The Long Roll Part 75

Judith rose and, with her hands on the window-sill, leaned out into the night. Her gaze went straight to the red light in the eastern sky. There was an effect as though the force, impalpable, real, which was herself, had gone too, flown from the window straight toward that horizon, leaving here but a fair ivory sh.e.l.l. It was but momentary; the chains held and she turned back to the shadowed room. "You have seen him?"

"Yes."

"How--"

"He has much of his mother in him, Judith. Eventually he will, I think, take it that way. But now it is his father that shows. He is very silent--grey and hard and silent."

"Where is he?"

"At present yet under guard. To-morrow it will all be over."

"He will be free, you mean?"

"Yes, he will be free."

She came and put her arm around her father's neck. "Father, you know what I want to do then? To do just as soon as I shall have seen him and made him realize that it is for my happiness. I want to marry him....

Ah, don't look at me so, saying nothing!" She withdrew herself a little, standing with her clasped hands against his breast. "You expected that, did you not? Why, what else.... Father, I am not afraid of you. You will let me do it."

He regarded her with a grave, compa.s.sionate face. "No. You need not fear me, Judith. It is hardly father and child with you and me. It is soul and soul, and I trust your soul with its own concerns. Moreover, if it is pain to consider what you would do, the pang would be greater to find you not capable.... Yes, I would let you do it. But I do not think that Richard will."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

CEDAR RUN

The Seven Days brought a sterner temper into this war. The two sides grew to know each other better; each saw how determined was the other, and either foe, to match the other, raised the bronze in himself to iron. The great army, still under McClellan, at Harrison's Landing, became the Army of the Potomac. The great army guarding Richmond under Lee, became the Army of Northern Virginia. President Lincoln called upon the Governors of the Northern States for three hundred thousand men, and offered bounties. President Davis called upon the Governors of the Southern States for conscripts, and obtained no great number, for the ma.s.s of the men had volunteered. The world at large looked on, now and henceforth, with an absorbed regard. The struggle promised to be Homeric, memorable. The South was a fortress beleaguered; seven hundred thousand square miles of territory lost and inland as the steppes of Tartary, for all her ports were blocked by Northern men-of-war. Little news from the fortress escaped; the world had a sense of gigantic grey figures moving here and there behind a great battle veil, of a push against the fortress, a push from all sides, with approved battering rams, scaling ladders, hooks, grapples, mines, of blue figures, all known and described in heroic terms by the Northern public prints, a push repelled by the voiceless, printless, dimly-discerned grey figures.

Not that the grey, too, were not described to the nations in the prints above. They were. The wonder was that the creatures could fight--even, it appeared, fight to effect. Around and over the wide-flung fortress the battle smoke rolled and eddied. Drums were distantly heard, now rallying, now m.u.f.fled. A red flag with a blue cross rose and fell and rose again; grey names emerged, floated, wraith-like, over the sea, not to be stopped by blue men-of-war, names and picturesque nicknames, loved of soldiers. It grew to be allowed that there must be courage in the fortress, and a gift of leaders.h.i.+p. All was seen confusedly, but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demonstrated to a nicety just how long the fortress might hold out, and just how it must be taken at last.

Schoolboys fought over again in the schoolyards the battles with the heathenish names. The Emperor of the French and the King of Prussia and the Queen of Spain and the Queen of England and the Czar and the Sultan and the Pope at Rome asked each morning for the war news, and so did gaunt cotton-spinners staring in mill towns at tall smokeless chimneys.

Early in June Halleck was appointed commander-in-chief of all the armies of the United States. What to do with McClellan, at present summering on the James twenty-five miles below Richmond, came upon the board.

McClellan claimed, quite rightly, that here and now, with his army on both sides of the James, he held the key position, and that with sufficient reinforcements he could force the evacuation of Richmond.

Only give him reinforcements with which to face Lee's "not less than two hundred thousand!" Recall the Army of the Potomac, and it might be some time before it again saw Richmond! Halleck deliberated. General Pope had come out of the west to take concentrated command of the old forces of Banks, Sigel, Fremont, and McDowell. He had an att.i.tude, had Pope, at the head of his forty thousand men behind the Rappahannock! The armies were too widely separated, McClellan's location notoriously unhealthy.

Impossible to furnish reinforcements to the tune asked for, Was.h.i.+ngton might, at any moment, be in peril. It was understood that Stonewall Jackson had left Richmond on the thirteenth, marching toward Gordonsville.

The James River might be somewhat unhealthy for strangers that summer, and Stonewall Jackson had marched toward Gordonsville. The desire at the moment most at the heart of General Robert Edward Lee was that General McClellan should be recalled. Therefore he guarded Richmond with something less than sixty thousand men, and he made rumours to spread of gunboats building, and he sent Major-General T. J. Jackson northward with twelve thousand men.

In this July month there was an effect of suspense. The fortress was taking muster, telling its strength, soldering its flag to the staff and the staff to the keep. The besiegers were gathering; the world was watching, expectant of the grimmer struggle. There came a roar and clang from the outer walls, from the Mississippi above Vicksburg, from the Georgian coast, from Murfreesboro in Tennessee, from Arkansas, from Morgan's raids in Kentucky. There was fire and sound enough, but the battles that were to tell were looked for on Virginia soil. Hot and still were the July days, hot and still was the air, and charged with a certain sentiment. Thunderbolts were forging; all concerned knew that, and very subtly life and death and the blue sky and the green leaves came freshlier across the senses. Jackson, arriving at Gordonsville the nineteenth of July, found Pope before him with forty-seven thousand men.

He asked for reinforcements and Lee, detaching yet another twelve thousand from the army at Richmond, sent him A. P. Hill and the Light Division. Hill arrived on the second of August, splendid fighter, in his hunting s.h.i.+rt, with his red beard! That evening in Jackson's quarters, some one showed him a captured copy of Pope's Orders, numbers 12 and 75.

He read, crumpled the papers and tossed them aside, then turned to Jackson sitting sucking a lemon. "Well, general, here's a new candidate for your attention!"

Jackson looked up. "Yes, sir. By G.o.d's blessing he shall have it." He sucked on, studying a map of the country between Slaughter Mountain and Mana.s.sas which Hotchkiss had made him. In a letter to his wife from Richmond he had spoken of "fever and debility" attending him during his stay in that section of the country. If it were so he had apparently left them in the rear when he came up here. He sat now tranquil as a stone wall, in sight of the mountains, sucking his lemon and studying his maps.

This was the second. On the sixth of August Pope began to cross the Rappahannock. On the afternoon of the seventh the grey army was in motion. All the eighth it was in column, the heat intense, the dust stifling, an entanglement of trains and a misunderstanding of orders on the part of Hill and Ewell resulting in a confused and r.e.t.a.r.ded march.

Night fell, hot and breathless. Twenty-three thousand grey soldiers, moving toward Orange Court House, made the dark road vocal with statements as to the reeking heat, the dust, the condition of their shoes and the impertinence of the cavalry. The latter was more irritating than were the flapping soles, the dust in the throat, and the sweat pouring into the eyes. The infantry swore, swerving again and again to one side of the narrow road to let small bodies of hors.e.m.e.n go by. It was dark, the road going through an interminable hot, close wood.

Officers and men were liberal in their vituperation. "Thank the Lord, it ain't my arm!"--"Here you fellows--d.a.m.n you! look where you are going!

Trampling innocent bystanders that way!--Why in h.e.l.l didn't you stay back where you belong?"--"Of course if you've positively got to get to the front and can't find any other road it's our place to give you this one!--Just wait a moment and we'll ask the colonel if we can't _lie down_. It'll be easier to ride over us that way.--Oh, go to h.e.l.l!"

The parties pa.s.sed, the ranks of the infantry straightened out again on the dark road, the column wound on through the hot, midnight wood. More hoof-beats--another party of cavalry to be let by! They pa.s.sed the infantry in the darkness, pus.h.i.+ng the broken line into the ditch and scrub. In the pitchy blackness an impatient command lost at this juncture its temper. The men swore, an officer called out to the hors.e.m.e.n a savage "Halt!" The party pressed on. The officer furious, caught a bridle rein. "Halt, d.a.m.n you! Stop them, men! Now you cavalry have got to learn a thing or two! One is, that the infantry is the important thing in war! It's the aristocracy, d.a.m.n you! The other is that we were on this road first anyhow! Now you just turn out into the woods yourself, and the next time I tell you to halt, d.a.m.n you, halt!"

"This, sir," said a voice, "is General Jackson and his staff."

The officer stammered forth apologies. "It is all right, sir," said the voice in the darkness. "The cavalry must be more careful, but colonel, true aristocrats do not curse and swear."

An hour later the column halted in open country. A pleasant farmhouse with a cool, gra.s.sy yard surrounded by an ornamental fence, white paling gleaming in the waved lights, flung wide its doors to Stonewall Jackson.

The troops bivouacked around, in field and meadow. A rain came up, a chilly downpour. An aide appeared before the brigade encamped immediately about the farmhouse. "The general says, sir, that the men may take the rail fence over there, but the regimental officers are to see that under no circ.u.mstances is the fence about Mrs. Wilson's yard to be touched."

The night pa.s.sed. Officers had had a hard day; they slept perhaps somewhat soundly, wrapped in their oilcloths, in the chilly rain, by the smallest of sputtering camp-fires. The rain stopped at three o'clock; the August dawn came up gloriously with a cool freshness. Reveille sounded. Stonewall Jackson came from the farmhouse, looked about him and then walked across the gra.s.sy yard. A little later five colonels of five regiments found themselves ordered to report to the general commanding the brigade.

"Gentlemen, as you came by did you notice the condition of the ornamental fence about the yard?"

"Not especially, sir."

"I did, sir. One panel is gone. I suppose the men were tempted. It was a confounded cold rain."

The brigadier pursed his lips. "Well, colonel, you heard the order. All of you heard the order. I regret to say, so did I. Dog-gone tiredness and profound slumber are no excuse. You ought--we ought--to have heard them at the palings. General Jackson has ordered you all under arrest."

"Five of us, sir?"

"Five of you. d.a.m.n it, sir, six of us!"

The five colonels looked at one another and looked at their brigadier.

"What would you advise, sir?"

The brigadier was very red. "I have sent one of my staff to Mrs. Wilson, gentlemen, to enquire the cost of the entire ornamental fence! I'd advise that we pay, and--if we've got any--pay in gold."

By eight o'clock the column was in motion--a fair day and a fair country, with all the harvest fields and the deep wooded hills and the August sky. After the rain the roads were just pleasantly wet; dewdrops hung on the corn blades, blackberries were ripening, ox-eye daisies fringed the banks of red earth. The head of the column, coming to a by-road, found awaiting it there an old, plain country woman in a faded sunbonnet and faded check ap.r.o.n. She had a basket on her arm, and she stepped into the middle of the road before Little Sorrel. "Air this General Jackson?"

Stonewall Jackson checked the horse. The staff and a division general or two stopped likewise. Behind them came on the infantry advance, long and jingling. "Yes, madam, I am General Jackson. What can I do for you?"

The old woman put down her basket and wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

"General, my son John air in your company. An' I've brought him some socks an' two s.h.i.+rts an' a chicken, an' a pot of apple b.u.t.ter. An' ef you'll call John I'll be obleeged to you, sir."

A young man in the group of hors.e.m.e.n laughed, but stopped abruptly as Jackson looked round. The latter turned to the old woman with the gentlest blue eyes, and the kindliest slow smile. "I've got a great many companies, ma'am. They are all along the road from Gordonsville. I don't believe I know your son."

But the old woman would not have that. "My lan', general! I reckon you all know John! I reckon John wuz the first man to jine the army. He wuz chopping down the big gum by the crick, an' the news come, an' he chopped on twel the gum wuz down, an' he says, says he, 'I'll cut it up for you, Maw, an' then I'm goin'.' An' he went.--He's about your make an' he has light hair an' eyes an' he wuz wearing b.u.t.ternut--"

"What is his last name, ma'am?"

"His middle name's Henry an' his last name's Simpson."

"In whose brigade is he, and in what regiment?"

But the old woman shook her head. She knew only that he was in General Jackson's company. "We never larned to write, John an' me. He wuz powerful good to me--en I reckon he's been in all the battles 'cause he wuz born that way. Some socks, and two s.h.i.+rts an' something to eat--an'

he hez a scar over his eye where a setting hen pecked him when he was little--an' won't you please find him for me, sir?" The old voice quavered toward tears.

Stonewall Jackson dismounted, and looked toward the on-coming column.