sat down at my feet penitently, just as she used to do when she was a child, and asked what she had done to anger me; and then, Heaven forgive me! I told her all, and asked her if she could say with her lips the words she had written, and she nestled in my arms all a-trembling like a bird, and said them over and over again.

“When Mary’s family heard of our engagement, there was trouble. They looked higher for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster. No blame to them. They forbade me the house, her uncles; but we met in the village and at the neighbors’ houses, and I was happy, knowing she loved me. Matters were in this state when the war came on. I had a strong call to look after the old flag, and I hung my head that day when the company raised in our village marched by the school-house to the railroad station; but I couldn’t tear myself away. About this time the minister’s son, who had been away to college, came to the village. He met Mary here and there, and they became great friends. He was a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was natural they should like one another. Sometimes I winced at seeing him made free of the home from which I was shut out; then I would open the grammar at the leaf where ‘Dear John’ was written up in the corner, and my trouble was gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale these days, and I think her people were worrying her.

“It was one evening two or three days before we got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set round the old man’s lot, and was just stepping into the enclosure, when I heard voices from the opposite side. One was Mary’s, and the other I knew to be young Marston’s, the minister’s son. I did n’t mean to listen, but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We must never meet again, she was saying in a wild way. We must say good-by here, for ever,—good-by, good-by! And I could hear her sobbing. Then, presently, she said, hurriedly, No, no; my hand, not my lips! Then it seemed he kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going towards the parsonage, and the other out by the gate near where I stood.

“I don’t know how long I stood there, but the night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole out of the graveyard and across the road to the school-house. I unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my bosom. There was not a sound or a light anywhere as I walked out of the village. And now,” said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree-trunk, “if the little book ever falls in your way, won’t you see that it comes to no harm, for my sake, and for the sake of the little woman who was true to me and did n’t love me? Wherever she is to-night, God bless her!”

As we descended to camp with our arms resting on each other’s shoulder, the watch-fires were burning low in the valleys and along the hillsides, and as far as the eye could reach the silent tents lay bleaching in the moonlight.

III

We imagined that the throwing forward of our brigade was the initial movement of a general advance of the army; but that, as the reader will remember, did not take place until the following March. The Confederates had fallen back to Centreville without firing a shot, and the national troops were in possession of Lewinsville, Vienna, and Fairfax Court-House. Our new position was nearly identical with that which we had occupied on the night previous to the battle of Bull Run—on the old turnpike road to Manassas, where the enemy was supposed to be in great force. With a field-glass we could see the Rebel pickets moving in a belt of woodland on our right, and morning and evening we heard the spiteful roll of their snare-drums.

Those pickets soon became a nuisance to us. Hardly a night passed but they fired upon our outposts, so far with no harmful result; but after a while it grew to be a serious matter. The Rebels would crawl out on all-fours from the wood into a field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called “The Pepper-Box,” another “Uncle Sam’s Well,” another “The Reb-Trap,” and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not-to-be-mentioned tropical locality. Though this rude sort of nomenclature predominated, there was no lack of softer titles, such as “Fortress Matilda” and “Castle Mary,” and one had, though unintentionally, a literary flavor to it, “Blair’s Grave,” which was not popularly considered as reflecting unpleasantly on Nat Blair, who had assisted in making the excavation.

Some of the regiment had discovered a field of late corn in the neighborhood, and used to boil a few ears every day, while it lasted, for the boys detailed on the night-picket. The corn-cobs were always scrupulously preserved and mounted on the parapets of the pits. Whenever a Rebel shot carried away one of these barbette guns, there was swearing in that particular trench. Strong, who was very sensitive to this kind of disaster, was complaining bitterly one morning, because he had lost three “pieces” the night before.

“There’s Quite So, now,” said Strong, “when a Minie-ball comes ping! and knocks one of his guns to flinders, he merely smiles, and does n’t at all see the degradation of the thing.”

Poor Bladburn! As I watched him day by day going about his duties, in his shy, cheery way, with a smile for every one and not an extra word for anybody, it was hard to believe he was the same man who, that night before we broke camp by the Potomac, had poured out to me the story of his love and sorrow in words that burned in my memory.

While Strong was speaking, Blakely lifted aside the flap of the tent and looked in on us.

“Boys, Quite So was hurt last night,” he said, with a white tremor to his lip.

“What!”

“Shot on picket.”

“Why, he was in the pit next to mine,” cried Strong.

“Badly hurt?”

“Badly hurt.”

I knew he was; I need not have asked the question. He never meant to go back to New England!

Страница 4 из 5

Назад1…345Далее

Вам также может понравиться

Человек-зверь — обложка книги

Человек-зверь

Эмиль Золя

Фараон — обложка книги

Фараон

Болеслав Прус

Нана — обложка книги

Нана

Эмиль Золя

Доктор Паскаль — обложка книги

Доктор Паскаль

Эмиль Золя

Саламбо — обложка книги

Саламбо

Гюстав Флобер

Легенды, заговоры и суеверия Ирландии — обложка книги

Легенды, заговоры и суеверия Ирландии

Франческа Сперанца Уайльд

Юки-онна, или Записки о ёкаях — обложка книги

Юки-онна, или Записки о ёкаях

draft.Anna

Отец Горио — обложка книги

Отец Горио

Оноре де Бальзак

Как меня выбирали в губернаторы — обложка книги

Как меня выбирали в губернаторы

Марк Твен

Баллада Рэдингской тюрьмы — обложка книги

Баллада Рэдингской тюрьмы

Константин Дмитриевич Бальмонт

Иродиада — обложка книги

Иродиада

Иван Сергеевич Тургенев

Легенда о св. Юлиане Милостивом — обложка книги

Легенда о св. Юлиане Милостивом

Иван Сергеевич Тургенев

Страница 1 из 55

Назад12…55Далее