The Long Roll
nights, fanfare of preparation, drill, camp, orders, counter-orders,
music, tears and laughter of high-hearted women--'"
Sairy touched her iron with a wet finger-tip. "This time next year
thar'll be more tears, I reckon, and less laughter! I ain't a girl, and
I don't hold with war--Well?"
"'Beat of drums and call of fife, heroic ardour and the cult of Mars--'"
"Of--?"
"That's the name of the heathen idol they used to sacrifice men to.
'Parties have vanished from county and State. Whigs and Democrats,
Unionists and Secessionists, Bell and Everett men and Breckinridge
men--all are gone. There is now but one party--_the party of the
invaded_. A month ago there was division of opinion; it does not exist
to-day. It died in the hour when we were called upon to deny our
convictions, to sacrifice our principles, to juggle with the
Constitution, to play fast and loose, to blow hot and cold, to say one
thing and do another, to fling our honour to the winds and to assist in
coercing Sovereign States back into a Union which they find intolerable!
It died in the moment when we saw, no longer the Confederation of
Republics to which we had acceded, but a land whirling toward Empire. It
is dead. There are no Union men to-day in Virginia. The ten Botetourt
companies hold themselves under arms. At any moment may come the order
to the front. The county has not spared her first-born--no, nor the
darling of his mother! It is a rank and file different from the Old
World's rank and file. The rich man marches, a private soldier, beside
the poor man; the lettered beside the unlearned; the planter, the
lawyer, the merchant, the divine, the student side by side with the man
from the plough, the smith, the carpenter, the hunter, the boatman, the
labourer by the day. Ay, rank and file, you are different; and the army
that you make will yet stir the blood and warm the heart of the world!'"
The ironer stretched another garment upon the board. "If only we fight
half as well as that thar newspaper talks! Is the editor going?"
"Yes, he is," said the old man. "It's fine talking, but it's mighty near
God's truth all the same!" He moved restlessly, then took his crutch and
beat a measure upon the sunken floor. His faded blue eyes, set in a
thousand wrinkles, stared down upon and across the great view of ridge
and spur and lovely valleys in between. The air at this height was clear
and strong as wine, the noon sunshine bright, not hot, the murmur in the
leaves and the sound of Thunder Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous.
"If it had to come," said Tom, "why couldn't it ha' come when I was
younger? If 't weren't for that darned fall out o' Nofsinger's hayloft
I'd go, anyhow!"
"Then I see," retorted Sairy, "what Brother Dame meant by good comin'
out o' evil!--Here's Christianna."
A girl in a homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road and
unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket such as
the mountain folk weave. "Good-mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good-mahnin', Mr.
Cole. It cert'ny is fine weather the mountain's having."
"Yes, it's fine weather, Christianna," answered the old man. "Come in,
come in, and take a cheer!"
Christianna came up the tiny path and seated herself, not in the
split-bottomed chair to which he waved her, but upon the edge of the
porch, with her back to the sapling that served for a pillar, and with
her small, ill-shod feet just touching a bed of heartsease. She pushed
back her sunbonnet. "Dave an' Billy told us good-bye yesterday. Pap is
going down the mountain to-day. Dave took the shotgun an' pap has
grandpap's flintlock, but Billy didn't have a gun. He said he'd take one
from the Yanks."
"Sho!" exclaimed Sairy. "Didn't he have no weapon at all?"
"He had a hunting-knife that was grandpap's. An' the blacksmith made him
what he called a spear-head. He took a bit o' rawhide and tied it to an
oak staff, an' he went down the mountain _so_!" Her drawling voice died,
then rose again. "I'll miss Billy--I surely will!" It failed again, and
the heartsease at her feet ran together into a little sea of purple and
gold. She took the cape of her sunbonnet and with it wiped away the
unaccustomed tears.
"Sho!" said Sairy. "We'll all miss Billy. I reckon we all that stay at
home air going to have our fill o' missing!--What have you got in your
basket, honey?"
Christianna lifted a coloured handkerchief and drew from the basket a
little bag of flowered chintz, roses and tulips, drawn up with a blue
ribbon. "My! that's pretty," exclaimed Sairy. "Whar did you get the
stuff?"
The girl regarded the bag with soft pride. "Last summer I toted a bucket
o' blackberries down to Three Oaks an' sold them to Mrs. Cleave. An' she
was making a valance for her tester bed, an' I thought the stuff was
mighty pretty, an' she gave me a big piece! an' I put it away in my
picture box with my glass beads. For the ribbon--I'd saved a little o'
my berry money, an' I walked to Buchanan an' bought it." She drew a long
breath. "My land! 't was fine in the town--High Street just crowded with
Volunteers, and the drums were beating." Her eyes shone like stars.
"It's right hard on women to stay at home an' have all the excitement go
away. There don't seem to be nothin' to make it up to us--"
Sairy put away the ironing-board. "Sho! We've just got the little end,
as usual. What's in the bag, child?"
"Thar's thread and needles in a needle-case, an' an emery," said
Christianna. "I wanted a little pair of scissors that was at Mr.
Moelick's, but I didn't have enough. They'd be right useful, I reckon,
to a soldier, but I couldn't get them. I wondered if the bag ought to be
smaller--but he'll have room for it, I reckon? _I_ think it's right
pretty."
Old Tom Cole leaned over, took the tiny, flowery affair, and balanced it
gently upon a horny hand. "Of course he'll have room for it! An' it's
jest as pretty as they make them!--An' here he comes now, down the
mountain, to thank ye himself!"
Allan Gold thanked Christianna with simplicity. He had never had so
pretty a thing, and he would keep it always, and every time he looked at
it he would see Thunder Run and hear the bees in the flowers. It was
very kind of her to make it for him, and--and he would keep it always.
Christianna listened, and then, with her eyes upon the heartsease, began
to say good-bye in her soft, drawling voice. "You're going down the
mountain to-day, Mrs. Cole says. Well, good-bye. An' pap's goin' too,
an' Dave an' Billy have gone. I reckon the birds won't be singin' when
you come again--thar'll be ice upon the creeks, I reckon." She drew her
shoulders together as though she shivered for all the May sunshine.
"Well, good-bye."
"I'll walk a piece of the road with you," said Allan, and the two went
out of the gate together.
Sairy, a pan of biscuits for dinner in her hand, looked after them.
"There's a deal of things I'd do differently if I was a man! What was
the use in sayin' that every time he looked at that thar bag he'd see
Thunder Run? Thunder Run ain't a-keerin' if he sees it or if he don't
see it! He might ha' said that every time he laid eyes on them roses
he'd see Christianna!--Thar's a wagon comin' up the road an' a man on
horseback behind. Here, I'll take the toll--"
"No, I'll take it myself," said Tom, reaching for the tobacco box which
served as bank. "If I can't 'list, I reckon I can get all the news
that's goin'!" He hobbled out to the gate. "Mornin', Jake! Mornin', Mr.
Robinson! Yes, 't is fine weather for the crops. What--"
"The Rockbridge companies are ordered off! Craig and Bedford are going,
too. They say Botetourt's time will come next. Lord! we used to think
forest fires and floods were exciting! Down there in camp the boys can't
sleep at night--every time a rooster crows they think it's Johnny
Mason's bugle and the order to the front! Ain't Allan Gold going?"
Sairy spoke from the path. "Course he's goin'--he and twenty more from
Thunder Run. I reckon Thunder Run ain't goin' to lag behind! Even Steve
Dagg's goin'--though I look for him back afore the battle. Jim's goin',
too, to see what he can make out of it--'t won't harm no one, I reckon,
if he makes six feet o' earth."
"They're the only trash in the lot," put in Tom. "The others are
first-rate--though a heap of them are powerfully young."
"Thar's Billy Maydew, for instance," said Sairy. "Sho! Billy is too
young to go--"
"All the cadets have gone from Lexington, remarked the man on horseback.
They've gone to Richmond to act as drill-masters--every boy of them with
his head as high as General Washington's! I was at Lexington and saw
them go. Good Lord! most of them just children--that Will Cleave, for
instance, that used to beg a ride on my load of hay! Four companies of
them marched away at noon, with their muskets shining in the sun. All
the town was up and out--the minister blessing them, and the people
crying and cheering! Major T. J. Jackson led them."
"The Thunder Run men are going in Richard Cleave's company. He sets a
heap o' store by Allan, an' wanted him for second lieutenant, but the
men elected Matthew Coffin--"
"Coffin's bright enough," said Tom, "but Allan's more dependable.--Well,
good-day, gentlemen, an' thank ye both!"
The wagon lumbered down the springtime road and the man on horseback
followed. The tollgate keeper hobbled back to his chair, and Sairy
returned to her dinner. Allan was going away, and she was making
gingerbread because he liked it. The spicy, warm fragrance permeated the
air, homely and pleasant as the curl of blue smoke above the chimney,
the little sunny porch, the buzzing of the bees in the lilacs. "Here's
Allan now," said Tom. "Hey, Allan! you must have gone a good bit o' the
way?"
"I went all the way," answered Allan, lifting the gourd of well-water to
his lips. "Poor little thing! she is breaking her heart over Billy's
going."
Sairy, cutting the gingerbread into squares, held the knife suspended.
"Have ye been talkin' about Billy all this time?"
"Yes," said Allan. "I saw that she was unhappy and I tried to cheer her
up. I'll look out for the boy in every way I can." He took the little
bag of chintz from the bench where he had laid it when he went with
Christianna, and turned to the rude stair that led to his room in the
half story. He was not kin to the tollgate keepers, but he had lived
long with them and was very fond of both. "I'll be down in a moment,
Aunt Sairy," he said. "I wonder when I'll smell or taste your
gingerbread again, and I don't see how I am going to tell you and Tom
good-bye!" He was gone, humming "Annie Laurie" as he went.
"'T would be just right an' fittin'," remarked Mrs. Cole, "if half the
men in the world went about with a piece of pasteboard round their necks
an' written on it, 'Pity the Blind!' Dinner's most ready, Tom,--an' I
don't see how I'm goin' to tell him good-bye myself."
An hour later, in his small bare room underneath the mossy roof, with
the small square window through which the breezes blew, Allan stood and
looked about him. Dinner was over. It had been something of a feast,
with unusual dainties, and a bunch of lilacs upon the table. Sairy had
on a Sunday apron. The three had not been silent either; they had talked
a good deal, but without much thought of what was said. Perhaps it was
because of this that the meal had seemed so vague, and that nothing had
left a taste in the mouth. It was over, and Allan was making ready to
depart.
On the floor, beside the chest of drawers, stood a small hair trunk. A
neighbour with a road wagon had offered to take it, and Allan, too, down
the mountain at three o'clock. In the spring of 1861, one out of every
two Confederate privates had a trunk. One must preserve the decencies of