Christmas Bells (26 page)

“Sir?” an urgent voice prompted him. “Mr. Longfellow, sir?”

With a start, Henry glanced up to find the messenger regarding him curiously. “Yes?”

“Do you wish to send a reply, sir?”

“No—no, thank you.” Henry fumbled for the doorknob. “Not at present. Good evening.”

“That'll be three dollars and fifty-three cents, sir,” the messenger blurted before he could close the door.

Henry kept his anguish in check as he paid the lad and sent him on his way, his thoughts racing with plans and with the inescapable imagery the telegram evoked in his mind's eye. Then he returned to the dining room, where Ernest and Alice were finishing their soup and conversing in murmurs while the little girls happily discussed a Christmas tea party they were planning for their dolls.

“I'm afraid I must depart for Washington City immediately,” he interrupted, his voice miraculously steady. “Charley has—I'm quite sorry to say that he has been rather badly injured. I must
get to the capital at once, so that I may be there to receive him when he is brought to the hospital.”

Anne let out a muffled shriek and seized Edith's arm, while Alice nodded gravely, her stricken gaze fixed on his. Ernest bolted to his feet and blurted, “I'll come with you.”

Henry was about to refuse, but then he realized how useful his steady, sensible son would be to him in such a time. “Of course. We'll leave at once.”

The girls would be well looked after by their governess in his absence, Henry knew, but he hastily sent off notes to trusted neighbors to inform them of his unexpected journey and where they could reach him in Washington. He and Ernest quickly packed their bags, and after the girls saw them off in a flurry of tearful embraces, promises to pray for Charley, and earnest pleas for them to write as soon as they had word of their dear brother, they raced to the wharf, where they caught the five o'clock Fall River steamer for New York.

There were no staterooms to be had, so Henry and Ernest retired to the saloon, where they settled into uncomfortable armchairs, which would serve as their beds for the night. “We must not imagine the worst,” Henry said, as much to inspirit himself as to comfort his son. “The telegram said it was a severe wound, not mortal.”

“Of course, Papa,” Ernest murmured, pale and quiet.

The night was stormy and a severe gale rocked the ship in the Sound, so although Henry and Ernest tried to sleep, they managed no better than a fitful doze. The storm delayed their arrival in New York City, and moments after they raced down the gangplank to the pier, they realized they had just missed the first train to Washington. They waited impatiently for the next, endured what felt like an interminable journey by rail, and at long last arrived in the capital at ten o'clock in the evening of December 2. They took rooms at the Willard Hotel, checked with the clerk for
telegrams from home or the War Department—there were none—and dispatched a messenger to Sumner's residence to inform him of their arrival in Washington and the dreadful circumstances that had brought them there.

After a restless night, Henry and Ernest awoke to the dismaying realization that they had received no news of Charley overnight, nothing regarding his condition or his whereabouts. Nevertheless, in expectation of his arrival, they quit the Willard and took a more spacious suite at Ebbitt House, three doors down the street from Sumner's home. Then they began their urgent search for Charley, not knowing in which of the many official and makeshift hospitals scattered throughout the city he could be, desperate to see for themselves that he lived, that he was being given every attention. To their dismay, an officer of the Sanitary Commission informed them that Charley had not yet arrived from the front, and worse yet, that no one could tell them where he was or when he might arrive.

After signing an oath of allegiance, Henry managed to secure a military pass that allowed them to cross military lines. He and Ernest immediately boarded a steamer that carried them across the Potomac, past several ships of the Russian fleet, and on to Alexandria, Virginia, where they sought out Colonel John H. Devereux, the superintendent of military railroads.

“I'm searching for my son,” Henry explained, breathless from exhaustion, haste, and worry. “Two days ago I received word that he was severely injured, but I've heard nothing of him since, and of course—” Ernest rested a hand upon his shoulder, lending him his strength. “As his father, I will imagine the worst. You understand.”

“Certainly I do,” the colonel replied kindly, and he offered to telegraph stations along the railroad line to ask for news. Gratified, Henry thanked him, and after the message was sent down the wire, he and Ernest settled down to wait in the seats the colonel offered them in his office.

All afternoon, Henry and Ernest waited for a reply, starting at every first click of an incoming message, sinking back into their chairs again when the operator glanced their way and shook his head in regret. With each passing hour they grew more dispirited, until eventually, reluctantly, they departed on the last steamer of the day back to Washington.

“What could this bewildering silence mean?” Ernest asked as they made their weary way back to Ebbitt House.

“I hope it signifies nothing but the usual inefficiencies of the military,” Henry replied, reluctant to confess what more dire occurrence it could portend.

Back in their suite, Ernest wrote to Alice to let her know they had arrived but had not yet seen Charley. Exhausted, they then retired for the night, determined to resume the search at daybreak.

At midnight, a brisk rapping upon the door woke Henry from unsettling dreams. Groggy, he drew on his dressing gown and opened the door to a messenger carrying a telegram from Colonel Devereux. “Lt Longfellow is in Hospital at Brandy Station and doing well,” the colonel had wired. “He will be sent to Washn tomorrow so says Capt Beckwith A.D.C. to Gen Patrick you can meet him at Alexa without difficulty as it will probably be late in the day before your son arrives.”

Greatly relieved, Henry was tempted to wake Ernest and share the encouraging news, but good sense and parental concern won out, and he let his steadfast boy sleep. Instead he sat on the edge of the bed, buried his head in his hands, and silently wept. Charley was doing well, the colonel had said. He might be disfigured and enduring great pain, but it seemed that he would live. Surely Colonel Devereux would not have encouraged Henry's hopes if it were not so.

Henry returned to bed and claimed a few more hours of troubled sleep, his dreams haunted by scenes of Charley, his face
swathed in bloody bandages, crying out in pain with every jolt of the railcar as it rumbled through Virginia.

In the morning, Ernest agreed that the news from Brandy Station was promising, and they were just going down to breakfast when another telegram from Colonel Devereux arrived: “Lt Longfellow shot in chest not in face. If the wounded are embarked at the time proposed they will arrive at Washington about six o'clock this p.m.”

Henry and Ernest exchanged startled looks. “Not shot in the face, but in the chest?” said Ernest. “This sounds like good news, don't you think, Papa?”

“Many a soldier has perished from a chest wound,” said Henry, uncertain, “but yes, it does seem somehow less dire, as wounds go.”

“I wish we could see him and judge for ourselves.” Frustration sharpened Ernest's voice. “I half expect to receive another telegram before we sit down at the breakfast table, informing us that Charley has been wounded not in the chest but in the backside, and he'll arrive in Washington a week from Tuesday.”

Henry almost laughed. “Patience is a virtue, son.”

“Even the most virtuous of saints would agree that after our haste to get here, this interminable waiting is unbearable.”

“All the more so because somewhere Charley is waiting too,” said Henry, “aboard a train or detained at a station, surely in great discomfort, and with his wounds unattended.”

He had very little patience left for the military's inconsistencies and inefficiencies, but he was powerless to speed Charley's journey. He and Ernest had no choice but to wait, but they found some consolation in knowing the specific hour Charley was expected to reach the capital—and that perhaps he had not been as badly hurt as they had feared.

With a long stretch of empty hours to fill, after breakfast Henry wrote cheery, optimistic letters home to Edith and Annie,
as Ernest had written to Alice the night before. Then Henry sent a brief note down the block to Sumner. His steadfast friend promptly replied by offering to escort Henry and Ernest to the Capitol to view
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
, a magnificent fresco the German artist Emanuel Leutze had painted on the wall of the landing in the west stairway the year before.

Sumner's company provided a welcome distraction, but Henry was ever mindful of the time, and by six o'clock he and Ernest had parted company with the senator and were anxiously waiting at the railway station. For hours they sat or paced on the platform, rushing to meet every train, frantically scanning the disembarking passengers for Charley—and soon, for any wounded soldier at all, for although numerous men in uniform were riding the trains, it was evident from their dress and manner that they had not come from the front.

“They will put all the wounded on one train,” Henry speculated, dismayed and increasingly restless. “Surely it will come soon.”

Ernest made no reply, but strode to the edge of the platform and gazed off down the tracks to the south, as if he could draw his brother's train to them by sheer force of longing.

They waited at the station until the last train arrived at ten o'clock, but Charley was not on it. Discouraged and disbelieving, they returned to Ebbitt House, where they contemplated all the possible reasons for the delay over a late supper. Then, after reassuring each other that someone would have telegraphed them if Charley had taken a turn for the worse, they retired for the night.

Again a brisk rapping upon the door woke Henry shortly after midnight. “Charley,” he murmured, swiftly rising and snatching up his dressing gown. When he tore open the door, his heart plummeted to discover not his missing son, but the now familiar messenger, bearing yet another telegram.

“Have just seen your son,” Colonel Devereux had written not
twenty minutes before. “He is bright & feeling well. Has a slight wound in shoulder ball glancing upward and no bones broken. He remains here tonight & will leave on train for Washington at 12.50 PM tomorrow I have informed him of your Hotel in case anything should cause you to pass each other accidentally in trying to meet.”

“The colonel writes as if Charley is up and walking around,” said Ernest, who had woken at the knock and had read the telegram over his father's shoulder.

“That may simply be an imprecise turn of phrase,” Henry cautioned him, “and yet I feel immeasurable relief knowing where he is, and that Colonel Devereux has seen him, and has spoken to him.”

Ernest concurred, and with an enormous yawn, he hugged Henry and returned to bed. Henry, his head buzzing with questions and plans, lay awake in bed long after a church bell struck one o'clock, but eventually fatigue overcame him and he drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, Henry and Ernest made sure the suite was ready to receive their injured soldier, and Henry wrote to Alice to share the good news of Charley's condition and imminent arrival, concluding with what he hoped was a note of reassuring levity. “Think of the mischief done by leaving out the little word ‘not' in the first telegram!” he wrote. “‘
Not
severely injured,' it should have been.”

At breakfast Henry and Ernest resolved that if Charley were not aboard the anticipated train, they would travel to Alexandria and transport him to Washington themselves. At noon they returned to the station, where they joined dozens of other anxious civilians waiting on the platform, gazing worriedly down the tracks, straining their ears for the rumble of iron wheels and the shriek of the whistle.

At long last they heard it—the chugging of the engine, the
squealing of brakes. Henry took Ernest by the arm and steered his son alongside the train, weaving their way through the crowd, craning their necks to peer in through the windows.

“Papa, look there,” said Ernest, gesturing to a baggage car near the end of the train. The doors had been flung wide, and haggard, bloodied, limping soldiers were disembarking, their soiled uniforms littered with pieces of the yellow straw strewn about to absorb bodily fluids and perhaps offer a modicum of comfort. As Henry and Ernst hurried toward it, they observed other soldiers carried off on stretchers, their bandages soiled and soaked through with blood.

Ernst glimpsed him first. “Charley,” he shouted, waving his hand in the air. Henry spotted him then, and felt a chill when the huddled figure on the stretcher beneath the blue wool blanket did not stir at his brother's cry. Seized by a sudden panic that Charley would be swallowed up by the throng and lost within the vast system of military hospitals and converted public buildings, Henry pushed his way through the crowd, all politeness and dignity forgotten, until he reached his stricken boy's side.

“Charley,” he gasped, taking hold of one pale hand folded across Charley's chest. “Charley, it's Papa. We're here, Ernest and I. We're here.”

Charley's blue eyes fluttered open, bleary and bloodshot. “Hello, Papa,” he said faintly, managing a wan smile before his eyes drifted shut again. He looked utterly bedraggled, his face gaunt and whiskered, his hair disheveled and flecked with straw.

“Come with me,” Henry commanded the two soldiers carrying the stretcher, fixing them with a look that precluded dissent. With Ernest following behind, Henry led them to the ambulance Sumner had arranged, but just as they were loading Charley on board, he roused himself enough to explain that his friend Captain Henry Pickering Bowditch was among the wounded, and to ask if they could see to him as well. At Henry's nod, Ernest raced
back to the luggage car, found the injured captain, and arranged for him to be carried onto the ambulance beside Charley.