THE BATTLETHE BATTLE
He found himself on his feet and in line, steady, clear of head as though he trod the path by Thunder Run.Forward! March!Thebrigade cleared the wood, and in line of battle passed the exhausted battery. Allan noted a soldier beneath a horse, a contorted, purple, frozen face held between the brute's fore-legs. The air was filled with whistling shells; the broom sedge was on fire.Right shoulder. Shift Arms! Charge!
Somewhere, about halfway over the plain, he became convinced that his right leg from the hip down was gone to sleep. He had an idea that he was not keeping up. A line passed him—another; he mustn't let the others get ahead! and for a minute he ran quite rapidly. There was a yellow, rain-washed gulley before him; the charge swept down one side and up the other. This crack in the earth was two thirds of the way across the open; beyond were the wood, the creek, the abattis, the climbing lines of breastworks, the thirty-five thousand in blue, and the tremendous guns. The grey charge was yelling high and clear, preparing to deliver its first fire; the air a roar of sound and a glaring light. Allan went down one side of the gulley with some ease, but it was another thing to climb the other. However, up he got, almost to the top—and then pitched forward, clutching at the growth of sedge along the crest. It held him steady, and he settled into a rut of yellow earth and tried to think it over. Endeavouring to draw himself a little higher, a minie ball went through his shoulder. The grey charge passed him, roaring on to the shadowy wood.
He helped himself as best he could, staunched some blood, drew his own conclusions as to his wounds. He was not suffering much; not over much. By nature he matched increasing danger with increasing coolness. All that he especially wanted was for that charge to succeed—for the grey to succeed. His position here, on the rim of the gully, was an admirable one for witnessing all that the shifting smoke might allow to be witnessed. It was true that a keening minie or one of the monstrous shells might in an instant shear his thread of life, probably would do so; all the probabilities lay that way. But he was cool and courageous, and had kept himself ready to go. An absorbing interest in the field of Gaines's Mill, a passionate desire that Victory should wear grey, dominated all other feeling. Half in the seam of the gully, half in the sedge at the top, he made himself as easy as he could and rested a spectator.
The battle smoke, now heavily settling, now drifting like clouds before a wind, now torn asunder and lifting from the scene, made the great field to come and go in flashes, or like visionsof the night. He saw that A. P. Hill was sending in his brigades, brigade after brigade. He looked to the left whence should come Jackson, but over there, just seen through the smoke, the forest stood sultry and still. Behind him, however, in the wood at the base of the armed hill, there rose a clamour and deep thunder as of Armageddon. Like a grey wave broken against an iron shore, the troops with whom he had charged streamed back disordered, out of the shadowy wood into the open, where in the gold sedge lay many a dead man and many a wounded. Allan saw the crimson flag with the blue cross shaken, held on high, heard the officers crying, "Back, men, back! Virginians, do your duty!" The wave formed again. He tried to rise so that he might go with it, but could not. It returned into the wood. Before him, racing toward the gully, came another wave—Branch's brigade, yelling as it charged. He saw it a moment like a grey wall, with the colours tossing, then it poured down into the gully and up and past him. He put up his arms to shield his face, but the men swerved a little and did not trample him. The worn shoes, digging into the loose earth covered him with dust. The moving grey cloth, the smell of sweat-drenched bodies, of powder, of leather, of hot metal, the panting breath, the creak and swing, the sudden darkening, heat and pressure—the passage of that wave took his own breath from him, left him white and sick. Branch went on. He looked across the gully and saw another wave coming—Pender, this time. Pender came without yelling, grim and grey and close-mouthed. Pender had suffered before Beaver Dam Creek; to-day there was not much more than half a brigade. It, too, passed, a determined wave. Allan saw Field in the distance coming up. He was tormented with thirst. Three yards from the gully lay stretched the trunk of a man, the legs blown away. He was almost sure he caught the glint of a canteen. He lay flat in the sedge and dragged himself to the corpse. There was the canteen, indeed; marked with a great U. S., spoil taken perhaps at Williamsburg or at Seven Pines. It was empty, drained dry as a bone. There was another man near. Allan dragged himself on. He thought this one dead, too, but when he reached him he opened large blue eyes and breathed, "Water!" Allan sorrowfully shook his head. The blue eyes did not wink nor close, they glazed and stayed open. The scout dropped beside the body, exhausted. Field's charge passed over him. When he opened his eyes, this portion of the plain was like a sea between cross winds. All the broken waves were wildly tossing. Here they recoiled, fled, even across the gully; here they seethed, inchoate; there, regathering form and might, they readvanced to the echoing hill, with its three breastworks and its eighty cannon. Death gorged himself in the tangled slashing, on the treacherous banks of the slow-moving creek. A. P. Hill was a superb fighter. He sent in his brigades. They returned, broken; he sent them in again. They went. The 16th and 22d North Carolina passed the three lines of blazing rifles, got to the head of the cliff, found themselves among the guns. In vain. Morrell's artillerymen, Morrell's infantry, pushed them back and down, down the hillside, back into the slashing. The 35th Georgia launched itself like a thunderbolt and pierced the lines, but it, too, was hurled down. Gregg's South Carolinians and Sykes Regulars locked and swayed. Archer and Pender, Field and Branch, charged and were repelled, to charge again. Save in marksmanship, the Confederate batteries could not match the Federal; strength was with the great, blue rifled guns, and yet the grey cannoneers wrought havoc on the plateau and amid the breastworks. The sound was enormous, a complex tumult that crashed and echoed in the head. The whole of the field existed in the throbbing, expanded brain—all battlefields, all life, all the world and other worlds, all problems solved and insoluble. The wide-flung grey battlefront was now sickle-shaped, convex to the foe. The rolling dense smoke flushed momently with a lurid glare. In places the forest was afire, in others the stubble of the field. From horn to horn of the sickle galloped the riderless horses. Now and again a wounded one among them screamed fearfully.
Allan dragged himself back to the gully. It was safer there, because the charging lines must lessen speed, break ranks a little; they would not be so resistlessly borne on and over him. He was not light-headed, or he thought he was not. He lay on the rim of the gully that was now trampled into a mere trough of dust, and he looked at the red light on the rolling vapour. Where it lifted he saw, as in a pageant, war in mid-career. Sound, too, had organized. He could have beaten time to the gigantic rhythm. It rose and sank; it was made up of groaning, shouting, breathing of men, gasping, and the sounds that horses make, with louder and louder the thunder of the inanimate, the congregated sound of the allies man had devised,—the saltpetre he had digged, the powder he had made, the rifles he had manufactured, the cannon he had moulded, the solid shot, grape, canister, shrapnel, minie balls. The shells were fearful, Allan was fain to acknowledge. They passed like whistling winds. They filled the air like great rocks from a blasting. The staunchest troops blanched a little, jerked the head sidewise as the shells burst and showered ruin. There came into Allan's mind a picture in the old geography,—rocks thrown up by Vesuvius. He thought he was speaking to the geography class. "I'll show you how they look. I was lying, you see, at the edge of the crater, and they were all overhead." The picture passed away, and he began to think that the minies' unearthly shriek was much like the winter wind round Thunder Run Mountain—Sairy and Tom—Was Sairy baking gingerbread?—Of course not; they didn't have gingerbread now. Besides, you didn't want gingerbread when you were thirsty....Oh, water, water, water, water!...Tom might be taking the toll—if there was anybody to pay it, and if they kept the roads up. Roses in bloom, and the bees in them and over the pansies.... The wrens sang, and Christianna came down the road. Roses and pansies, with their funny little faces, and Sairy's blue gingham apron and the blue sky. The water-bucket on the porch, with the gourd. He began to mutter a little. "Time to take in, children—didn't you hear the bell? I rang it loudly. I am ringing it now. Listen! Loud, loud—like church bells—and cannons. The old lesson.... Curtius and the gulf."
In the next onrush a man stumbled and came to his knees beside him. Not badly hurt, he was about to rise. Allan caught his arm. "For God's sake—if you've got any water—" The man, a tall Alabamian, looked down, nodded, jerked loose another U. S. canteen, and dropped it into the other's hand. "All right, all right—not at all—not at all—" He ran on, joining the hoar and shouting wave. Allan, the flask set to his lips, found not water, but a little cold and weak coffee. It was nectar—it was happiness—it was life—though he could have drunk ten times the amount!
The cool draught and the strength that was in it revived him, drew his wandering mind back from Thunder Run to Gaines's Mill.Again he wished to know where was the Army of the Valley. It might be over there, in the smoke pall, turning Fitz John Porter's right ... but he did not believe it. Brigade after brigade had swept past him, had been broken, had reformed, had again swept by into the wood that was so thick with the dead. A. P. Hill continued to hurl them in, standing, magnificent fighter! his eyes on the dark and bristling stronghold. On the hill, behind the climbing breastworks and the iron giants atop, Fitz John Porter, good and skilful soldier, withdrew from the triple lines his decimated regiments, put others in their places, scoured with the hail of his twenty-two batteries the plain of the Confederate centre. All the attack was here—all the attack was here—and the grey brigades were thinning like mist wreaths. The dead and wounded choked field and gully and wood and swamp. Allan struck his hands together. What had happened—what was the matter? How long had he lain here? Two hours, at the least—and always it was A. P. Hill's battle, and always the grey brigades with a master courage dashed themselves against the slope of fire, and always the guns repelled them. It was growing late. The sun could not be seen. Plain and woods were darkening, darkening and filled with groaning. It was about him like a melancholy wind, the groaning. He raised himself on his hands and saw how many indeed were scattered in the sedge, or in the bottom of the yellow gully, or slanted along its sides. He had not before so loudly heard the complaining that they made, and for a moment the brain wondered why. Then he was aware that the air was less filled with missiles, that the long musketry rattle and the baying of the war dogs was a little hushed. Even as he marked this the lull grew more and more perceptible. He heard the moaning of the wounded, because now the ear could take cognizance.
The shadow deepened. A horse, with a blood-stained saddle, unhurt himself, approached him, stood nickering for a moment, then panic-struck again, lashed out with his heels and fled. All the plain, the sedge below, the rolling canopy above, was tinged with reddish umber. The sighing wind continued, but the noise of firing died and died. For all the moaning of the wounded, there seemed to fall a ghastly silence.
Over Allan came a feeling as of a pendulum forever stopped, as of Time but a wreck on the shore of Space, and Space a deserted coast, an experiment of some Power who found it ineffective and tossed it away. The Now and Here, petrified forever, desolate forever, an obscure bubble in the sea of being, a faint tracing on the eternal Mind to be overlaid and forgotten—here it rested, and would rest. The field would stay and the actors would stay, both forever as they were, standing, lying, in motion or at rest, suffering, thirsting, tasting the sulphur and feeling the heat, held here forever in a vise, grey shadows suffering like substance, knowing the lost battle.... A deadly weakness and horror came over him. "O God!—Let us die—"
From the rear, to A. P. Hill's right, where was Longstreet, broke a faint yelling. It grew clearer, came nearer. From another direction—from the left—burst a like sound, increasing likewise, high, wild, and clear. Like a breath over the field went the conviction—Jackson—Jackson at last!Allan dropped in the broom sedge, his arm beneath his head. The grey sleeve was wet with tears. The pendulum was swinging; he was home in the dear and dread world.
The sound increased; the earth began to shake with the tread of men; the tremendous guns began again their bellowing. Longstreet swung into action, with the brigades of Kemper, Anderson, Pickett, Willcox, Pryor, and Featherstone. On the left, with his own division, with Ewell's, with D. H. Hill's, Jackson struck at last like Jackson. Whiting, with two brigades, should have been with Jackson, but, missing his way in the wood, came instead to Longstreet, and with him entered the battle. The day was descending. All the plain was smoky or luridly lit; a vast Shield of Mars, with War in action. With Longstreet and with Jackson up at last, Lee put forth his full strength. Fifty thousand men in grey, thirty-five thousand men in blue, were at once engaged—in three hundred years there had been in the Western Hemisphere no battle so heavy as this one. The artillery jarred even the distant atmosphere, and the high mounting clouds were tinged with red. Six miles away, Richmond listened aghast.
Allan forgot his wounds, forgot his thirst, forgot the terror, sick and cold, of the minute past. He no longer heard the groaning. The storm of sound swept it away. He was a fighter with the grey; all his soul was in the prayer. "Let them come! Let them conquer!" He thought,Let the war bleed and the mighty die. He saw a charge approaching. Willingly would he have been stamped into the earthwould it further the feet on their way. The grey line hung an instant, poised on the further rim of the gully, then swept across and onward. Until the men were by him, it was thick night, thick and stifling. They passed. He heard the yelling as they charged the slope, the prolonged tremendous rattle of musketry, the shouts, the foiled assault, and the breaking of the wave. Another came, a wall of darkness in the closing day. Over it hung a long cloud, red-stained. Allan prayed aloud. "O God of Battles—O God of Battles—"
The wave came on. It resolved itself into a moving frieze, a wide battle line of tall men, led by a tall, gaunt general, with blue eyes and flowing, tawny hair. In front was the battle-flag, red ground and blue cross. Beside it dipped and rose a blue flag with a single star. The smoke rolled above, about the line. Bursting overhead, a great shell lit all with a fiery glare. The frieze began to sing.
"The race is not to them that's gotThe longest legs to run,Nor the battle to that peopleThat shoots the biggest gun—"
Allan propped himself upon his hands. "Fourth Texas! Fourth Texas!—Fourth—"
The frieze rushed down the slope of the gully, up again, and on. A foot came hard on Allan's hand. He did not care. He had a vision of keen, bronze faces, hands on gun-locks. The long, grey legs went by him with a mighty stride. Gun-barrel and bayonet gleamed like moon on water. The battle-flag with the cross, the flag with the single star, spread red and blue wings. Past him they sped, gigantic, great ensigns of desperate valour, war goddesses, valkyries, ... rather the great South herself, the eleven States, Rio Grande to Chesapeake, Potomac to the Gulf! All the shells were bursting, all the drums were thundering—
The Texans passed, he sank prone on the earth. Other waves he knew were following—all the waves! Jackson with Ewell, Longstreet, the two Hills. He thought he saw his own brigade—saw the Stonewall. But it was in another quarter of the field, and he could not call to it. All the earth was rocking like a cradle, blindly swinging in some concussion and conflagration as of world systems.
As dusk descended, the Federal lines were pierced and broken. The Texans made the breach, but behind them stormed the other waves,—D. H. Hill, Ewell, the Stonewall Brigade, troops of Longstreet. They blotted out the triple breastworks; from north, west, and south they mounted in thunder upon the plateau. They gathered to themselves here twenty-two guns, ten thousand small arms, twenty-eight hundred prisoners. They took the plateau. Stubbornly fighting, Fitz John Porter drew off his exhausted brigades, plunged downward through the forest, toward the Chickahominy. Across that river, all day long McClellan, with sixty-five thousand men, had rested behind earthworks, bewildered by Magruder, demonstrating in front of Richmond with twenty-eight thousand. Now, at the twelfth hour, he sent two brigades, French and Meagher.
Night fell, black as pitch. The forest sprang dense, from miry soil. The region was one where Nature set traps. In the darkness it was not easy to tell friend from foe. Grey fired on grey, blue on blue. The blue still pressed, here in disorder, here with a steady front, toward the grapevine bridge across the Chickahominy. French and Meagher arrived to form a strong rearguard. Behind, on the plateau, the grey advance paused, uncertain in the darkness and in its mortal fatigue. Here, and about the marshy creek and on the vast dim field beyond, beneath the still hanging battle cloud, lay, of the grey and the blue, fourteen thousand dead and wounded. The sound of their suffering rose like a monotonous wind of the night.
The Stonewall Brigade, a unit in Jackson's advance, halted on the plateau near the McGehee house. All was dark, all was confused. In the final and general charge, regiments had become separated from brigades, companies from regiments. Fragments of many commands were on the plateau,—Whiting, Ewell, D. H. Hill, Jackson's own division, portions of Longstreet's brigades, even a number of A. P. Hill's broken, exhausted fighters. Many an officer lay silent or moaning, on the scarped slope, in the terrific tangle about the creek, or on the melancholy plain beyond. Captains shouted orders in the colonels' places; lieutenants or sergeants in the captains'. Here, on the plateau, where for hours the blue guns had thundered, the stars were seen but dimly through the smoke. Bodies of men, and men singly or in twos and threes, wandered like ghosts in Hades. "This way, Second Virginia!" "Fall in here, Hood's Texans!"—"Hampton's men, over here!"—"Fifteenth Alabama! Fifteenth Alabama!"—"I'm looking for the Milledgeville Hornets."—"Iverson's men! Iverson's men!"—"Fall in here, Cary's Legion!"—"First Maryland!"—"Fifth Virginia over here!"—"Where in hell is the Eleventh Mississippi!"—"Lawton! Lawton!"—"Sixty-fifth Virginia, fall in here!"
East and south, sloping toward the Chickahominy, ran several miles of heavy forest. It was filled with sound,—the hoofs of horses, the rumbling of wheels, the breaking through undergrowth of masses of men,—sound that was dying in volume, rolling toward the Chickahominy. On the trampled brow of the plateau, beneath shot-riddled trees, General D. H. Hill, coming from the northern face, found General Winder of the First Brigade standing with several of his officers, trying to pierce the murk toward the river. "You rank here, General Winder?" said Hill.
"I think so, general. Such a confusion of troops I have never seen! They have been reporting to me. It is yours now to command."
"Have you seen General Jackson?"
"No. Not lately."
D. H. Hill looked toward the Chickahominy. "I don't deny it's temptatious! And yet.... Very dark. Thick woods. Don't know what obstructions. Men exhausted. Our centre and right not come up. Artillery still across the swamp—What's that cheering toward the river?"
"I don't know. McClellan may have sent reinforcements."
"Have you pickets out?"
"Yes. What do you think, Cleave?"
"I think, sir, the rout outweighs the reinforcements. I think we should press on at once."
"If we had cavalry!" said Winder impatiently. "However, General Stuart has swept down toward the Pamunkey. That will be their line of retreat—to the White House."
"There is the chance," said Cleave, "that General McClellan will abandon that line, and make instead for the James and the gunboats at Harrison's Landing."
Hill nodded. "Yes, it's a possibility. General Lee is aware of it. He'll not unmask Richmond and come altogether on this side the Chickahominy until he knows. All that crowd down there may set to and cross to-night—"
"How many bridges?" asked Lawton.
"Alexander's and Grapevine. Woodbury's higher up."
"I do not believe that there are three, sir. There is a report that two are burned. I believe that the Grapevine is their only road—"
"You believe, colonel, but you do not know. What do you think, General Winder?"
"I think, sir, with Colonel Cleave, that we should push down through the woods to the right of the Grapevine Bridge. They, too, are exhausted, their horses jaded, their ammunition spent. We could gather a little artillery—Poague's battery is here. They are crushed together, in great masses. If we could fall upon them, cause a great panic there at the water, much might come of it."
Hill looked with troubled eyes about the plateau. "And two or three thousand men, perhaps, be swallowed up and lost! A grand charge that took this plateau—yes! and a grand charge at Beaver Dam Creek yesterday at dark, and a grand charge when Albert Sidney Johnston was killed, and a grand charge when Ashby was killed, and on a number of other occasions, and now a grand night-time charge with worn-out troops. All grand—just the kind of grandeur the South cannot afford!... An army yet of blue troops and fresh, shouting brigades, and our centre and right on the other side of the creek.... I don't dare do it, gentlemen!—not on my own responsibility. What do you think, General Lawton?"
"I think you are right, sir."
"More and more troops are coming upon the plateau," said Winder. "General Hill, if you will order us to go we will see to it that you do not repent—"
"They are defeated and retreating, sir," said Cleave. "If they are crossing the river, it is at least in the realm of probability that they have but the one path. No one knows better than you what resolute pressure might now accomplish. Every moment that we wait they gain in steadiness, and other reserves will come up. Make their junction with their centre, and to-morrow we fight a terrific battle where to-night a lesser struggle might secure a greater victory."
"Speaking largely, that is true," said Hill. "But—I wish General Jackson were here! I think you know, gentlemen, that, personally, I could wish, at this minute, to be down there in the woods, beside the Grapevine Bridge. But with the knowledge that the enemy is bringing up reserves, with the darkness so thick, with no great force, and that exhausted, and with no artillery, I cannot take the responsibility of the advance. If General Jackson were here—"
"May I send in search of him, sir?"
"Yes, General Winder, you may do that. And if he says, 'Go!' there won't one of you be happier than I."
"We know that, general.—Cleave, I am going to send you. You're far the likeliest. We want him to come and lead us to the completest victory. By God, we want Front Royal and Port Republic again!"
Cleave, turning, disappeared into the darkness. "See to your men, General Winder. Get them ready," said Hill. "I'm going a little way into the woods to see what I can see myself." He went, Lawton with him. Before many minutes had passed they were back. "Nearly walked into their lines! Strung across the Grapevine road. Massed thick between us and the Chickahominy. Scattered like acorns through the woods. Pretty miserable, I gather. Passed party hunting water. Speech bewrayeth the man, so didn't say anything. Heard the pickets talking. 'Twas Meagher and French came up. They're building great fires by the water. Looks as though they meant to cross. Nothing of General Jackson yet?"
"No, sir. Not yet."
"Well, I'm going into the house for a morsel of food. Send for me the moment you hear anything. I wish the artillery were up. Who's this? Colonel Fauquier Cary? In the darkness, couldn't tell. Yes, General Winder thinks so, too. We've sent to ask General Jackson. Come with me, Cary, to the house. Faugh! this stifling heat! And that was Sykes we were fighting against—George Sykes! Rememberhe was my roommate at the Point?"
The short path to McGehee's house was not trodden without difficulty. All the great plateau was cumbered with débris of the struggle. On the cut and furrowed ground one stumbled upon abandoned stores and arms. There were overturned wagons and ambulances with dead horses; there were ruined gun-carriages; there were wrecked litters, fallen tents, dead men and the wounded. Here, and on the plain below, the lanterns of the surgeons and their helpers moved like glowworms. They gathered the wounded, blue and grey. "Treat the whole field alike," had said Lee. Everywhere were troops seeking their commands, hoarsely calling, joining at last their comrades. Fires had been kindled. Dim, dim, in the southwestern sky beyond the yet rolling vapour, showed a gleaming where was Richmond. D. H. Hill and Fauquier Cary went indoors. An aide managed to find some biscuits, and there was water from the well. "I haven't touched food since daybreak," said the general.
"Nor I. Much as I like him, I am loath to let Fitz John Porter strike down the York River line to-night, if that's his road, or cross the Chickahominy if that's the road! We have a victory. Press it home and fix it there."
"I believe that you are right. Surely Jackson will see it so."
"Where is General Jackson?"
"God knows!—Thank you, Reid. Poor fare, Cary, but familiar. Come, Reid, get your share."
They ate the hard biscuits and drank the well-water. The air was still and sultry; through the windows they heard, afar off, the bugles—their own and those of the foe.
"High, over all the melancholy bugle grieves."
Moths came in to the candle. With his hand Cary warned them away. One lit on his sleeve. "I wonder what you think of it," he said, and put him out of window. There was a stir at the door. A sergeant appeared. "We're gathering up the wounded, general—and we found a Yankee officer under the trees just here—and he said you'd know him—but he's fainted dead away—" He moved aside. "Litters gave out long ago, so we're taking U. S. blankets—"
Four men, carrying by the corners a blanket with an unconscious man upon it, came into the room. The Confederate officers looked. "No, I don't know him. Why, wait—Yes, I do! It's Clitz—Clitz that was so young and red-cheeked and our pet at the Point!... Yes, and one day in Mexico his regiment filed past, going into a fight, and he looked so like a gallant boy that I prayed to God that Clitz might not be hurt!... Reid, have him put in a room here! See that Dr. Mott sees him at once.—O God, Cary, this fratricidal war! Fighting George Sykes all day, and now this boy—"
"Yes," said Cary. "Once to-day I was opposed to Fitz John Porter. He looked at me out of a cloud, and I looked at him out of one, and the battle roared between. I always liked him." He walked across the room, looked out of the window upon the battlefield, and came back. "But," he said grimly, "it is a war of invasion. What do you think is wrong with Jackson?"
The other looked at him with his fine, kindly eyes. "Why, let me tell you, Cary,—since it won't go any further,—I am as good a Presbyterian as he is, but I think he has prayed too much."
"I see!" said Cary. "Well, I would be willing to put up a petition of my own just now.—Delay! Delay! We have set opportunity against a wall and called out the firing party." He rose. "Thanks for the biscuits. I feel another man. I'll go now and look after my wounded. There are enough of them, poor souls!"
Another stir occurred at the door. The aide appeared. "They've taken some prisoners in the wood at the foot of the hill, sir. One of them says he's General Reynolds—"
"Reynolds! Good God, Reynolds! Bring him in—"
General Reynolds came in. "Reynolds!"—"Hill!"—"How are you, Reynolds?"—"Good Lord, it's Fauquier Cary!"
The aide put a chair. The prisoner sank into it and covered his face with his hands. Presently he let them drop. "Hill, we ought not to be enemies! Messmates and tent-mates for a year!... It's ghastly."
"I'll agree with you there, Reynolds. It's ghastlier than ghastly.—You aren't hurt?"
Outside, over the great hilltop upon which Richard Cleave was moving, the darkness might be felt. The air smelled strongly of burned powder, was yet thickened by smoke. Where fires had been kindled, the ruddy light went up like pillars to sustain a cloudy roof. There were treetops, burnished, high in air; then all the land fell to the swampy shores of the creek, and beyond to the vast and sombre battle plain, where the shells had rained. The masses of grey troops upon it, resting on their arms, could be divined by the red points of camp-fires. Lanterns, also, were wandering like marsh lights, up and down and to and fro. Here, on the plateau, it was the same. They danced like giant fireflies. He passed a blazing log about which were gathered a dozen men. Some wag of the mess had said something jocular; to a man they were laughing convulsively. Had they been blamed, they would perhaps have answered that it was better to laugh than to cry. Cleave passed them with no inclination to blame, and came to where, under the trees, the 65th was gathered. Here, too, there were fires; his men were dropped like acorns on the ground, making a little "coosh," frying a little bacon, attending to slight hurts, cognizant of the missing but not referring to them loudly, glad of victory, burying all loss, with a wide swing of courage making the best of it in the darkness. When they saw Cleave they suspended all other operations long enough to cheer him. He smiled, waved his hand, spoke a short word to Hairston Breckinridge, and hurried on. He passed the 2d Virginia, mourning its colonel—Colonel Allen—fallen in the front of the charge. He passed other bivouacs—men of Rodes's, of Garland's, of Trimble's. "Where is General Jackson?"—"Can't tell you, sir—" "Here is General Ewell."
"Old Dick" squatted by a camp-fire, was broiling a bit of bacon, head on one side, as he looked up with bright round eyes at Cleave, whom he liked. "That you, Richard Cleave? By God, sir, if I were as excellent a major-general as I am a cook!—Have a bit?—Well, we wolloped them! They fought like men, and we fought like men, and by God, I can't get the cannon out of my ears! General Jackson?—I thought he was in front with D. H. Hill. Going to do anything more to-night? It's pretty late, but I'm ready."
"Nothing—without General Jackson," said Cleave. "Thank you, general—if I might have a mouthful of coffee? I haven't the least idea when I have eaten."
Ewell handed him the tin cup. He drank hastily and went on. Now it was by a field hospital, ghastly sights and ghastly sounds, pine boughs set for torches. He shut his eyes in a moment's faintness. It looked a demoniac place, a smoke-wreathed platform in some Inferno circle. He met a staff officer coming up from the plain. "General Lee has ridden to the right. He is watching for McClellan's next move. There's a rumour that everything's in motion toward the James. If it's true, there's a chase before us to-morrow, eh?—A. P. Hill suffered dreadfully. 'Prince John' kept McClellan beautifully amused.—General Jackson? On the slope of the hill by the breastworks."
A red light proclaimed the place as Cleave approached it. It seemed a solitary flame, night around it and a sweep of scarped earth. Cleave, coming into the glow, found only the old negro Jim, squat beside it like a gnome, his eyes upon the jewelled hollows, his lips working. Jim rose. "De gineral, sah? De gineral done sont de staff away ter res'. Fo' de Lawd, de gineral bettah follah dat 'zample! Yaas, sah,—ober dar in de big woods."
Cleave descended the embankment and entered a heavy wood. A voice spoke—Jackson's—very curtly. "Who is it, and what is your business?"
"It is the colonel of the 65th Virginia, sir. General Winder sends me, with the approval of General D. H. Hill, from the advance by the McGehee house."
A part of the shadow detached itself and came forward as Jackson. It stalked past Cleave out of the belt of trees and over the bare red earth to the fire. The other man followed, and in the glare faced the general again. The leaping flame showed Jackson's bronzed face, with the brows drawn down, the eyes looking inward, and the lips closed as though no force could part them. Cleave knew the look, and inwardly set his own lips. At last the other spoke. "Well, sir?"
"The enemy is cramped between us and the Chickahominy, sir. Our pickets are almost in touch of theirs. If we are scattered and disorganized, they are more so,—confused—distressed. We are the victors, and the troops still feel the glow of victory."
"Well?"
"There might be a completer victory. We need only you to lead us, sir."
"You are mistaken. The men are wearied. They worked very hard in the Valley. They need not do it all."
"They are not so wearied, sir. There is comment, I think, on what the Army of the Valley has not done in the last two days. We have our chance to refute it all to-night."
"General Lee is the commander-in-chief. General Lee will give orders."
"General Lee has said to himself: 'He did so wonderfully in the Valley, I do not doubt he will do as wonderfully here. I leave him free. He'll strike when it is time.'—It is time now, sir."
"Sir, you are forgetting yourself."
"Sir, I wish to rouse you."
Jackson walked past the fire to a fallen tree, sat himself down and looked across to the other man. The low flame more deeply bronzed his face. His eyes looked preternaturally sunken. He sat, characteristically rigid, a figure in grey stone. There was about him a momentary air of an Indian, he looked so ruthless. If it was not that, thought Cleave, then it was that he looked fanatic. Whichever it might be, he perceived that he himself stood in arctic air. He had been liked, he knew; now he saw the mist of disfavour rise. Jackson's voice came gratingly. "Who sent you?"
"General Winder and General D. H. Hill."
"You will tell General Hill that I shall make no further attack to-night. I have other important duties to perform."
"I know what I risk," said Cleave, "and I do not risk it lightly. Have you thought of how you fell on them at Front Royal and at Winchester? Here, too, they are confused, retreating—a greater force to strike, a greater result to win, a greater service to do for the country, a greater name to make for yourself. To-morrow morning all the world may say, 'So struck Napoleon—'"
"Napoleon's confidence in his star was pagan. Only God rules."
"And the man who accepts opportunity—is he not His servant? May we not, sir, may we not make the attack?"
"No, sir; not to-night. We have marred too many Sundays—"
"It is not Sunday!"
Jackson looked across with an iron countenance. "So little the fighter knows! See, what war does! But I will keep, in part atleast, the Sabbath. You may go, sir."
"General Jackson, this is Friday evening."
"Colonel Cleave, did you hear my order? Go, sir!—and think yourself fortunate that you do not go under arrest."
"Sir—Sir—"
Jackson rose. "One other word, and I take your sword. It occurs to me that I have indulged you in a freedom that—Go!"
Cleave turned with sharp precision and obeyed. Three paces took him out of the firelight into the overhanging shadow. He made a gesture of sorrow and anger. "Who says that magic's dead? Now, how long will that potion hold him?" He stumbled in the loose, bare earth, swamp and creek below him. He looked down into that trough of death. "I gained nothing, and I have done for myself! If I know him—Ugh!"
He shook himself, went on through the sultry, smoky night, alternate lantern-slides of glare and darkness, to the eastern face of the plateau. Here he found Winder, reported, and with him encountered D. H. Hill coming with Fauquier Cary from the McGehee house. "What's that?" said Hill. "He won't pursue to-night? Very well, that settles it! Maybe they'll be there in the morning, maybe not. Look here, Winder! Reynolds's taken—you remember Reynolds?"
Cary and Cleave had a moment apart. "All well, Fauquier? The general?—Edward?"
"I think so. I saw Warwick for a moment. A minie had hurt his hand—not serious, he said. Edward I have not seen."
"I had a glimpse of him this morning.—This morning!"
"Yes—long ago, is it not? You'll get your brigade after this."
The other looked at him oddly. "Will I? I strongly doubt it. Well, it seems not a large thing to-night."
Beyond the main battlefield where A. P. Hill's and Longstreet's shattered brigades lay on their arms, beyond the small farmhouse where Lee waked and watched, beyond the Chickahominy and its swamps, beyond forest and farm land, lay Richmond under the stars. Eastwardly, within and without its girdling earthworks, that brilliant and histrionic general, John Bankhead Magruder, El Capitan Colorado, with a lisping tongue, a blade like Bayard's, and a talent for drama and strategy, kept General McClellan under the impression, confirmed by the whole Pinkerton force, that "at least eighty thousand men" had remained to guard Richmond, when Lee with "at least eighty thousand men" had crossed the Chickahominy. Richmond knew better, but Richmond was stoically calm as to the possibility of a storming. What it had been hard to be calm over was the sound, this Friday, of the guns beyond the Chickahominy. Mechanicsville, yesterday, was bad enough, but this was frightful. Heavy, continuous, it took away the breath and held the heart in an iron grip. All the loved ones there—all the loved ones there!—and heavier and heavier toward night grew the fearful sound.... Then began the coming of the wounded. In the long dusk of the summer evening, the cannonading ceased. A little after nine arrived couriers, announcing the victory. The church bells of Richmond, not yet melted into cannon, began to ring. "It was a victory—it was a victory," said the people to one another.... But the wounded continued to come in, ambulance, cart, and wagon rolling like tumbrels over the stones. To many a mother was brought tidings of the death of her son, and many a wife must say, "I am widowed," and many children cried that night for their father. The heat was frightful. The city tossed and moaned, without sleep, or nursed, or watched, or wandered fevered through the streets. The noise of the James around its rocky islands was like the groaning of the distant battlefield. The odour of the June flowers made the city like a chamber of death. All windows were open wide to the air, most houses lighted. Sometimes from these there came forth a sharp cry; sometimes womens' forms, restless in the night, searching again the hospitals. "He might be here."—"He might be at this one." Sometimes, before such or such a house, cart or carriage or wagon stopped. "Oh, God! wounded or—?" All night long fared the processions from the field of Gaines's Mill to the hospitals. Toward dawn it began to be "No room. Try Robinson's—try the De Sales."—"Impossible here! We can hardly step between the rows. The beds gave out long ago. Take him to Miss Sally Tompkins."—"No room. Oh, the pity of it! Take him to the St. Charles or into the first private house. They are all thrown open."
Judith, kept at the Stonewall all the night before, had gone home, bathed, drawn the shutters of her small room, lain down and resolutely closed her eyes. She must sleep, she knew,—must gather strength for the afternoon and night. The house was quiet. Last night the eldest son had been brought in wounded. The mother, her cousin, had him in her chamber; she and his mammy and the old family doctor. His sister, a young wife, was possessed by the idea that her husband might be in one of the hospitals, delirious, unable to tell where he belonged, calling upon her, and no one understanding. She was gone, in the feverish heat, upon her search. There came no sounds from below. After the thunder which had been in the ear, after the sounds of the hospital, all the world seemed as silent as a cavern or as the depth of the sea. Judith closed her eyes, determinedly stilled her heart, drew regular breath, put herself out of Richmond back in a certain cool and green forest recess which she loved, and there wooed sleep. It came at last, with a not unhappy dream. She thought she was walking on the hills back of Greenwood with her Aunt Lucy. The two said they were tired and would rest, and entered the graveyard and sat down upon the bank of ivy beside Ludwell Cary's grave. That was all natural enough; a thing they had done many times. They were taught at Greenwood that there was nothing mournful there. Shells lay about them, beneath the earth, but the beneficent activities had escaped, and were active still, beneficent still.... The word "shells" in the dream turned the page. She was upon a great sea beach and quite alone. She sat and looked at the waves coming rolling in, and presently one laid Richard at her feet. She bandaged the cut upon his forehead, and called him by his name, and he looked at her and smiled. "Out of the ocean, into the ocean," he said. "All of us. A going forth and a returning." She felt herself, in the dream, in his arms, and found it sweet. The waves were beneath them; they lay now on the crests, now in the hollows, and there seemed no port. This endured a long while, until she thought she heard the sea-fairies singing. Then there came a booming sound, and she thought, "This is the port, or perhaps it is an island that we are passing." She asked Richard which it was, but he did not answer, and she turned upon the wave and found that he was not there.... It was seaweed about her arms. The booming grew louder, rattled the window-glass. She opened her eyes, pushed her dark loosened hair from her arms and bosom, and sat up. "The cannon again!"
She looked at her watch. It was two o'clock. Rising, she put on her dark, thin muslin, and took her shady hat. The room seemed to throb to the booming guns. All the birds had flown from the tulip tree outside. She went downstairs and tapped at her cousin's door."How is he?"—"Conscious now, thank God, my dear! The doctor says he will be spared. How the house shakes! And Walter and Ronald out there. You are going back?"
"Yes. Do not look for me to-night. There will be so much to be done—"
"Yes, yes, my dear. Louder and louder! And Ronald is so reckless! You must have something to eat."
"Shirley will give me a glass of milk. Tell Rob to get well. Good-bye."
She kissed her cousin, drank her glass of milk in the dining-room where the silver was jingling on the sideboard, and went out into the hot, sound-filled air. At three she was at her post in the hospital.
The intermittent thunder, heavier than any on the continent before, was stilled at last,—at nine, as had happened the night before. The mazed city shook the mist from before its eyes, and settled to the hot night's work, with the wagons, bringing the dead and the wounded, dull on the cobblestones to the ear, but loud, loud to the heart. All that night the Stonewall Hospital was a grisly place. By the next morning every hospital in town was choked with the wounded, and few houses but had their quota. The surgeons looked like wraiths, the nursing women had dark rings beneath their eyes, set burningly in pale faces, the negroes who valiantly helped had a greyish look. More emotional than the whites, they burst now and then into a half wail, half chant. So heavy was the burden, so inadequate the small, beleaguered city's provision for the weight of helpless anguish, that at first there was a moment of paralysis. As easy to strive with the tornado as with this wind of pain and death! Then the people rallied and somewhat outstripped a people's best.
From the troops immediately about the city came the funeral escorts. All day the Dead March from "Saul" wailed through the streets, out to Hollywood. The churches stayed open; old and young, every man in the city, white or black, did his part, and so did all the women. The need was so great that the very young girls, heretofore spared, found place now in hospital or house, beside the beds, the pallets, the mere blanket, or no blanket, on the floor. They could keep away the tormenting flies, drawn by the heat, the glare, the blood and effluvia, could give the parched lips water, could watch by the less terrifically hurt. All the city laboured; puttingaside the personal anguish, the private loss known, suspected, or but fearfully dreaded. Glad of the victory but with only calamity beneath its eyes, the city wrestled with crowding pain, death, and grief.
Margaret Cleave was at one of the great hospitals. An hour later came, too, Miriam and Christianna. "Yes, you can help. Miriam, you are used to it. Hold this bandage so, until the doctor comes. If it grows blood-soaked—like this one—call some one at once. Christianna, you are strong.—Mrs. Preston, let her have the bucket of water. Go up and down, between the rows, and give water to those who want it. If they cannot lift themselves, help them—so!"
Christianna took the wooden bucket and the tin dipper. For all she looked like a wild rose she was strong, and she had a certain mountain skill and light certainty of movement. She went down the long room, giving water to all who moaned for it. They lay very thick, the wounded, side by side in the heat, the glare of the room, where all the light possible must be had. Some lay outstretched and rigid, some much contorted. Some were delirious, others writhed and groaned, some were most pathetically silent and patient. Nearly all were thirsty; clutched the dipper with burning fingers, drank, with their hollow eyes now on the girl who held it, now on mere space. Some could not help themselves. She knelt beside these, raised the head with one hand, put water to the lips with the other. She gained her mountain steadiness and did well, crooning directions in her calm, drawling voice. This bucket emptied, she found where to fill it again, and pursued her task, stepping lightly between the huddled, painful rows, among the hurrying forms of nurses and surgeons and coloured helpers.
At the very end of the long lane, she came upon a blanket spread on the blood-stained floor. On it lay a man, blond and straight, closed eyes with a line between them, hand across his breast touching his shirt where it was stiff with dried blood. "Air you thirsty?" began Christianna, then set the bucket suddenly down.
Allan opened his eyes. "Very thirsty.... I reckon I am light-headed. I'm not on Thunder Run, am I?"
The frightful day wore on to late afternoon. No guns shook the air in these hours. Richmond understood that, out beyond the entrenchments, there was a pause in the storm. McClellan was leaving his own wonderful earthworks. But would he retreat down the Peninsula by the way he had come, or would he strike across and down the James to his gunboats by Westover? The city gathered that General Lee was waiting to find out. In the meantime the day that was set to the Dead March in "Saul" passed somehow, in the June heat and the odour of flowers and blood.
Toward five o'clock Judith left the Stonewall Hospital. She had not quitted it for twenty-four hours, and she came now into the light and air like a form emerging from Hades, very palely smiling, with the grey of the underworld, its breath and its terror still about her. There was hardly yet a consciousness of fatigue. Twelve hours before she had thought, "If I do not rest a little, I shall fall." But she had not been able to rest, and the feeling had died. For the last twelve she had moved like an automaton, swift, sure, without a thought of herself. It was as though her will stood somewhere far above and swayed her body like a wand. Even now she was going home, because the will said she must; must rest two hours, and come back fresher for the night.
As she came out into the golden light, Cleave left the group of young and old about the door and met her. In the plane along which life now moved, nothing was unnatural; certainly Richmond did not find it so, that a lover and his beloved should thus encounter in the street, a moment between battles. Her dark eyes and his grey ones met. To find him there seemed as natural as it had been in her dream; the street was no more to her than the lonely beach. They crossed it, went up toward the Capitol Square, and, entering, found a green dip of earth with a bench beneath a linden tree. Behind them rose the terraced slope to the pillared Capitol; as always, in this square children's voices were heard with their answering nurses, and the squirrels ran along the grass or upon the boughs above. But the voices were somewhat distant and the squirrels did not disturb; it was a leafy, quiet nook. The few men or women who passed, pale, distrait, hurrying from one quarter of the city to another, heeded as little as they were heeded. Lovers' meetings—lovers' partings—soldiers—women who loved them—faces pale and grave, yet raised, hands in hands, low voices in leafy places—man and woman together in the golden light, in the breathing space before the cannon should begin again—Richmond was growing used to that. All life was now in public. For the most part a clear altruism swayed the place and time, and in the glow smallness of comment or of thought was drowned. Certainly, it mattered not to Cleave and Judith that it was the Capitol Square, and that people went up and down.
"I have but the shortest while," he said. "I came this morning with Allen's body—the colonel of the 2d. I ride back directly. I hope that we will move to-night."
"Following McClellan?"
"To get across his path, if possible."
"There will be another battle?"
"Yes. More than one, perhaps."
"I have believed that you were safe. I do not see that I could have lived else."
"Many have fallen; many are hurt. I found Allan Gold in the hospital. He will not die, however.... Judith, how often do I see your face beside the flag!"
"When I was asleep I dreamed of you. We were drifting together, far out at sea—your arm here—" She lifted his hand, drew his arm about her, rested her head on his breast. "I love you—I love you—I love you."
They stayed in the leafy place and the red-gold light for half an hour, speaking little, sitting sometimes with closed eyes, but hand in hand. It was much as though they were drifting together at sea, understanding perfectly, but weary from battling, and with great issues towering to the inner vision.They would have been less nobly minded had their own passion inexorably claimed them. All about them were suffering and death and the peril of their cause. For one half-hour they drew happiness from the darkly gigantic background, but it was a quiet and lofty form, though sweet, sweet! with whom they companioned. When the time was passed the two rose, and Cleave held her in his arms. "Love—Love—"
When he was gone she waited awhile beneath the trees, then slowly crossed the Capitol Square and moved toward the small room behind the tulip tree. The streets were flooded with a sunset glow. Into Franklin from Main came marching feet, then, dull, dull! the muffled drums. Soldiers and furled colours and the coffin, atop it the dead man's cap and gauntlets and sword; behind, pacing slowly, his war horse, stirrups crossed over saddle. Soldiers, soldiers, and the drums beating like breaking hearts. She moved back to a doorstep and let the Dead March from "Saul" go by.
The troops, moving at dawn to the Chickahominy, over a road and through woods which testified in many ways of the blue retreat, found the Grapevine Bridge a wreck, the sleepers hacked apart, framework and middle structure cast into the water. Fitz John Porter and the 5th Army Corps were across, somewhere between the river and Savage Station, leaving only, in the thick wood above the stream, a party of sharpshooters and a battery. When the grey pioneers advanced to their work, these opened fire. The bridge must be rebuilt, and the grey worked on, but with delays and difficulties. D. H. Hill, leading Jackson's advance, brought up two batteries and shelled the opposite side. The blue guns and riflemen moved to another position and continued, at short intervals, to fire on the pioneers. It was Sunday the twenty-ninth; fearfully hot by the McGehee house, and on Turkey Hill, and in the dense midsummer woods, and in the mosquito-breeding bogs and swamps through which meandered the Chickahominy. The river spread out as many arms as Briareus; short, stubby creeks, slow waters prone to overflow and creep, between high knotted roots of live-oak and cypress, into thickets of bog myrtle. The soil hereabouts was black and wet, further back light and sandy. The Valley troops drew the most uncomplimentary comparisons. To a man they preferred mountains, firm rolling champaign, clean rivers with rocky bottoms, sound roads, and a different vegetation. They were not in a good humour, anyhow.
Ewell was at Dispatch Station, seven miles below, guarding Bottom's Bridge and tearing up the York River Railroad. Stuart was before him, sweeping down on the White House, burning McClellan's stations and stores, making that line of retreat difficult enough for an encumbered army. But McClellan had definitely abandoned any idea of return upon Yorktown. The head of his column was set for the James, for Harrison's Landing and the gunboats. There were twenty-five difficult miles to go. He had something like a hundred thousand men. He had five thousand wagons, heavy artillery trains, enormous stores, a rabble of camp followers, a vast, melancholy freight of sick and wounded. He left his camps and burned his depots, and plunged into the heavy, still, and torrid forest. This Sunday morning, the twenty-ninth, the entrenchments before Richmond, skilful, elaborate pieces of engineering, were found by Magruder's and Huger's scouts deserted by all but the dead and a few score of sick and wounded, too far gone to be moved. Later, columns of smoke, rising from various quarters of the forest, betrayed other burning camps or depots. This was followed by tidings which served to make his destination certain. He was striking down toward White Oak Swamp. There the defeated right, coming from the Chickahominy, would join him, and the entire great force move toward the James. Lee issued his orders. Magruder with Hugerpursued by the Williamsburg road. A. P. Hill and Longstreet, leaving the battlefield of the twenty-seventh, crossed the Chickahominy by the New Bridge, passed behind Magruder, and took the Darbytown road. A courier, dispatched to Ewell, ordered him to rejoin Jackson. The latter was directed to cross the Chickahominy with all his force by the Grapevine Bridge, and to pursue with eagerness. He had the directest, shortest road; immediately before him the corps which had been defeated at Gaines's Mill. With D. H. Hill, with Whiting and Lawton, he had now fourteen brigades—say twenty thousand men.
The hours passed in languid sunshine on the north bank of the Chickahominy. The troops were under arms, but the bridge was not finished. The smoke and sound of the rival batteries, the crack of the hidden rifles on the southern side, concerned only those immediately at issue and the doggedly working pioneers. Mere casual cannonading, amusement of sharpshooters, no longer possessed the slightest tang of novelty. Where the operation was petty, and a man in no extreme personal danger, he could not be expected to be much interested. The troops yawned; some of the men slept; others fretted. "Why can't we swim the damned old trough? They'll get away! Thank the Lord, I wasn't born in Tidewater Virginia! Oh, I'd like to see the Shenandoah!"
The 65th Virginia occupied a rise of sandy ground covered with hazel bushes. Company A had the brink of it, looking out toward the enormously tall trees towering erect from the river's margin of swamp. The hazel bushes gave little shade and kept off the air, the blue above was intense, the buzzards sailing. Muskets were stacked, the men sprawling at ease. A private, who at home was a Sunday School superintendent, read his Bible; another, a lawyer, tickled a hop toad with a spear of grass; another, a blacksmith, rebound the injured ankle of a schoolboy. Some slept, snoring in the scanty shade; some compared diaries or related, scrappily enough, battle experiences. "Yes, and Robinson was scouting, and he was close to Garland's line, and, gosh! he said it was short enough! And Garland rode along it, and he said, said he, 'Boys, you are not many, but you are a noble few.'" Some listened to the booming of the sparring batteries; two or three who had lost close friends or kinsmen moped aside. The frank sympathy of all for these made itselfapparent. The shadiest hazel bushes unobtrusively came into their possession; there was an evident intention of seeing that they got the best fare when dinner was called; a collection of tobacco had been taken and quietly pushed their way. Some examined knapsack and haversacks, good oilcloths, belts, rolled blankets, canteens, cartridge-boxes and cartridges, picked up upon the road. Others seriously did incline to search for certain intruders along the seams of shirt and trousers; others merely lay on their backs and looked up into Heaven. Billy Maydew was one of these, and Steve Dagg overturned the contents of a knapsack.
It was well filled, but with things Steve did not want. "O Gawd! picters and pincushions and Testaments with United States flags in them—I never did have any luck, anyhow!—in this here war nor on Thunder Run neither!"
Dave Maydew rolled over. "Steve says Thunder Run didn't like him—Gosh! what's a-going to happen ef Steve takes to telling the truth?"
Sergeant Coffin turned from contemplation of a bursting shell above the Grapevine crossing. "If anybody finds any letter-paper and doesn't want it—"
A chorus arose. "Sorry we haven't got any!"—"I have got some—lovely! But I've got a girl, too."—"Sorry, sergeant, but it isn't pale blue, scented with forget-me-nots."—"Justthinkher a letter—think it out loud! Wait, I'll show you how.Darling Chloe—Don't get angry! He's most gotten over getting angry and it becomes him beautifully—Darling Chloe—What'reyoucoming into it for, Billy Maydew? 'Don't tease him!'—My son, he loves to be teased. All lovers love to be teased.Darling Chloe. It is Sunday morning. The swans are warbling your name and so are half a dozen pesky Yankee Parrotts. The gentle zephyrs speak of thee, and so does the hot simoom that blows from Chickahominy, bringing an inordinate number of mosquitoes. I behold thy sinuous grace in the curls of smoke from Reilly's battery, and also in the slide and swoop of black buzzards over a multitude of dead horses in the woods. Darling Chloe, we are stranded on an ant heap which down here they call a hill, and why in hell we don't swim the river is more than at the moment I can tell you. It's rumoured that Old Jack's attending church in the neighbourhood, but we are left outside to praise God from whom allblessings flow. Darling Chloe, this company is not so unpopular with me as once it was. War is teaching it a damned lot, good temper and pretty ways and what not—It is teaching it! Who says it is not?—Darling Chloe, if you could see how long and lean and brown we are and how ragged we are and how lousy—Of course, of course, sergeant, you're not! Only the high private in the rear rank is, and even he says he's not—Darling Chloe, if I could rise like one of those damned crows down there and sail over these damned flats and drop at your feet in God's country beyond the mountains, you wouldn't walk to church to-day with me. You'd turn up your pretty little nose, and accept the arm of some damned bombproof—Look out! What's the matter here? 'The last straw! shan't slander her!'—I'm not slandering her. I don't believe either she'd do it. Needn't all of you look so glum! I'll take it back. We know, God bless every last woman of them, that they don't do it! They haven't got any more use for a bombproof than we have!—I can't retract handsomer than that!—Darling Chloe, the Company's grown amiable, but it don't think much so far of its part in this campaign. Heretofore in tableaux and amateur theatricals it has had a star rôle, and in this damned Richmond play it's nothing but a walking shadow! Darling Chloe, we want somebody to whoop things up. We demand the centre of the stage—"
It was so hot on the little sandy hill that there was much straggling down through the woods to some one of the mesh of water-courses. The men nearest Steve were all turned toward the discourser to Chloe, who sat on a lift of sand, cross-legged like an Eastern scribe. Mathew Coffin, near him, looked half pleased, half sulky at the teasing. Since Port Republic he was a better-liked non-commissioned officer. Billy Maydew, again flat on his back, stared at the blue sky. Steve stole a tin cup and slipped quietly off through the hazel bushes.
He found a muddy runlet straying off from the river and quenched his thirst, then, turning, surveyed through the trees the hump of earth he had left and the company upon it. Beyond it were other companies, the regiment, the brigade. Out there it was hot and glaring, in here there was black, cool, miry loam, shade and water. Steve was a Sybarite born, and he lingered here. He didn't meanto straggle, for he was afraid of this country and afraid now of his colonel; he merely lingered and roamed about a little, beneath the immensely tall trees and in the thick undergrowth. In doing this he presently came, over quaking soil and between the knees of cypresses, flush with the Chickahominy itself. He sat down, took his own knees in his arms and looked at it. It was not so wide, but it looked stiller than the sky, and bottomless. The banks were so low that the least rain lifted it over. It strayed now, here and there, between tree roots. There was no such word as "sinister" in Steve's vocabulary. He only said, "Gawd! I wouldn't live here for choice!" The country across the stream engaged his attention. Seen from this bank it appeared all forest clad, but where his own existence from moment to moment was in question Steve could read the signboards as well as another. Certain distant, southward moving, yellowish streaks he pronounced dust clouds. There were roads beneath, and moving troops and wagon trains. He counted four columns of smoke of varying thickness. The heavier meant a cluster of buildings, holding stores probably, the thinner some farmhouse or barn or mill. From other signs he divined that there were clearings over there, and that the blue troops were burning hayricks and fences as well as buildings. Sound, too—it seemed deathly still here on the brim of this dead water, and yet there was sound—the batteries, of course, down the stream where they built the bridge, but also a dull, low, dreary murmur from across,—from the thick forest and the lost roads, and the swamps through which guns were dragged; from the clearings, the corn and wheat fields, the burning depots and encampments and houses of the people—the sound of a hostile army rising from the country where two months before it had settled. All was blended; there came simply a whirring murmur out of the forest beyond the Chickahominy.
Steve rose, yawned, and began again to prowl. Every rood of this region had been in possession of that humming army over there. All manner of desirable articles were being picked up. Orders were strict. Weapons, even injured weapons, ammunition, even half-spoiled ammunition, gun-barrels, ramrods, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, belts—all these must be turned in to the field ordnance officer. The South gleaned her battlefields of every ounce of lead or iron, every weapon or part of a weapon, every manufactured article of war. This done, the men might appropriate or themselves distribute apparel, food, or other matters. Steve, wandering now, his eyes on earth, saw nothing. The black wet soil, the gnarled roots, the gloomy meanders of the stream, looked terribly lonely. "Gawd! even the water-rats don't come here!" thought Steve, and on his way back to the hill entered a thicket of low bushes with shiny green leaves. Here he all but stumbled over a dead soldier in a blue uniform. He lay on his face, arms out, hands clutching at some reed-like grass. His rifle was beside him, haversack—all undisturbed. "Picket," said Steve. "O Gawd, ain't war glorious?"
Not at all without imagination, he had no fondness for touching dead men, but there were several things about this one that he wanted. He saw that the shoes wouldn't fit, and so he left them alone. His own rifle was back there, stacked with the others on the hot hillside, and he had no intention of bothering with this one. If the ordnance officer wanted it, let him come himself and get it! He exchanged cartridge-boxes, and took the other's rolled oilcloth, and then he looked into the haversack.
Rising to his feet, he glanced about him with quick, furtive, squirrel-like motions of his head. Cool shade, stillness, a creepy loneliness. Taking the haversack, he left the thicket and went back to the brink of Chickahominy. Here he sat down between the cypress knees and drew out of the haversack the prize of prizes. It fixed a grin upon his lean, narrow face, the sight and smell of it, the black, squat bottle. He held it up to the light; it was three quarters full. The cork came out easily; he put it to his lips and drank. "Gawd! it ain't so damned lonely, after all!"
The sun climbed to the meridian. The pioneers wrought as best they might on the Grapevine Bridge. The blue battery and the blue sharpshooters persisted in their hindering, and the grey battery continued to interfere with the blue. In the woods and over the low hills back of the Chickahominy the grey brigades of Stonewall Jackson rested, impatiently wondering, staring at the river, staring at the smoke of conflagrations on the other side and the dust streaks moving southward. Down on the swampy bank, squat between the cypress knees, Steve drank again, and then again,—in fact, emptied the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled him with a tremendous courage, and conferred upon him great fluency of thought. He waxedeloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the war. "Gawd! if they'd listen ter me I'd te—tell them how!—I'd bui—build a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke I'd bui—build another. Yah! They don't 'pre—'preciate a man when they see him. Gawd! they're damn slow, and ain't a man over here got anything to drink! It's all over there." He wept a little. "O Gawd, make them hurry up, so's I kin git across." He put the bottle to his lips and jerked his head far back, but there was not a drop left to trickle forth. He flung it savagely far out into the water. "Ef I thought there was another like you over there—" His courage continued to mount as he went further from himself. He stood up and felt a giant; stretched out his arm and admired the muscle, kicked a clod of black earth into the stream and rejoiced in the swing of his leg. Then he smiled, a satyr-like grin wrinkling the cheek to the ear; then he took off his grey jacket, letting it drop upon the cypress roots; then he waded into the Chickahominy and began to swim to the further shore. The stream was deep but not swift; he was lank and lean but strong, and there was on the other side a pied piper piping of bestial sweetnesses. Several times arms and legs refused to coöperate and there was some likelihood of a death by drowning, but each time instinct asserted herself, righted matters, and on he went. She pulled him out at last, on the southern bank, and he lay gasping among the tree roots, somewhat sobered by the drenching, but still on the whole a courageous giant. He triumphed. "Yah! I got across! Goo'—goo-'bye, ye darned fools squattin' on the hillside!"
He left the Chickahominy and moved through the woods. He went quite at random and with a peculiar gait, his eyes on the ground, looking for another haversack. But just hereabouts there showed nothing of the kind; it was a solemn wood of pines and cedars, not overtrampled as yet by war. Steve shivered, found a small opening where the sun streamed in, planted himself in the middle of the warmth, and presently toppled over on the pine needles and went to sleep. He slept an hour or more, when he was waked by a party of officers riding through the wood. They stopped. Steve sat up and blinked. The foremost, a florid, side-whiskered, magnificently soldierly personage, wearing a very fine grey uniform and the stars of a major-general, addressed him. "What are youdoing here, thir? Thraggling?—Anther me!"
Steve saluted. "I ain't the straggling kind, sir. Any man that says I straggle is a liar—exceptin' the colonel, and he's mistaken. I'm one of Stonewall's men."