The Long Roll Part 43

The a.s.sistant placed a basin and cloths. The surgeon gave a jerk of his head. "You come on this side, Mrs. Cleave."

"No chloroform?"

"No chloroform. Contraband of war. d.a.m.ned chivalric contest."

Late in the afternoon, as she was crossing the hall upon some other of the long day's tasks she heard a group of soldiers talking. There were infantry officers from the regiments left in town, and a dusty cavalryman or two--riders from the front with dispatches or orders. One with an old cut gla.s.s goblet of water in his hand talked and drank, talked and drank.

"The aide came to George H. Steuart and said, 'General Jackson orders you to pursue vigorously. He says lose no time. He says kill and capture; let as few as possible get to the Potomac. Do your best.'" He filled his gla.s.s again from the pitcher standing by. "Steuart answers that he's of General Ewell's Division. Must take his orders from General Ewell."

"West Point notions! Good Lord!"

"Says the aide, 'General Jackson commands General Ewell, and so may command you. His orders are that you shall pursue vigorously'--Says Steuart, 'I will send a courier to find General Ewell. If his orders are corroboratory I will at once press forward--'"

"Good G.o.d! did he think Banks would wait?"

"Old d.i.c.k was in front; he wasn't behind. Took the aide two hours to find him, sitting on Rifle, swearing because he didn't see the cavalry!

Well, he made the air around him blue, and sent back highly 'corroboratory' orders. Steuart promptly 'pressed forward vigorously,'

but Lord! Banks was halfway to the Potomac, his troops streaming by every cow path, Stonewall and the infantry advance behind him--but Little Sorrel couldn't do it alone." He put down the gla.s.s. "Steuart'll catch it when Old Jack reports. We might have penned and killed the snake, and now it's gotten away!"

"Never mind! It's badly hurt and it's quitting Virginia at a high rate of speed. It's left a good bit of its skin behind, too. Hawks says he's d.a.m.ned if the army shan't have square meals for a week, and Crutchfield's smiling over the guns--"

"Falligant says the men are nigh dead, officers nodding in their saddles, giving orders in their sleep. Falligant says--"

Margaret touched one of the group upon the arm. He swung round in the hall that was darkening toward sunset and swept off his hat. "Do you think, sir, that there will be fighting to-night?"

"I think not, madam. There may be skirmishes of course--our men may cut off parties of the enemy. But there will be no general battle. It is agreed that General Banks will get across the Potomac. The troops will bivouac this side of Martinsburg."

The wounded in the house slept or did not sleep. The young widow sat beside the dead officer. She would not be drawn away--said that she was quite comfortable, not unhappy, there was so much happiness to remember.

Hannah found a nook for the little girl and put her to bed. The officers went away. There were a thousand things to do, and, also, they must s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep, or the brain would reel. The surgeon, hollow-eyed, grey with fatigue, dropping for sleep, spoke at the open front door to the elderly lady of the house and to Margaret Cleave. "Lieutenant Waller will die, I am afraid, though always while there is life there is hope.

No, there is nothing--I have given Mrs. Cleave directions, and his boy is a good nurse. I'll come back myself about midnight. That Louisiana youngster is all right. You might get two men and move him from that room. No; the other won't lose the foot. He, too, might be moved, if you can manage it. I'll be back--"

"I wish you might sleep yourself, doctor."

"Shouldn't mind it. I don't expect you women do much sleeping either.

Got to do without like coffee for a while. Funny world, funny life, funny death, funny universe. Could give whoever made it a few points myself. Excuse me, ladies, I hardly know what I am saying. Yes, thank you, I see the step. I'll come back about midnight."

The old yards up and down the old street were much trampled, shrubbery broken, fences down, the street thick dust, and still strewn with accoutrements that had been thrown away, with here and there a broken wagon. Street and pavement, there was pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing--the life of the rear of an army, and the faring to and fro on many errands of the people of the relieved town. There were the hospitals and there were the wounded in private houses. There were the dead, and all the burials for the morrow--the negroes digging in the old graveyard, and the children gathering flowers. There were the living to be cared for, the many hungry to be fed. All the town was exalted, devoted, bent on service--a little city raised suddenly to a mountain platform, set in a strange, high light, fanned by one of the oldest winds, and doing well with a clear intensity.

Miriam came and stood beside her mother, leaning her head upon the other's breast. The two seemed like elder and younger sister, no more.

There was a white jasmine over the porch, in the yard the fireflies were beginning to sparkle through the dusk. "Dear child, are you very tired?"

"I am not tired at all. That Louisiana boy called me 'Zephine'--'Zephine!' 'Zephine, your eyes are darker, but your lips are not so red.' He said he kept all my letters over his heart--only he tore them up before the battle, tore them into little bits and gave them to the wind, so that if he fell into his hands 'l'ennemi' might not read them."

"The doctor says that he will do well."

"He is like Will. Oh, mother, I feel ten thousand years old! I feel as though I had always lived."

"I, too, dear. Always. I have always borne children and they have always gone forth to war. They say there will be no fighting to-night."

She put her daughter slightly from her and leaned forward, listening.

"That is Richard. His foot strikes that way upon the street."

In the night, in his mother's chamber Cleave waked from three hours of dreamless sleep. She stood beside him. "My poor, dead man, I hated to keep my word."

He smiled. "It would have been as hard to wake up at the end of a week!--Mother, I am so dirty!"

"The servants have brought you plenty of hot water, and we have done the best we could with your uniform. Here is fresh underwear, and a beautiful shirt. I went myself down to the officer in charge of captured stores. He was extremely good and let me have all I wished. Tullius is here. He came in an hour ago with Dundee. I will send him up. When you are dressed come into the hall. I will have something there for you to eat."

Richard drew her hand to his lips. "I wonder who first thought of so blessed an inst.i.tution as a mother? Only a mother could have thought of it, and so there you are again in the circle!"

When he was dressed he found in the wide upper hall without his door, spread upon a small leaf table, a meal frugal and delicate. A breeze came through the open window, and with it the scent of jasmine. The wind blew the candle flame until his mother, stepping lightly, brought a gla.s.s shade and set it over the silver stick. Small moths flew in and out, and like a distant ground swell came the noise of the fevered town.

The house itself was quiet after the turmoil of the day; large halls and stair in dimness, the ill or wounded quiet or at least not loudly complaining. Now and then a door softly opened or closed; a woman's figure or that of some coloured servant pa.s.sed from dimness to dimness.

They pa.s.sed and the whole was quiet again. Mother and son spoke low. "I will not wake Miriam until just time to say good-bye. She is overwrought, poor child! She had counted so on seeing Will."

"We will press on now, I think, to Harper's Ferry. But events may bring us this way again. The 2d is bivouacked by a little stream, and I saw him fast asleep. He is growing strong, hardy, bronzed. It is striking twelve. Tullius is saddling Dundee."

"There will be no fighting in the morning?"

"No. Not, perhaps, until we reach Harper's Ferry. Banks will get across to Williamsport to-night. For the present he is off the board. Saxton at Harper's Ferry has several thousand men, and he will be at once heavily reinforced from Washington. It is well for us and for Richmond that that city is so nervous."

"General Jackson is doing wonderful work, is he not, Richard?"

"Yes. It is strange to see how the heart of the army has turned to him.

'Old Jack' can do no wrong. But he is not satisfied with to-day's work."

"But if they are out of Virginia--"

"They should be in Virginia--prisoners of war. It was a cavalry failure.--Well, it cannot be helped."

"Will you cross at Harper's Ferry?"

"With all my heart I wish we might! Defensive war should always be waged in the enemy's territory. But I am certain that we are working with the explicit purpose of preventing McDowell's junction with McClellan and the complete investment of Richmond which would follow that junction. We are going to threaten Washington. The government there may be trusted, I think, to recall McDowell. Probably also they will bring upon our rear Fremont from the South Branch. That done, we must turn and meet them both."

"Oh, war! Over a year now it has lasted! There are so many in black, and the church bells have always a tolling sound. And then the flowers bloom, and we hear laughter as we knit."

"All colours are brighter and all sounds are deeper. If there is horror, there is also much that is not horror. And there is n.o.bility as well as baseness. And the mind adapts itself, and the ocean is deeper than we think. Somewhere, of course, lies the sh.o.r.e of Brotherhood, and beyond that the sh.o.r.e of Oneness. It is not unlikely, I think, that we may reinforce Johnston at Richmond."

"Then Miriam and I will make our way there also. How long will it last, Richard--the war?"

"It may last one year and it may last ten. The probability is perhaps five."

"Five years! All the country will be grey-haired."

"War is a forge, mother. Many things will be forged--more of iron perhaps than of gold."

"You have no doubt of the final victory?"

"If I ever have I put it from me. I do not doubt the armies nor the generals--and, G.o.d knows, I do not doubt the women at home! If I am not so sure in all ways of the government, at least no man doubts its integrity and its purpose. The President, if he is clear and narrow rather than clear and broad, if he sometimes plays the bigot, if he is a good field officer rather than the great man of affairs we need--yet he is earnest, disinterested, able, a patriot. And Congress does its best--is at least eloquent and fires the heart. Our crowding needs are great and our resources small; it does what it can. The departments work hard. Benjamin, Mallory, Randolph, Meminger--they are all good men. And the railroad men and the engineers and the chemists and the mechanics--all so wonderfully and pathetically ingenious, labouring day and night, working miracles without material, making bricks without straw. a.r.s.enals, foundries, powder-mills, workshop, manufactories--all in a night, out of the wheat fields! And the runners of blockades, and the river steamer men, the special agents, the clerks, the workers of all kind--a territory large as Europe and every man and woman in the field in one aspect or another! If patriotism can save and ability, fort.i.tude, endurance, we are saved. And yet I think of my old 'Plutarch's Lives,' and of all the causes that have been lost. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I see all our blocked ports--and the Mississippi, slipping from our hands. I do not believe that England will come to our help. There is a sentiment for us, undoubtedly, but like the island mists it stays at home."