Soon after breakfast on the day of the battle Grace came across to the parsonage, her swollen eyes and pallid face telling of a sleepless night. She could not bear her mother's company that day, for she knew that she had never greatly liked Philip. Miss Morton was very tender and sympathetic. Grace was a little comforted by Mr. Morton's saying that commonly great battles did not open much before noon. It was a respite to be able to think that probably up to that moment at least no harm had come to Philip. In the early afternoon the minister drove into Waterville to get the earliest bulletins at the “Banner” office, leaving the two women alone.
The latter part of the afternoon a neighbor who had been in Waterville drove by the house, and Miss Morton called to him to know if there were any news yet. He drew a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he had scribbled the latest bulletin before the “Banner” office, and read as follows: “The battle opened with a vigorous attack by our right. The enemy was forced back, stubbornly contesting every inch of ground. General ------'s division is now bearing the brunt of the fight and is suffering heavily. The result is yet uncertain.”
The division mentioned was the one in which Philip's regiment was included. “Is suffering heavily,”--those were the words. There was something fearful in the way the present tense brought home to Grace a sense of the battle as then actually in progress. It meant that while she sat there on the shady piazza with the drowsy hum of the bees in her ears, looking out on the quiet lawn where the house cat, stretched on the grass, kept a sleepy eye on the birds as they flitted in the branches of the apple-trees, Philip might be facing a storm of lead and iron, or, maybe, blent in some desperate hand-to-hand struggle, was defending his life--her life--against murderous cut and thrust.
To begin to pray for his safety was not to dare to cease, for to cease would be to withdraw a sort of protection--all, alas I she could give --and abandon him to his enemies. If she had been watching over him from above the battle, an actual witness of the carnage going on that afternoon on the far-off field, she could scarcely have endured a more harrowing suspense from moment to moment. Overcome with the agony, she threw herself on the sofa in the sitting-room and lay quivering, with her face buried in the pillow, while Miss Morton sat beside her, stroking her hair and saying such feeble, soothing words as she might.