the woman would have become part of his family, but not in the way David had hoped.
“I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live...”
The reverend presiding over the service recited the words of Jesus, but by the look on Elizabeth’s face, it appeared she found no comfort in the promise of eternal life. Pale and stunned, she stared at Jeremiah’s coffin. By all outward appearances she was the epitome of proper decorum, but the moment David caught her eye he sensed a storm below the surface.
If only you had left well enough alone, she seemed to say. I’d have given anything for just a few days with him as his wife.
Grief rolled through him in more ways than one. The loss of his brother was like a knife to his soul, and the sight of Elizabeth’s pain cut him just as deeply.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say. So sorry for everything.
She returned her focus to the minister, but David’s thoughts remained in the past.
Little had he realized when he first met her that his life, and that of his brother’s, would be changed forever. Elizabeth was a Baltimore belle, born and bred. Like many other women from her city, she had volunteered to serve as a nurse following the battle of Antietam. Scores of wounded soldiers, Union and rebel alike, had come to Baltimore’s US Army General Hospital for care and processing. David and Jeremiah were a pair of soldiers from Boston who had been assigned as stewards in the place. Elizabeth had worked in the ward alongside David. Jeremiah served next door.
Her Southern sympathy revealed itself from time to time, mostly in expressions of relief whenever she learned of rebel victories on the battlefield. As a Union soldier and the son of an abolition-preaching minister, David found that troubling. Then he learned Elizabeth’s loyalty was more to an older brother named George, who had enlisted in the rebel forces, than to the actual Confederacy.
Her devotion to her secession-supporting family member, however, had cost her the position at the hospital. For, when a rebel prisoner escaped, Elizabeth and several other Baltimore volunteer nurses were accused of assisting him. She was found innocent of the charges but was forced to leave the hospital for refusing to sign an oath of loyalty that would have demanded that she cut off all contact with her brother.
It had been a dark day when she left David’s ward, but worse ones were to follow. Shortly after her dismissal, Jeremiah had announced he was courting her.
Why didn’t I speak up then? David couldn’t help but think. Why didn’t I do something? Surely my brother would have respected my wishes if I’d told him that I’d fallen in love with her.
Three weeks later Jeremiah had proposed. He and Elizabeth had planned to marry immediately. David had done his best to speak then. He remembered every detail of that conversation.
“You can’t marry her,” he’d insisted.
“Why not?”
“Well...this war.”
“I will not reenlist,” Jeremiah had announced. “I’ve done my duty. I’m going to marry Elizabeth.”
“But you would marry her before your service is through? Why, you barely know each other.”
“We will have a lifetime to get to know each other. I love her. She loves me.”
The pain that statement had inflicted was more than David could stand, but he did not let his brother know that. “But surely you want what is best for her,” he’d said.
“Of course I do.”
“Then consider what could happen. If you married her before your service in the army is finished...”
Jeremiah had quickly dismissed his misgivings. “They have kept us in the same hospital for the past two years. There is no reason to think they would change our posting now. It’s already November! We’ll be out the first of January.”
“But you can’t be certain of that. You have no guarantee the army will keep you here in Baltimore until your enlistment ends. They could extend our service. What if we are sent to the battlefield?”
“Then I will do my duty.”
David didn’t doubt his brother’s courage, and that was exactly what had frightened him.
“For her sake, don’t be selfish, man! Think of her! Will you run the risk of making your new bride a widow? And if there is a child, would you leave him fatherless? Where will that leave her? I’ll tell you—with the memory of a short-lived love and the lifelong responsibility of rearing the consequences!”
He may have been crass, indelicate for certain, but Jeremiah saw his point and he’d postponed the wedding. For David, however, it was hardly a victory.
Sitting here now before his brother’s casket, his own words pounded repeatedly in his mind. Don’t be selfish, man! Think of her...
He had told himself he had acted for Elizabeth’s protection, but he realized now he had spoken for his own well-being. Deep down David knew he could not bear the thought of her belonging to another man, even one as good and as God-fearing as Jeremiah.
But a man without the courage to proclaim his own intentions has no business disrupting another’s.
The minister continued on, talking of Jeremiah’s unselfish nature, how he’d ministered to sick soldiers, many of whom considered him the enemy. David’s guilt grew.
I am the older brother. I was supposed to be looking out for him. That’s why I enlisted in the first place. I should have encouraged him to marry Elizabeth when he wished. I had no idea he would succumb to pneumonia just days before our service in the army ended.
He chanced a glance in her direction. She was staring straight at the coffin. Her chin was quivering, but she was trying desperately to maintain control.
The last thing on earth he’d wanted to do was hurt her, and yet that was exactly what he had done. He had stolen what precious little happiness Elizabeth could have had. He’d stolen it from Jeremiah, as well.
The casket was closed. A bone-rattling chill, one even colder than the dreadful January weather, shivered through him. The minister offered a final prayer, and when it was over, David and his fellow mourners stood.
Across the way, Elizabeth did the same. She wiped her eyes, tucked her black-trimmed handkerchief in the cuff of her sleeve and prepared to greet each of their guests. David was confident she would do so with respect and grace, no matter what she may be feeling inside. She would execute the duties of this day. He would do the same.
In a few hours he would place his brother’s casket on the northbound train. When he reached Boston, his family would then conduct a second service at their home, followed by internment in the Wainwright plot. All honors would be paid to Jeremiah for his service to the Union.
In the weeks to come David would help settle his brother’s affairs, then do his best to reenter civilian life. In all likelihood he would never see Elizabeth Martin again, but he knew what he had done to her and his brother would haunt him for the rest of his days.
*
