The end of the war

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
And now instead of mounting barbed steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Shakespeare.

Ten days later Molina-del-Rey, Casa-de-Mata, and Chapultepec had fallen! The United States forces occupied the city of Mexico, General Scott was in the Grand Plaza, and the American standard waved above the capital of the Montezumas!

Let those who have a taste for swords and muskets, drums and trumpets, blood and fire, describe the desperate battles and splendid victories that led to this final magnificent triumph!

My business lies with the persons of our story, to illustrate whom I must pick out a few isolated instances of heroism in this glorious campaign.

Herbert Greyson’s division was a portion of the gallant Eleventh that charged the Mexican batteries on Molina-del-Rey. He covered his name with glory, and qualified himself to merit the command of the regiment, which he afterwards received.

Traverse Rocke fought like a young Paladin. When they were marching into the very mouths of the cannon they were vomiting fire upon them, and when the young ensign of his company was struck down before him, Traverse Rocke took the colors from his falling hand, and crying “Victory!” pressed onward and upward over the dead and the dying, and springing upon one of the guns which continued to belch forth fire, he thrice waved the flag over his head and then planted it upon the battery. Captain Zuten fell in the subsequent assault upon Chapultepec.

Colonel Le Noir entered the city of Mexico with the victorious army, but on the subsequent day, being engaged in a street skirmish with the leperos, or liberated convicts, he fell mortally wounded by a copper bullet, and he was now dying by inches at his quarters near the Grand Cathedral.

It was on the evening of the 20th of September, six days from the triumphant entry of General Scott into the capital, that Major Greyson was seated at supper at his quarters, with some of his brother officers, when an orderly entered and handed a note to Herbert, which proved to be a communication from the surgeon of their regiment, begging him to repair without delay to the quarters of Colonel Le Noir, who, being in extremity, desired to see him.

Major Greyson immediately excused himself to his company, and repaired to the quarters of the dying man.

He found Colonel Le Noir stretched upon his bed in a state of extreme exhaustion and attended by the surgeon and chaplain of his regiment.

As Herbert advanced to the side of his bed, Le Noir stretched out his pale hand and said:

“You bear no grudge against a dying man, Greyson?”

“Certainly not,” said Herbert, “especially when he proposes doing the right thing, as I judge you do, from the fact of your sending for me.”

“Yes, I do; I do!” replied Le Noir, pressing the hand that Herbert’s kindness of heart could not withhold.

Le Noir then beckoned the minister to hand him two sealed packets, which he took and laid upon the bed before him.

Then taking up the larger of the two packets, he placed it in the hands of Herbert Greyson, saying:

“There, Greyson, I wish you to hand that to your friend, young Rocke, who has received his colors, I understand?”

“Yes, he has now the rank of ensign.”

“Then give this parcel into the hands of Ensign Rocke, with the request, that being freely yielded up, they may not be used in any manner to harass the last hours of a dying man.”

“I promise, on the part of my noble young friend, that they shall not be so used,” said Herbert, as he took possession of the parcel.

Le Noir then took up the second packet, which was much smaller, but much more firmly secured, than the first, being in an envelope of parchment, sealed with three great seals.

Le Noir held it in his hand for a moment, gazing from the surgeon to the chaplain, and thence down upon the mysterious packet, while spasms of pain convulsed his countenance. At length he spoke:

“This second packet, Greyson, contains a well, I may as well call it a narrative. I confide it to your care upon these conditions that it shall not be opened until after my death and funeral, and that, when it has served its purpose of restitution, it may be, as far as possible, forgotten. Will you promise me this?”

“On my honor, yes,” responded the young man, as he received the second parcel.

“This is all I have to say, except this that you seemed to me, upon every account, the most proper person to whom I could confide this trust. I thank you for accepting it, and I believe that I may safely promise that you will find the contents of the smaller packet of great importance and advantage to yourself and those dear to you.”

Herbert bowed in silence.

“That is all, good-by. I wish now to be alone with our chaplain,” said Colonel Le Noir, extending his hand.

Herbert pressed that wasted hand; silently sent up a prayer for the dying wrong-doer, bowed gravely and withdrew.

It was almost eight o’clock, and Herbert thought that he would scarcely have time to find Traverse before the drum should beat to quarters.

He was more fortunate than he had anticipated, for he had scarcely turned the Grand Cathedral when he came full upon the young ensign.

“Ah! Traverse, I am very glad to meet you! I was just going to look for you. Come immediately to my rooms, for I have a very important communication to make to you. Colonel Le Noir is supposed to be dying. He has given me a parcel to be handed to you, which I shrewdly suspect to contain your intercepted correspondence for the last two years,” said Herbert.

Traverse started and gazed upon his friend in amazement, and was about to express his astonishment, when Herbert, seeing others approach, drew the arm of his friend within his own, and they hurried silently on toward Major Greyson’s quarters.

They had scarcely got in and closed the door and stricken a light before Traverse exclaimed impatiently:

“Give it me!” and almost snatched the parcel from Herbert’s hands.

“Whist! don’t be impatient! I dare say it is all stale news!” said Herbert, as he yielded up the prize.

They sat down together on each side of a little stand supporting a light.

Herbert watched with sympathetic interest while Traverse tore open the envelope and examined its contents.

They were, as Herbert had anticipated, letters from the mother and the betrothed of Traverse letters that had arrived and been intercepted, from time to time, for the preceding two years.

There were blanks, also, directed in a hand strange to Traverse, but familiar to Herbert as that of Old Hurricane, and those blanks inclosed drafts upon a New Orleans bank, payable to the order of Traverse Rocke.

Traverse pushed all these latter aside with scarcely a glance and not a word of inquiry, and began eagerly to examine the long-desired, long-withheld letters from the dear ones at home.

His cheek flamed to see that every seal was broken, and the fresh aroma of every heart-breathed word inhaled by others, before they reached himself.

“Look here, Herbert! look here! Is not this insufferable? Every fond word of my mother, every delicate and sacred expression of of regard from Clara, all read by the profane eyes of that man!”

“That man is on his deathbed, Traverse, and you must forgive him! He has restored your letters.”

“Yes, after their sacred privacy has been profaned! Oh!”

Traverse handed his mother’s letters over to Herbert, that his foster brother might read them, but Clara’s “sacred epistles” were kept to himself.

“What are you laughing at?” inquired Traverse, looking up from his page, and detecting Herbert with a smile upon his face.

“I am thinking that you are not as generous as you were some few years since, when you would have given me Clara herself; for now you will not even let me have a glimpse of her letters!”

“Have they not been already sufficiently published?” said Traverse, with an almost girlish smile and blush.

When those cherished letters were all read and put away, Traverse stooped down and “fished up” from amidst envelopes, strings and waste paper another set of letters which proved to be the blanks inclosing the checks, of various dates, which Herbert recognized as coming anonymously from Old Hurricane.

“What in the world is the meaning of all this, Herbert? Have I a nabob uncle turned up anywhere, do you think? Look here! a hundred dollars and a fifty, and another all drafts upon the Planters’ Bank, New Orleans, drawn in my favor and signed by Largent & Dor, bankers! I, that haven’t had five dollars at a time to call my own for the last two years! Here, Herbert, give me a good, sharp pinch to wake me up! I may be sleeping on my post again?” said Traverse in perplexity.

“You are not sleeping, Traverse!”

“Are you sure?”

“Perfectly,” replied Herbert, laughing.

“Well, then, do you think that crack upon the crown of my head that I got upon Chapultepec has not injured my intellect?”

“Not in the slightest degree!” said Herbert, still laughing at his friend’s perplexity.

“Then I am the hero of a fairy tale, that is all a fairy tale in which waste paper is changed into bank notes and private soldiers prince palatines! Look here!” cried Traverse, desperately, thrusting the bank checks under the nose of his friend, “do you see those things and know what they are, and will you tell me that everything in this castle don’t go by enchantment?”

“Yes, I see what they are, and it seems to me perfectly natural that you should have them!”

“Humph!” said Traverse, looking at Herbert with an expression that seemed to say that he thought the wits of his friend deranged.

“Traverse,” said Major Greyson, “did it never occur to you that you must have other relatives in the world besides your mother? Well, I suspect that those checks were sent by some relative of yours or your mother’s, who just begins to remember that he has been neglecting you.”

“Herbert, do you know this?” inquired Traverse, anxiously.

“No, I do not know it; I only suspect this to be the case,” said Herbert, evasively. “But what is that which you are forgetting?”

“Oh! this yes, I had forgotten it. Let us see what it is!” said Traverse, examining a paper that had rested unobserved upon the stand.

“This is an order for my discharge, signed by the Secretary of War, and dated ha ha ha two years ago! Here I have been serving two years illegally, and if I had been convicted of neglect of duty in sleeping on my post, I should have been shot unlawfully, as that man, when he prosecuted me, knew perfectly well!” exclaimed Traverse.

“That man, as I said before, lies upon his deathbed! Remember, nothing against him! But that order for a discharge! now that you are in the way of promotion and the war is over, will you take advantage of it?”

“Decidedly, yes! for though I am said to have acquitted myself passably well at Chapultepec ”

“Gloriously, Traverse! You won your colors gloriously!”

“Yet for all that my true mission is not to break men’s bones, but to set them when broken. Not to take men’s lives, but to save them when endangered! So to-morrow morning, please Providence, I shall present this order to General Butler and apply for my discharge.”

“And you will set out immediately for home?”

The face of Traverse suddenly changed.

“I should like to do so! Oh, how I should like to see my dear mother and Clara, if only for a day! but I must not indulge the longing of my heart. I must not go home until I can do so with honor!”

“And can you not do so now? You, who triumphed over all your personal enemies and who won your colors at Chapultepec?”

“No, for all this was in my legitimate profession! Nor will I present myself at home until, by the blessing of the Lord, I have done what I set out to do, and established myself in a good practice. And so, by the help of heaven, I hope within one week to be on my way to New Orleans to try my fortune in that city.”

“To New Orleans! And a new malignant fever of some horrible, unknown type, raging there!” exclaimed Herbert.

“So much the more need of a physician! Herbert, I am not the least uneasy on the subject of infection! I have a theory for its annihilation.”

“I never saw a clever young professional man without a theory!” laughed Herbert.

The drum was now heard beating the tattoo, and the friends separated with hearts full of revived hope.

The next morning Traverse presented the order of the Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief and received his discharge.

And then, after writing long, loving and hopeful letters to his mother and his betrothed, and entreating the former to try to find out who was the secret benefactor who had sent him such timely aid, Traverse took leave of his friends, and set out for the Southern Queen of Cities, once more to seek his fortune.

Meantime the United States army continued to occupy the City of Mexico, through the whole of the autumn and winter.

General Butler, who temporarily succeeded the illustrious Scott in the chief command, very wisely arranged the terms of an armistice with the enemy that was intended to last two months from the beginning of February, but which happily lasted until the conclusion of the treaty of peace between the two countries.

Colonel Le Noir had not been destined soon to die; his wound, an inward canker from a copper bullet, that the surgeon had at length succeeded in extracting, took the form of a chronic fester disease. Since the night upon which he had been so extremely ill to be supposed dying, and yet had rallied, the doctors felt no apprehensions of his speedy death, though they gave no hopes of his final recovery.

Under these circumstances there were hours in which Le Noir bitterly regretted his precipitation in permitting those important documents to go out of his own hands. And he frequently sent for Herbert Greyson in private to require assurances that he would not open the packet confided to him before the occurrence of the event specified.

And Herbert always soothed the sufferer by reiterating his promise that so long as Colonel Le Noir should survive the seals of that packet should not be broken.

Beyond the suspicion that the parcel contained an important confession, Herbert Greyson was entirely ignorant of its contents.

But the life of Gabriel Le Noir was prolonged beyond all human calculus of probabilities.

He was spared to experience a more effectual repentance than that spurious one into which he had been frightened by the seeming rapid approach of death. And after seven months of lingering illness and gradual decline, during the latter portions of which he was comforted by the society of his only son, who had come at his summons to visit him, in May, 1848, Gabriel Le Noir expired a sincere penitent, reconciled to God and man.

And soon afterward, in the month of May, the treaty of peace having been ratified by the Mexican Congress at Queretaro, the American army evacuated the city and territory of Mexico.

And our brave soldiers, their “brows crowned with victorious wreaths,” set out upon their return to home and friends.