: Secret Service Being the Happenings of a Night in Richmond in the Spring of 1865 by Brady Cyrus Townsend Gillette William - War stories; Virginia History Civil War 1861-1865 Fiction; Richmond (Va.) Fiction

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BOOK I WHAT HAPPENED AT EIGHT O'CLOCK

BOOK II WHAT HAPPENED AT NINE O'CLOCK

Afterword 330

BOOK I

WHAT HAPPENED AT EIGHT O'CLOCK

THE BATTERY PASSES

Outside, the softness of an April night; the verdure of tree and lawn, the climbing roses, already far advanced in that southern latitude, sweetly silvered in the moonlight. Within the great old house apparently an equal calm.

Yet, neither within nor without was the night absolutely soundless. Far away to the southward the cloudless horizon, easily visible from the slight eminence on which the house stood, was marked by quivering flashes of lurid light. From time to time, the attentive ear might catch the roll, the roar, the reverberation of heavy sound like distant thunder-peals intermingled with sharper detonations. The flashes came from great guns, and the rolling peals were the sound of the cannon, the detonations explosions of the shells. There was the peace of God in the heaven above; there were the passions of men on the earth beneath.

Lights gleamed here and there, shining through the twining rose foliage, from the windows of the old house, which stood far back from the street. From a room on one side of the hall, which opened from the broad pillared portico of Colonial fashion, a hum of voices arose.

A group of women, with nervous hands and anxious faces, working while they talked, were picking lint, tearing linen and cotton for bandages. Their conversation was not the idle chatter of other days. They "told sad stories of the death of kings!" How "Tom" and "Charles" and "Allen" and "Page" and "Burton" had gone down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, whence they had not come back. How this fort had been hammered yesterday, the other, the day before. How So-and-So's wounds had been ministered to. How Such-a-One's needs had been relieved. How the enemy were drawing closer and closer and closer, and how they were being held back with courage, which, alas! by that time was the courage of despair. And much of their speech was of their own kind, of bereft women and fatherless children. And ever as they talked, the busy fingers flew.

Upstairs from one of the front rooms the light shone dimly through a window partly covered by a half-drawn Venetian blind. One standing at the side of the house and listening would have heard out of the chamber low moanings, muttered words from feverish lips and delirious brain. The meaningless yet awful babble was broken now and again by words of tenderness and anguish. Soft hands were laid on the burning brow of the poor sufferer within, while a mother's eyes dropped tears upon bloodstained bandages and wasted frame.

And now the gentle wind which swept softly through the trees bore a sudden sharper, stranger sound toward the old house in the garden. The tramp of horse, the creak of wheels, the faint jingling of arms and sabres drew nearer and rose louder. Sudden words of command punctured the night. Here came a battery, without the rattle of drum or the blare of bugles, with no sound but its own galloping it rolled down the street. Lean, gaunt horses were ridden and driven by leaner and gaunter men in dusty, worn, ragged, tattered uniforms. Only the highly polished brass guns--twelve-pounder Napoleons--gleamed bright in the moonlight.

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