Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the CarolinasKennedy, Sara Beaumont
History
Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas
Kennedy, Sara Beaumont
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
Returning from that fierce charge with the flush of the fight upon him,
Richard came upon a man lying prone upon his face in the stubble--the
gallant English captain who had led the sally. He had seen him as he
fell far in advance of his column. There the retreat had left him inside
the new lines of the Continentals, and finding him still alive, Richard
turned him over softly so as not to start his wound afresh; and as he
did so he caught one word from the pale lips:--
"_Joscelyn._"
The name unlocked the floodgates of the young Continental's sympathies.
"Dunn," he said to the man in front of him, "give me a hand, that I may
get this poor fellow to my tent."
"The surgeon will find him here directly and have him moved to the field
hospital."
"He could not stand so long a trip; see how near he is already gone with
this bullet hole in his side. Come, I have a fancy not to see him die
here in the wet grass."
So Dunn lent his aid, and the wounded man was put down in Richard's
tent, murmuring again that talismanic name.
"He may possibly live till morning," the surgeon said, when at last he
came from attending to his own men, "but he cannot be moved. I will try
and send some one to look after him."
Richard touched his cap, "If you please, I am off duty to-night; I will
willingly nurse him, if so you give me directions."
And the man was left in his care; and during the slow hours, word by
word and sentence by sentence, he patched together the fevered ramblings
of his patient, until he knew that the Joscelyn of his own hopes and
fears and dreams was identical with the girl of this other man's
thoughts.
With the knowledge something seemed to catch at his throat, to tighten
about his heart; and he went out and stood awhile at the tent door,
gazing up into the clear heavens whose steadfast stars were shining also
on the distant Carolina hills, watching a window behind which a girl lay
sleeping--dreaming perhaps of the man yonder on the pallet. Had he lost
her through this other one? Was his life to miss its one strong purpose,
in missing her?
By and by, when he was calmer, he came again to the pallet where the
dying man lay, and picked up the sword which, along with his own, was
propped against the canvas wall of the tent. It was of beautiful
workmanship with a crest on the jewelled scabbard, and below a graven
name which, by the light of the tallow dip, Richard at last spelled
out:--
"Barry."
He stood thinking for a moment. Why, this then was the man for whom
Ellen Singleton had mistaken him that night he played the squire to her
in a borrowed military cloak at the fête in Philadelphia. What strange
fate had brought them thus together? "The finest officer who wears the
red, and a lady-killer," Dunn had said. And that tightness gathered
again at Richard's heart, for where else had he heard of the man?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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