The field of trampled clover looked as if a windstorm had swept over it, strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay beside the charred remains of fires, and loose fence rails showed red and white glimpses of playing cards, hidden, before the fight, by superstitious soldiers.
Groups of men were scattered in dark spots over the field, and about them stragglers drifted slowly back from the road to Centreville. There was no discipline, no order—regiment was mixed with regiment, and each man was hopelessly inquiring for his lost company.
As Dan stepped over the fallen fence upon the crushed pink heads of the clover, he came upon a circle of privates making merry over a lunch basket they had picked up on the turnpike—a basket brought by one of the Washington parties who had gayly driven out to watch the battle. A broken fence rail was ablaze in the centre of the group, and as the red light fell on each soiled and unshaven face, it stood out grotesquely from the surrounding gloom. Some were slightly wounded, some had merely scented the battle from behind the hill—all were drinking rare wine in honour of the early ending of the war. As Dan looked past them over the darkening meadow, where the returning soldiers drifted aimlessly across the patches of red light, he asked himself almost impatiently if this were the pure and patriotic army that held in its ranks the best born of the South? To him, standing there, it seemed but a loosened mass, without strength and without cohesion, a mob of schoolboys come back from a sham battle on the college green. It was his first fight, and he did not know that what he looked upon was but the sure result of an easy victory upon the undisciplined ardour of raw troops—that the sinews of an army are wrought not by a single trial, but by the strain of prolonged and strenuous endeavour.
“I say, do you reckon they'll lemme go home ter-morrow?” inquired a slightly wounded man in the group before him. “Thar's my terbaccy needs lookin' arter or the worms 'ull eat it clean up 'fo' I git thar.” He shook the shaggy hair from his face, and straightened the white cotton bandage about his chin. On the right side, where the wound was, his thick sandy beard had been cut away, and the outstanding tuft on his left cheek gave him a peculiarly ill-proportioned look.
“Lordy! I tell you we gave it ter 'em!” exclaimed another in excited jerks. “Fight! Wall, that's what I call fightin', leastways it's put. I declar' I reckon I hit six Yankees plum on the head with the butt of this here musket.”
He paused to knock the head off a champagne bottle, and lifting the broken neck to his lips drained the foaming wine, which spilled in white froth upon his clothes. His face was red in the firelight, and when he spoke his words rolled like marbles from his tongue. Dan, looking at him, felt a curious conviction that the man had not gone near enough to the guns to smell the powder.
“Wall, it may be so, but I ain't seed you,” returned the first speaker, contemptuously, as he stroked his bandage. “I was thar all day and I ain't seed you raise no special dust.”
“Oh, I ain't claimin' nothin' special,” put in the other, discomfited.
“Six is a good many, I reckon,” drawled the wounded man, reflectively, “and I ain't sayin' I settled six on 'em hand to hand—I ain't sayin' that.” He spoke with conscious modesty, as if the smallness of his assertion was equalled only by the greatness of his achievements. “I ain't sayin' I settled more'n three on 'em, I reckon.”
Dan left the group and went on slowly across the field, now and then stumbling upon a sleeper who lay prone upon the trodden clover, obscured by the heavy dusk. The mass of the army was still somewhere on the long road—only the exhausted, the sickened, or the unambitious drifted back to fall asleep upon the uncovered ground.
As Dan crossed the meadow he drew near to a knot of men from a Kentucky regiment, gathered in the light of a small wood fire, and recognizing one of them, he stopped to inquire for news of his missing friends.
“Oh, you wouldn't know your sweetheart on a night like this,” replied the man he knew—a big handsome fellow, with a peculiar richness of voice. “Find a hole, Montjoy, and go to sleep in it, that's my advice. Were you much cut up?”
“I don't know,” answered Dan, uneasily. “I'm trying to make sure that we were not. I lost the others somewhere on the road—a horse knocked me down.”
“Well, if this is to be the last battle, I shouldn't mind a scratch myself,” put in a voice from the darkness, “even if it's nothing more than a bruise from a horse's hoof. By the bye, Montjoy, did you see the way Stuart rode down the Zouaves? I declare the slope looked like a field of poppies in full bloom. Your cousin was in that charge, I believe, and he came out whole. I saw him afterwards.”
“Oh, the cavalry gets the best of everything,” said Dan, with a sigh, and he was passing on, when Jack Powell, coming out of the darkness, stumbled against him, and broke into a delighted laugh.
“Why, bless my soul, Beau, I thought you'd run after the fleshpots of Washington!” His face was flushed with excitement and the soft curls upon his forehead were wet and dark. Around his mouth there was a black stain from bitten cartridges. “By George, it was a jolly day, wasn't it, old man?” he added warmly.
“Where are the others?” asked Dan, grasping his arm in an almost frantic pressure.
“The others? they're all right—all except poor Welch, who got a ball in his thigh, you know. Did you see him when he was taken off the field? He laughed as he passed me and shouted back that he 'was always willing to spare a leg or two to the cause!'”
“Where are you off to?” inquired Dan, still grasping his arm.
“I? oh, I'm on the scent of water. I haven't learned to sleep dirty yet, which Bland says is a sign I'm no soldier. By the way, your darky, Big Abel, has a coffee-boiler over yonder in the fence corner. He's been tearing his wool out over your absence; you'd better ease his mind.” With a laugh and a wave of his hand, he plunged into the darkness, and Dan made his way slowly to the campfire, which twinkled from the old rail fence. As he groped toward it curses sprang up like mustard from the earth beneath. “Get off my leg, and be damned,” growled a voice under his feet. “Oh, this here ain't no pesky jedgment day,” exclaimed another just ahead. Without answering he stepped over the dark bodies, and, ten minutes later, came upon Big Abel waiting patiently beside the dying fire.
At sight of him the negro leaped, with a shout, to his feet; then, recovering himself, hid his joy beneath an accusing mask.
“Dis yer coffee hit's done 'mos' bile away,” he remarked gloomily. “En ef'n it don' tase like hit oughter tase, 'tain' no use ter tu'n up yo' nose, caze 'tain' de faul' er de coffee, ner de faul' er me nurr.”
“How are you, old man?” asked Bland, turning over in the shadow.
“Who's there?” responded Dan, as he peered from the light into the obscurity.
“All the mess except Welch, poor devil. Baker got his hair singed by our rear line, and he says he thinks it's safer to mix with the Yankees next time. Somebody behind him shot his cowlick clean off.”
“Cowlick, the mischief!” retorted Baker, witheringly. “Why, my scalp is as bald as your hand. The fool shaved me like a barber.”
“It's a pity he didn't aim at your whiskers,” was Dan's rejoinder. “The chief thing I've got against this war is that when it's over there won't be a smooth-shaven man in the South.”
“Oh, we'll stand them up before our rear line,” suggested Baker, moodily. “You may laugh, Bland, but you wouldn't like it yourself, and if they keep up their precious marksmanship your turn will come yet. We'll be a regiment of baldheads before Christmas.”
Dan sat down upon the blanket Big Abel had spread and leaned heavily upon his knapsack, which the negro had picked up on the roadside. A nervous chill had come over him and he was shaking with icy starts from head to foot. Big Abel brought a cup of coffee, and as he took it from him, his hand quivered so that he set the cup upon the ground; then he lifted it and drank the hot coffee in long draughts.
“I should have lost my very identity but for you, Big Abel,” he observed gratefully, as he glanced round at the property the negro had protected.
Big Abel leaned forward and stirred the ashes with a small stick.
“En I done fit fer 'em, suh,” he replied. “I des tell you all de fittin' ain' been over yonder on dat ar hill caze I'se done fit right yer in dis yer fence conder, en I ain' fit de Yankees nurr. Lawd, Lawd, dese yer folks es is been a-sniffin' roun' my pile all day, ain' de kinder folks I'se used ter, caze my folks dey don' steal w'at don' b'long ter 'em, en dese yer folks dey do. Ole Marster steal? Huh! he 'ouldn't even tech a chicken dat 'uz roos'in in his own yard. But dese yer sodgers!—Why, you cyarn tu'n yo' eye a splinter off de vittles fo' dey's done got 'em. Dey poke dey han's right spang in de fire en eat de ashes en all.”
He went off grumbling to lie down at a little distance, and Dan sat thoughtfully looking into the smouldering fire. Bland and Baker, having heatedly discussed the details of the victory, had at last drifted into silence; only Pinetop was awake—this he learned from the odour of the corncob pipe which floated from a sheltered corner.
“Come over, Pinetop,” called Dan, cordially, “and let's make ready for the pursuit to-morrow. Why, to-morrow we may eat a civilized dinner in Washington—think of that!”
He spoke excitedly, for he was still quivering from the tumult of his thoughts. There was no sleep possible for him just now; his limbs twitched restlessly, and he felt the prick of strong emotion in his blood.
“I say, Pinetop, what do you think of the fight?” he asked with an embarrassed boyish eagerness. In the faint light of the fire his eyes burned like coals and there was a thick black stain around his mouth. The hand in which he had held his ramrod was of a dark rust colour, as if the stain of the battle had seared into the skin. A smell of hot powder still hung about his clothes.
The mountaineer left the shadow of the fence corner and slowly dragged himself into the little glow, where he sat puffing at his corncob pipe. He gave an easy, sociable nod and stared silently at the embers.
“Was it just what you imagined it would be?” went on Dan, curiously.
Pinetop took his pipe from his mouth and nodded again. “Wall, 'twas and 'twan't,” he answered pleasantly.
“I must say it made me sick,” admitted Dan, leaning his head in his hand. “I've always been a fool about the smell of blood; and it made me downright sick.”
“Wall, I ain't got much of a stomach for a fight myself,” returned Pinetop, reflectively. “You see I ain't never fought anythin' bigger'n a skunk until to-day; and when I stood out thar with them bullets sizzlin' like fryin' pans round my head, I kind of says to myself: 'Look here, what's all this fuss about anyhow? If these here folks have come arter the niggers, let 'em take 'em off and welcome.' I ain't never owned a nigger in my life, and, what's more, I ain't never seen one that's worth owning. 'Let 'em take 'em and welcome,' that's what I said. Bless your life, as I stood out thar I didn't see how I was goin' to fire my musket, till all of a jiffy a thought jest jumped into my head and sent me bangin' down that hill. 'Them folks have set thar feet on ole Virginny,' was what I thought 'They've set thar feet on ole Virginny, and they've got to take 'em off damn quick!'”
His teeth closed over his pipe as if it were a cartridge; then, after a silent moment, he opened his mouth and spoke again.
“What I can't make out for the life of me,” he said, “is how those boys from the other states gave thar licks so sharp. If I'd been born across the line in Tennessee, I wouldn't have fired my musket off to-day. They wan't a-settin' thar feet on Tennessee. But ole Virginny—wall, I've got a powerful fancy for ole Virginny, and they ain't goin' to project with her dust, if I can stand between.” He turned away, and, emptying his pipe, rolled over upon the ground.
Dan lay down upon the blanket, and, with his hand upon his knapsack, gazed at the small red ember burning amid the ashes. When the last spark faded into blackness it was as if his thoughts went groping for a light. Sleep came fitfully in flights and pauses, in broken dreams and brief awakenings. Losing himself at last it was only to return to the woods at Chericoke and to see Betty coming to him among the dim blue bodies of the trees. He saw the faint sunshine falling upon her head and the stir of the young leaves above her as a light wind passed. Under her feet the grass was studded with violets, and the bonnet swinging from her arm was filled with purple blossoms. She came on steadily over the path of grass and violets, but when he reached out to touch her a great shame fell over him for there was blood upon his hand.
There was something cold in his face, and he emerged slowly from his sleep into the consciousness of dawn and a heavy rain. The swollen clouds hung close above the hills, and the distance was obscured by the gray sheets of water which fell like a curtain from heaven to earth. Near by a wagon had drawn up in the night, and he saw that a group of half-drenched privates had already taken shelter between the wheels. Gathering up his oilcloth, he hastily formed a tent with the aid of a deep fence corner, and, when he had drawn his blanket across the opening, sat partly protected from the shower. As the damp air blew into his face, he became quickly and clearly awake, and it was with the glimmer of a smile that he looked over the wet meadow and the sleeping regiments. Then a shudder followed, for he saw in the lines of gray men stretched beneath the rain some likeness to that other field beyond the hill where the dead were still lying, row on row. He saw them stark and cold on the scorched grass beside the guns, or in the thin ridges of trampled corn, where the gay young tassels were now storm-beaten upon the ripped-up earth. He saw them as he had seen them the evening before—not in the glow of battle, but with the acuteness of a brooding sympathy—saw them frowning, smiling, and with features which death had twisted into a ghastly grin. They were all there—each man with open eyes and stiff hands grasping the clothes above his wound.
But to Dan, sitting in the gray dawn in the fence corner, the first horror faded quickly into an emotion almost triumphant. The great field was silent, reproachful, filled with accusing eyes—but was it not filled with glory, too? He was young, and his weakened pulses quickened at the thought. Since men must die, where was a brighter death than to fall beneath the flutter of the colours, with the thunder of the cannon in one's ears? He knew now why his fathers had loved a fight, had loved the glitter of the bayonets and the savage smell of the discoloured earth.
For a moment the old racial spirit flashed above the peculiar sensitiveness which had come to him from his childhood and his suffering mother; then the flame went out and the rows of dead men stared at him through the falling rain in the deserted field.
At sunrise on the morning of the battle Betty and Virginia, from the whitewashed porch of a little railway inn near Manassas, watched the Governor's regiment as it marched down the single street and into the red clay road. Through the first faint sunshine, growing deeper as the sun rose gloriously above the hills, there sounded a peculiar freshness in the martial music as it triumphantly floated back across the fields. To Betty it almost seemed that the drums were laughing as they went to battle; and when the gay air at last faded in the distance, the silence closed about her with a strangeness she had never felt before—as if the absence of sound was grown melancholy, like the absence of light.
She shut her eyes and brought back the long gray line passing across the sunbeams: the tanned eager faces, the waving flags, the rapid, almost impatient tread of the men as they swung onward. A laugh had run along the column as it went by her and she had smiled in quick sympathy with some foolish jest. It was all so natural to her, the gayety and the ardour and the invincible dash of the young army—it was all so like the spirit of Dan and so dear to her because of the likeness.
Somewhere—not far away, she knew—he also was stepping briskly across the first sun rays, and her heart followed him even while she smiled down upon the regiment before her. It was as if her soul were suddenly freed from her bodily presence, and in a kind of dual consciousness she seemed to be standing upon the little whitewashed porch and walking onward beside Dan at the same moment. The wonder of it glowed in her rapt face, and Virginia, turning to put some trivial question, was startled by the passion of her look.
“Have—have you seen—some one, Betty?” she whispered.
The charm was snapped and Betty fell back into time and place.
“Oh, yes, I have seen—some one,” her voice thrilled as she spoke. “I saw him as clearly as I see you; he was all in sunshine and there was a flag close above his head. He looked up and smiled at me. Yes, I saw him! I saw him!”
“It was Dan,” said Virginia—not as a question, but in a wondering assent. “Why, Betty, I thought you had forgotten Dan—papa thought so, too.”
“Forgotten!” exclaimed Betty scornfully. She fell away from the crowd and Virginia followed her. The two stood leaning against the whitewashed wall in the dust that still rose from the street. “So you thought I had forgotten him,” said Betty again. She raised her hand to her bosom and crushed the lace upon her dress. “Well, you were wrong,” she added quietly.
Virginia looked at her and smiled. “I am almost glad,” she answered in her sweet girlish voice. “I don't like to have Dan forgotten even if—if he ought to be.”
“I didn't love him because he ought to be loved,” said Betty. “I loved him because I couldn't help it—because he was himself and I was myself, I suppose. I was born to love him, and to stop loving him I should have to be born again. I don't care what he does—I don't care what he is even—I would rather love him than—than be a queen.” She held her hands tightly together. “I would be his servant if he would let me,” she went on. “I would work for him like a slave—but he won't let me. And yet he does love me just the same—just the same.”
“He does—he does,” admitted Virginia softly. She had never seen Betty like this before, and she felt that her sister had become suddenly very strange and very sacred. Her hands were outstretched to comfort, but Betty turned gently away from her and went up the narrow staircase to the bare little room where the girls slept together.
Alone within the four white walls she moved breathlessly to and fro like a woodland creature that has been entrapped. At the moment she was telling herself that she wanted to keep onward with the army; then her courage would have fluttered upward like the flags. It was not the sound of the cannon that she dreaded, nor the sight of blood—these would have nerved her as they nerved the generations at her back—but the folded hands and the terrible patience that are the woman's share of a war. The old fighting blood was in her veins—she was as much the child of her father as a son could have been—and yet while the great world over there was filled with noise she was told to go into her room and pray. Pray! Why, a man might pray with his musket in his hand, that was worth while.
In the adjoining room she saw her mother sitting in a square of sunlight with her open Bible on her knees.
“Oh, speak, mamma!” she called half angrily. “Move, do anything but sit so still. I can't bear it!” She caught her breath sharply, for with her words a low sound like distant thunder filled the room and the little street outside. As she clung with both hands to the window it seemed to her that a gray haze had fallen over the sunny valley. “Some one is dead,” she said almost calmly, “that killed how many?”
The room stifled her and she ran hurriedly down into the street, where a few startled women and old men had rushed at the first roll of the cannon. As she stood among them, straining her eyes from end to end of the little village, her heart beat in her throat and she could only quaver out an appeal for news.
“Where is it? Doesn't any one know anything? What does it mean?”
“It means a battle, Miss, that's one thing,” remarked on obliging by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. “Bless you, I kin a'most taste the powder.” He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. “To think that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight,” he pursued regretfully, “when I could have set right here at home and had it all in old Virginny. Well, well, that comes of hurryin' the Lord afo' he's ready.”
He rambled on excitedly, but Betty, frowning with impatience, turned from him and walked rapidly up and down the single street, where the voices of the guns growled through the muffling distance. “That killed how many? how many?” she would say at each long roll, and again, “How many died that moment, and was one Dan?”
Up and down the little village, through the heavy sunshine and the white dust, among the whimpering women and old men, she walked until the day wore on and the shadows grew longer across the street. Once a man had come with the news of a sharp repulse, and in the early afternoon a deserter straggled in with the cry that the enemy was marching upon the village. It was not until the night had fallen, when the wounded began to arrive on baggage trains, that the story of the day was told, and a single shout went up from the waiting groups. The Confederacy was established! Washington was theirs by right of arms, and tomorrow the young army would dictate terms of peace to a great nation! The flags waved, women wept, and the wounded soldiers, as they rolled in on baggage cars, were hailed as the deliverers of a people. The new Confederacy! An emotion half romantic, half maternal filled Betty as she bent above an open wound—for it was in her blood to do battle to the death for a belief, to throw herself into a cause as into the arms of a lover. She was made of the stuff of soldiers, and come what might she would always take her stand upon her people's side.
There were cheers and sobs in the little street about her; in the distance a man was shouting for the flag, and nearer by a woman with a lantern in her hand was searching among the living for her dead. The joy and the anguish of it entered into the girl like wine. She felt her pulses leap and a vigour that was not her own nerved her from head to foot. With that power of ardent sacrifice which lies beneath all shams in the Southern heart, she told herself that no endurance was too great, no hope too large with which to serve the cause.
The exaltation was still with her when, a little later, she went up to her room and knelt down to thank God. Her people's simple faith was hers also, and as she prayed with her brow on her clasped hands it was as if she gave thanks to some great warrior who had drawn his sword in defence of the land she loved. God was on her side, supreme, beneficent, watchful in little things, as He has been on the side of all fervent hearts since the beginning of time.
But after her return to Uplands in midsummer she suffered a peculiar restlessness from the tranquil August weather. The long white road irritated her with its aspect of listless patience, and at times she wanted to push back the crowding hills and leave the horizon open to her view. When a squadron of cavalry swept along the turnpike her heart would follow it like a bird while she leaned, with straining eyes, against a great white column. Then, as the last rider was blotted out into the landscape, she would clasp her hands and walk rapidly up and down between the lilacs. It was all waiting—waiting—waiting—nothing else.
“Something must happen, mamma, or I shall go mad,” she said one day, breaking in upon Mrs. Ambler as she sorted a heap of old letters in the library.
“But what? What?” asked Virginia from the shadow of the window seat. “Surely you don't want a battle, Betty?”
Mrs. Ambler shuddered.
“Don't tempt Providence, dear,” she said seriously, untying a faded ribbon about a piece of old parchment. “Be grateful for just this calm and go out for a walk. You might take this pitcher of flaxseed tea to Floretta's cabin, if you've nothing else to do. Ask how the baby is to-day, and tell her to keep the red flannel warm on its chest.”
Betty went into the hall after her bonnet and came back for the pitcher. “I'm going to walk across the fields to Chericoke,” she said, “and Hosea is to bring the carriage for me about sunset. We must have some white silk to make those flags out of, and there isn't a bit in the house.”
She went out, stepping slowly in her wide skirts and holding the pitcher carefully before her.
Floretta's baby was sleeping, and after a few pleasant words the girl kept on to Chericoke. There she found that the Major had gone to town for news, leaving Mrs. Lightfoot to her pickle making in the big storeroom, where the earthenware jars stood in clean brown rows upon the shelves. The air was sharp with the smell of vinegar and spices, and fragrant moisture dripped from the old lady's delicate hands. At the moment she had forgotten the war just beyond her doors, and even the vacant places in her household; her nervous flutter was caused by finding the plucked corn too large to salt.
“Come in, child, come in,” she said, as Betty appeared in the doorway. “You're too good a housekeeper to mind the smell of brine.”
“How the soldiers will enjoy it,” laughed Betty in reply. “It's fortunate that both sides are fond of spices.”
The old lady was tying a linen cloth over the mouth of a great brown jar, and she did not look up as she answered. “I'm not consulting their tastes, my dear, though, as for that, I'm willing enough to feast our own men so long as the Yankees keep away. This jar, by the bye, is filled with 'Confederate pickle'—it was as little as I could do to compliment the Government, I thought, and the green tomato catchup I've named in honour of General Beauregard.”
Betty smiled; and then, while Mrs. Lightfoot stood sharply regarding Car'line, who was shucking a tray of young corn, she timidly began upon her mission. “The flags must be finished, and I can't find the silk,” she pleaded. “Isn't there a scrap in the house I may have? Let me look about the attic.”
The old lady shook her head. “I haven't allowed anybody to set foot in my attic for forty years,” she replied decisively. “Why, I'd almost as soon they'd step into my grandfather's vault.” Then as Betty's face fell she added generously. “As for white silk, I haven't any except my wedding dress, and that's yellow with age; but you may take it if you want it. I'm sure it couldn't come to a better end; at least it will have been to the front upon two important occasions.”
“Your wedding dress!” exclaimed Betty in surprise, “oh, how could you?”
Mrs. Lightfoot smiled grimly.
“I could give more than a wedding dress if the Confederacy called for it, my dear,” she answered. “Indeed, I'm not perfectly sure that I couldn't give the Major himself—but go upstairs and wait for me while I send Car'line for the keys.”
She returned to the storeroom, and Betty went upstairs to wander leisurely through the cool faintly lighted chambers. They were all newly swept and scented with lavender, and the high tester beds, with their slender fluted posts, looked as if they had stood spotless and untouched for generations. In Dan's room, which had been his mother's also, the girl walked slowly up and down, meeting, as she passed, her own eyes in the darkened mirror. Her mind fretted with the thought that Dan's image had risen so often in the glass, and yet had left no hint for her as she looked in now. If it had only caught and held his reflection, that blank mirror, she could have found it, she felt sure, though a dozen faces had passed by since. Was there nothing left of him, she wondered, nothing in the place where he had lived his life? She turned to the bed and picked up, one by one, the scattered books upon the little table. Among them there was a copy of the “Morte d'Arthur,” and as it fell open in her hand, she found a bit of her own blue ribbon between the faded leaves. A tremor ran through her limbs, and going to the window she placed the book upon the sill and read the words aloud in the fragrant stillness. Behind her in the dim room Dan seemed to rise as suddenly as a ghost—and that high-flown chivalry of his, which delighted in sounding phrases as in heroic virtues, was loosened from the leaves of the old romance.
“For there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman but they loved one better than another, and worship in arms may never be foiled; but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady; and such love I call virtuous love.”
She leaned her cheek upon the book and looked out dreamily into the green box mazes of the garden. In the midst of war a great peace had come to her, and the quiet summer weather no longer troubled her with its unbroken calm. Her heart had grown suddenly strong again; even the long waiting had become but a fit service for her love.
There was a step in the hall and Mrs. Lightfoot rustled in with her wedding dress.
“You may take it and welcome, child,” she said, as she gave it into Betty's arms. “I can't help feeling that there was something providential in my selecting white when my taste always leaned toward a peach-blow brocade. Well, well, who would have believed that I was buying a flag as well as a frock? If I'd even hinted such a thing, they would have said I had the vapours.”
Betty accepted the gift with her pretty effusion of manner, and went downstairs to where Hosea was waiting for her with the big carriage. As she drove home in a happy revery, her eyes dwelt contentedly on the sunburnt August fields, and the thought of war did not enter in to disturb her dreams.
Once a line of Confederate cavalrymen rode by at a gallop and saluted her as her face showed at the window. They were strangers to her, but with the peculiar feeling of kinship which united the people of the South, she leaned out to wish them “God speed” as she waved her handkerchief.
When, a little later, she turned into the drive at Uplands, it was to find, from the prints upon the gravel, that the soldiers had been there before her. Beyond the Doric columns she caught a glimpse of a gray sleeve, and for a single instant a wild hope shot up within her heart. Then as the carriage stopped, and she sprang quickly to the ground, the man in gray came out upon the portico, and she saw that it was Jack Morson.
“I've come for Virginia, Betty,” he began impulsively, as he took her hand, “and she promises to marry me before the battle.”
Betty laughed with trembling lips. “And here is the dress,” she said gayly, holding out the yellowed silk.
After a peaceful Christmas, New Year's Day rose bright and mild, and Dan as he started from Winchester with the column felt that he was escaping to freedom from the tedious duties of camp life.
“Thank God we're on the war-path again,” he remarked to Pinetop, who was stalking at his side. The two had become close friends during the dull weeks after their first battle, and Bland, who had brought a taste for the classics from the lecture-room, had already referred to them in pointless jokes as “Pylades and Orestes.”
“It looks mighty like summer,” responded Pinetop cheerfully. He threw a keen glance up into the blue clouds, and then sniffed suspiciously at the dust that rose high in the road. “But I ain't one to put much faith in looks,” he added with his usual caution, as he shifted the knapsack upon his shoulders.
Dan laughed easily. “Well, I'm heartily glad I left my overcoat behind me,” he said, breathing hard as he climbed the mountain road, where the red clay had stiffened into channels.
The sunshine fell brightly over them, lying in golden drops upon the fallen leaves. To Dan the march brought back the early winter rides at Chericoke, and the chain of lights and shadows that ran on clear days over the tavern road. Joyously throwing back his head, he whistled a love song as he tramped up the mountain side. The irksome summer, with its slow fevers and its sharp attacks of measles, its scarcity of pure water and supplies of half-cooked food, was suddenly blotted from his thoughts, and his first romantic ardour returned to him in long draughts of wind and sun. After each depression his elastic temperament had sprung upward; the past months had but strengthened him in body as in mind.
In the afternoon a gray cloud came up suddenly and the sunshine, after a feeble struggle, was driven from the mountains. As the wind blew in short gusts down the steep road, Dan tightened his coat and looked at Pinetop's knapsack with his unfailing laugh.
“That's beginning to look comfortable. I hope to heaven the wagons aren't far off.”
Pinetop turned and glanced back into the valley. “I'll be blessed if I believe they're anywhere,” was his answer.
“Well, if they aren't, I'll be somewhere before morning; why, it feels like snow.”
A gust of wind, sharp as a blade, struck from the gray sky, and whirlpools of dead leaves were swept into the forest. Falling silent, Dan swung his arms to quicken the current of his blood, and walked on more rapidly. Over the long column gloom had settled with the clouds, and they were brave lips that offered a jest in the teeth of the wind. There were no blankets, few overcoats, and fewer rations, and the supply wagons were crawling somewhere in the valley.
The day wore on, and still the rough country road climbed upward embedded in withered leaves. On the high wind came the first flakes of a snowstorm, followed by a fine rain that enveloped the hills like mist. As Dan stumbled on, his feet slipped on the wet clay, and he was forced to catch at the bared saplings for support. The cold had entered his lungs as a knife, and his breath circled in a little cloud about his mouth. Through the storm he heard the quick oaths of his companions ring out like distant shots.
When night fell they halted to bivouac by the roadside, and until daybreak the pine woods were filled with the cheerful glow of the campfires. There were no rations, and Dan, making a jest of his hunger, had stretched himself in the full light of the crackling branches. With the defiant humour which had made him the favourite of the mess, he laughed at the frozen roads, at the change in the wind, at his own struggles with the wet kindling wood, at the supply wagons creeping slowly after them. His courage had all the gayety of his passions—it showed itself in a smile, in a whistle, in the steady hand with which he played toss and catch with fate. The superb silence of Pinetop, plodding evenly along, was as far removed from him as the lofty grandeur of the mountains. A jest warmed his heart against the cold; with set lips and grave eyes, he would have fallen before the next ridge was crossed.
Through the woods other fires were burning, and long reddish shadows crept among the pine trees over the rotting mould. For warmth Dan had spread a covering of dried leaves over him, raking them from sheltered corners of the forest. When he rose from time to time during the night to take his turn at replenishing the fire the leaves drifted in gravelike mounds about his feet.
For three days the march was steadily upward over long ridges coated deep with ice. In the face of the strong wind, which blew always down the steep road, the army passed on, complaining, cursing, asking a gigantic question of its General. Among the raw soldiers there had been desertions by the dozen, filling the streets of the little town with frost-bitten malcontents. “It was all a wild goose chase,” they declared bitterly, “and if Old Jack wasn't a March hare—well, he was something madder!”
Dan listened to the curses with his ready smile, and walked on bravely. Since the first evening he had uttered no complaint, asked no question. He had undertaken to march, and he meant to march, that was all. In the front with which he veiled his suffering there was no lessening of his old careless confidence—if his dash had hardened into endurance it wore still an expression that was almost debonair.
So as the column straggled weakly upward, he wrung his stiffened fingers and joked with Jack Powell, who stumbled after him. The cold had brought a glow to his tanned face, and when he lifted his eyes from the road Pinetop saw that they were shining brightly. Once he slipped on the frozen mud, and as his musket dropped from his hand, it went off sharply, the load entering the ground.
“Are you hurt?” asked Jack, springing toward him; but Dan looked round laughing as he clasped his knee.
“Oh, I merely groaned because I might have been,” he said lightly, and limped on, singing a bit of doggerel which had taken possession of his regiment.
“Then let the Yanks say what they will,We'll be gay and happy still;Gay and happy, gay and happy,We'll be gay and happy still.”
On the third day out they reached a little village in the mountains, but before the week's end they had pushed on again, and the white roads still stretched before them. As they went higher the tracks grew steeper, and now and then a musket shot rang out on the roadside as a man lost his footing and went down upon the ice. Behind them the wagon train crept inch by inch, or waited patiently for hours while a wheel was hoisted from the ditch beside the road. There was blood on the muzzles of the horses and on the shining ice that stretched beyond them.
To Dan these terrible days were as the anguish of a new birth, in which the thing to be born suffered the conscious throes of awakening life. He could never be the same again; something was altered in him forever; this he felt dimly as he dragged his aching body onward. Days like these would prove the stuff that had gone into the making of him. When the march to Romney lay behind him he should know himself to be either a soldier or a coward. A soldier or a coward! he said the words over again as he struggled to keep down the pangs of hunger, telling himself that the road led not merely to Romney, but to a greater victory than his General dreamed of. Romney might be worthless, after all, the grim march but a mad prank of Jackson's, as men said; but whether to lay down one's arms or to struggle till the end was reached, this was the question asked by those stern mountains. Nature stood ranged against him—he fought it step by step, and day by day.
At times something like delirium seized him, and he went on blindly, stepping high above the ice. For hours he was tortured by the longing for raw beef, for the fresh blood that would put heat into his veins. The kitchen at Chericoke flamed upon the hillside, as he remembered it on winter evenings when the great chimney was filled with light and the crane was in its place above the hickory. The smell of newly baked bread floated in his nostrils, and for a little while he believed himself to be lying again upon the hearth as he thrilled at Aunt Rhody's stories. Then his fancies would take other shapes, and warm colours would glow in red and yellow circles before his eyes. When he thought of Betty now it was no longer tenderly but with a despairing passion. He was haunted less by her visible image than by broken dreams of her peculiar womanly beauties—of her soft hands and the warmth of her girlish bosom.
But from the first day to the last he had no thought of yielding; and each feeble step had sent him a step farther upon the road. He had often fallen, but he had always struggled up again and laughed. Once he made a ghastly joke about his dying in the snow, and Jack Powell turned upon him with an oath and bade him to be silent.
“For God's sake don't,” added the boy weakly, and fell to whimpering like a child.
“Oh, go home to your mother,” retorted Dan, with a kind of desperate cruelty.
Jack sobbed outright.
“I wish I could,” he answered, and dropped over upon the roadside.
Dan caught him up, and poured his last spoonful of brandy down his throat, then he seized his arm and dragged him bodily along.
“Oh, I say don't be an ass,” he implored. “Here comes old Stonewall.”
The commanding General rode by, glanced quietly over them, and passed on, his chest bowed, his cadet cap pulled down over his eyes. A moment later Dan, looking over the hillside, at the winding road, saw him dismount and put his shoulder to a sunken wheel. The sight suddenly nerved the younger man, and he went on quickly, dragging Jack up with him.
That night they rested in a burned-out clearing where the pine trees had been felled for fence rails. The rails went readily to fires, and Pinetop fried strips of fat bacon in the skillet he had brought upon his musket. Somebody produced a handful of coffee from his pocket, and a little later Dan, dozing beside the flames, was awakened by the aroma.
“By George!” he burst out, and sat up speechless.
Pinetop was mixing thin cornmeal paste into the gravy, and he looked up as he stirred busily with a small stick.
“Wall, I reckon these here slapjacks air about done,” he remarked in a moment, adding with a glance at Dan, “and if your stomach's near as empty as your eyes, I reckon your turn comes first.”
“I reckon it does,” said Dan, and filling his tin cup, he drank scalding coffee in short gulps. When he had finished it, he piled fresh rails upon the fire and lay down to sleep with his feet against the embers.
With the earliest dawn a long shiver woke him, and as he put out his hand it touched something wet and cold. The fire had died to a red heart, and a thick blanket of snow covered him from head to foot. Straight above there was a pale yellow light where the stars shone dimly after the storm.
He started to his feet, rubbing a handful of snow upon his face. The red embers, sheltered by the body of a solitary pine, still glowed under the charred brushwood, and kneeling upon the ground, he fanned them into a feeble blaze. Then he laid the rails crosswise, protecting them with his blanket until they caught and flamed up against the blackened pine.
Near by Jack Powell was moaning in his sleep, and Dan leaned over to shake him into consciousness. “Oh, damn it all, wake up, you fool!” he said roughly, but Jack rolled over like one drugged and broke into frightened whimpers such as a child makes in the dark. He was dreaming of home, and as Dan listened to the half-choked words, his face contracted sharply. “Wake up, you fool!” he repeated angrily, rolling him back and forth before the fire.
A little later, when Jack had grown warm beneath his touch, he threw a blanket over him, and turned to lie down in his own place. As he tossed a last armful on the fire, his eyes roamed over the long mounds of snow that filled the clearing, and he caught his breath as a man might who had waked suddenly among the dead. In the beginning of dawn, with the glimmer of smouldering fires reddening the snow, there was something almost ghastly in the sloping field filled with white graves and surrounded by white mountains. Even the wintry sky borrowed, for an hour, the spectral aspect of the earth, and the familiar shapes of cloud, as of hill, stood out with all the majesty of uncovered laws—stripped of the mere frivolous effect of light or shade. It was like the first day—or the last.
Dan, sitting watchful beside the fire, fell into the peculiar mental state which comes only after an inward struggle that has laid bare the sinews of one's life. He had fought the good fight to the end, and he knew that from this day he should go easier with himself because he knew that he had conquered.
The old doubt—the old distrust of his own strength—was fallen from him. At the moment he could have gone to Betty, fearless and full of hope, and have said, “Come, for I am grown up at last—at last I have grown up to my love.” A great tenderness was in his heart, and the tears, which had not risen for all the bodily suffering of the past two weeks, came slowly to his eyes. The purpose of life seemed suddenly clear to him, and the large patience of the sky passed into his own nature as he sat facing the white dawn. At rare intervals in the lives of all strenuous souls there comes this sense of kinship with external things—this passionate recognition of the appeal of the dumb world. Sky and mountains and the white sweep of the fields awoke in him the peculiar tenderness he had always felt for animals or plants. His old childish petulance was gone from him forever; in its place he was aware of a kindly tolerance which softened even the common outlines of his daily life. It was as if he had awakened breathlessly to find himself a man.
And Betty came to him again—not in detached visions, but entire and womanly. When he remembered her as on that last night at Chericoke it was with the impulse to fall down and kiss her feet. Reckless and blind with anger as he had been, she would have come cheerfully with him wherever his road led; and it was this passionate betrayal of herself that had taught him the full measure of her love. An attempt to trifle, to waver, to bargain with the future, he might have looked back upon with tender scorn; but the gesture with which she had made her choice was as desperate as his own mood—and it was for this one reckless moment that he loved her best.
The east paled slowly as the day broke in a cloud, and the long shadows beside the fire lost their reddish glimmer. A little bird, dazed by the cold and the strange light, flew into the smoke against the stunted pine, and fell, a wet ball of feathers at Dan's feet. He picked it up, warmed it in his coat, and fed it from the loose crumbs in his pocket.
When Pinetop awoke he was gently stroking the bird while he sang in a low voice:—