Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series. Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

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       Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

      Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066084868

Table of Contents

       A FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER.

       PART I.

       FARMER BASSETT'S ROMANCE.

       MY TOURMALINE.

       JOE HALE'S RED STOCKINGS

       SUSAN LAWTON'S ESCAPE.

A FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER.

      PART I.

       Table of Contents

      SERGEANT KARL REUTNER had never found a four-leaved clover. He had often looked for them—at home in Bavaria, in the green meadows at the foot of the giant glacier Watzman, and in America, on the sunny prairies of Illinois. But he had never found one. "It is luck; I shall not have luck before I find the four leaf of clover," he had said, half jesting, many a time, to himself or to gay comrades. And in his secret heart he was not without a shadow of superstition about it. It had again and again happened that some one by his side had stooped and picked a four-leaved clover, upon which he was just on the point of treading, while his eyes were searching eagerly for it. It did seem as if Karl could never see the magic little leaf, and why should this not mean some thing? Whence came the world-wide belief in the spell, if it were merely an idle fancy?

      But now Karl Reutner was to find his four ​leaved clover. There it was, gently waving in the wind, not two feet away from his eyes. Karl was lying low on the ground. He was not looking for four-leaved clover; he was listening with every faculty sharply concentrated, waiting for a sound which seemed to him inexplicably delayed. He was lying in a trench before Gettysburg, and he was impatient for the order to fire.

      The gentle summer breeze stirred the grass blades on the upper edge of the trench, and parting them, showed one tall four-leaved clover. With an exclamation of delight, Karl dropped his musket, picked the clover, fastened it in the band of his cap, and lifting up the cap, imprudently waved it to the right and left, calling down the line: "Good luck, boys! The four leaf of clover!"

      The next Karl knew, it was night—dark, starless, chilly night. He was alone; a dreadful silence, broken now and then by more dreadful groans, reigned all around. He was naked; he could not move; terrible pains were racking his breast. Something was firmly clutched in his right hand, but he could not lift his arm to see what it was; neither could he unclasp his hand.

      The battle of Gettysburg was over, and Karl was shot through the lungs. "Good luck, boys! The four leaf of clover!" had been his last words, hardly spoken before the waving cap had proved a mark for a rebel sharp-shooter, and Karl had fallen back apparently dead.

      ​No time then for one comrade to help another. In a few moments more his company had gone, leaving behind many of its brave fellows wounded, dying, dead. In the night Karl had been stripped by rebel prowlers, and left for dead. Only his cap remained; that was so firmly clutched in his right hand, they could not take it from him. Withered, drooping above the tarnished gilt wreath on the band, hung the four-leaved clover; but Karl could not see it. He remembered it, however, and as he struggled in his feverish half delirium to recall the last moments before he fell, he muttered to himself: "The four leaf of clover brought this of luck; bad luck to begin."

      The feeble sounds caught the ear of a party of rebels, searching for their wounded. As the dark lantern flashed its slender ray of light upon Karl's figure, and the rebel officer saw the United States badge on the cap, he turned away. But at Karl's voice and the broken English: "Water! For God's love, one water!" he turned back. The blue eyes and the yellow hair had a spell in them for the dark-haired Southerner. There had been a Gretchen once with whom he had roamed many a moonlight night, in Heidelberg. Her eyes and her hair, and the pretty broken English she had learned from him, were like these.

      "Pick him up, boys; he 'll count for one, damn him!" were the words under which he hid his sudden sympathy from the angry and resentful ​men who obeyed his orders. But afterward he went many times secretly to the ambulance to see if that yellow-haired German boy were still alive, and were covered by blankets.

      Of the terrible journey to Libby Prison Karl knew nothing. A few days after it he came again, slowly and painfully, to his consciousness, as he had that first night on the battle-field, like one awakening from a frightful and confused dream. He was on the damp dungeon floor; a pretense of a pallet beneath him. When he tried to speak, a strange, gurgling sound filled his throat.

      "Better not try to talk," said the surgeon, who happened to be standing near.

      "Am I dying?" said Karl.

      "No, not just yet," laughed the brutal surgeon; but you won't last long. Our boys have n't left you any lungs."

      It was too true. The bullet had gone through both lungs. In one there was a hole into which a man might put his fist. Karl shut his eyes and again the vision of the waving clover leaf floated before them. He fell asleep, and dreamed that he was lying in a field filled with four-leaved clovers, and that a beautiful, dark-haired girl was gathering them and bringing them to him by handfuls. When he waked he saw a kind face bending over him, and felt something pressed between his lips. One of his fellow prisoners was trying to feed him with bread soaked in wine. Ah, the heroes of ​Libby Prison! Almost all those who came out alive from that hell of tortures, did so because other men had freely spent their lives for them.

      All Karl's fellow prisoners loved him. His fair face, beautiful blue eyes, and golden-brown hair, his broken English, and his pathetic patience, appealed to every heart. Every man saved the soft part of his bread for him; and on this, with occasionally a few drops of wine, he lived—that is, he did not die; but he did not gain; the wound did not heal, and each day his strength grew less and less, long after it had seemed that he could not be weaker and live. But hope never forsook him. The four-leaved clover, folded in a bit of paper, was hid in the lining of his cap. Sometimes he took it out, showed it to the prisoners, and told them the story.

      "It has brought to me such bad luck, you see; but I think it shall bring one luck better; it is a true sign; there is time yet."

      The men shrugged their shoulders. They thought Karl a little weakened in intellect by his sufferings; but they did not contradict him.

      Three months later Karl was again lying on the ground at midnight, alone, helpless. An exchange of prisoners had been arranged, and he, with most of his friends, had been carried to City Point. They arrived there at five in the afternoon. The sun was still high and hot, and Karl being one of the feeblest of the prisoners was laid behind an old hogshead, for shade. Boat load after boat ​load pushed off from the wharf; but he was not taken. He could not speak except in the faintest whisper; he could not move; there he lay, utterly helpless, hearing all the stir and bustle of the loading of the boats, then the plashing of the oars, then the silence, then the return of the boats, more bustle, more departures, and then the dreadful silence again.

      He had been laid in such a position that he could see nothing but the planks of the hogshead. It was old and decayed, and rats were crawling in