The Long Roll
clapped on his hat and beckoned for his horse. The ground about him
showed furrowed as for planting, and a neighbouring oak tree was so
riddled with bullets that the weight of a man might have sent it
crashing down. D. H. Hill, drawing long breath, spoke half to his staff,
half to the stars: "Give me Federal artillery and Confederate infantry,
and I'd whip the world!"
CHAPTER XXXVII
A WOMAN
Allan Gold, lying in a corner of the Stonewall Hospital, turned his
head toward the high window. It showed him little, merely a long strip
of blue sky above housetops. The window was open, and the noises of the
street came in. He knew them, checked them off in his mind. He was doing
well. A body, superbly healthful, might stand out boldly against a
minie ball or two, just as calm nerves, courage and serene judgement
were of service in a war hospital such as this. If he was restless now,
it was because he was wondering about Christianna. It was an hour past
her time for coming.
The ward was fearfully crowded. This, however, was the end by the stair,
and he had a little cut-off place to himself. Many in the ward yet lay
on the floor, on a blanket as he had done that first morning. In the
afternoon of that day a wide bench had been brought into his corner, a
thin flock mattress laid upon it, and he himself lifted from the floor.
He had protested that others needed a bed much more, that he was used to
lying on the earth--but Christianna had been firm. He wondered why she
did not come.
Chickahominy, Gaines's Mill, Garnett's and Golding's farms, Peach
Orchard, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Frayser's Farm, Malvern
Hill--dire echoes of the Seven Days' fighting had thronged into this
hospital as into all others, as into the houses of citizens and the
public buildings and the streets! All manner of wounded soldiers told
the story--ever so many soldiers and ever so many variants of the story.
The dead bore witness, and the wailing of women which was now and then
heard in the streets; not often, for the women were mostly silent, with
pressed lips. And the ambulances jolting by--and the sound of
funerals--and the church bells tolling, tolling--all these bore witness.
And day and night there was the thunder of the cannon. From
Mechanicsville and Gaines's Mill it had rolled near and loud, from
Savage Station somewhat less so; White Oak Swamp and Frayser's Farm had
carried the sound yet further off, and from Malvern Hill it came but
distantly. But loud or low, near or far, day by day and into each night,
Richmond heard the cannon. At first the vibration played on the town's
heart, like a giant hand on giant strings. But at last the tune grew old
and the town went about its business. There was so much to do! One could
not stop to listen to cannon. Richmond was a vast hospital; pain and
fever in all places, and, around, the shadow of death. Hardly a house
but mourned a kinsman or kinsmen; early and late the dirges wailed
through the streets. So breathlessly filled were the days, that often
the dead were buried at night. The weather was hot--days and nights hot,
close and still. Men and women went swiftly through them, swift and
direct as weavers' shuttles. Privation, early comrade of the South, was
here; scant room, scant supplies, not too much of wholesome food for the
crowded town, few medicines or alleviatives, much to be done and done
at once with the inadequatest means. There was little time in which to
think in general terms; all effort must go toward getting done the
immediate thing. The lift and tension of the time sloughed off the
immaterial weak act or thought. There were present a heroic simplicity,
a naked verity, a full cup of service, a high and noble altruism. The
plane was epic, and the people did well.
The sky within Allan's range of vision was deep blue; the old brick
gable-ends of houses, mellow and old, against it. A soldier with a
broken leg and a great sabre cut over the head, just brought into the
ward, brought with him the latest news. He talked loudly, and all down
the long room, crowded to suffocation, the less desperately wounded
raised themselves on their elbows to hear. Others, shot through stomach
or bowels, or fearfully torn by shells, or with the stumps of amputated
limbs not doing well, raved on in delirium or kept up their pitiful
moaning. The soldier raised his voice higher, and those leaning on
elbows listened with avidity. "Evelington Heights? Where's Evelington
Heights?"--"Between Westover and Rawling's millpond, near Malvern
Hill!"--"Malvern Hill! That was ghastly!"--"Go on, sergeant-major! We're
been pining for a newspaper."
"Were any of you boys at Malvern Hill?"
"Yes,--only those who were there ain't in a fix to tell about it! That
man over there--and that one--and that one--oh, a middling lot! They're
pretty badly off--poor boys!"
From a pallet came a hollow voice. "I was at Malvern Hill, and I ain't
never going there again--I ain't never going there again--I ain't
never.... Who's that singing? I kin sing, too--
'The years creep slowly by, Lorena;
The snow is on the grass again;
The sun's low down the sky, Lorena;
The frost gleams where the flowers have been--'"
"Don't mind him," said the soldiers on elbows. "Poor fellow! he ain't
got any voice anyhow. We know about Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill was
pretty bad. And we heard there'd been a cavalry rumpus--Jeb Stuart and
Sweeney playing their tricks! We didn't know the name of the place.
Evelington Heights! Pretty name."
The sergeant-major would not be cheated of Malvern Hill. "'Pretty bad!'
I should say 'twas pretty bad! Malvern Hill was _awful_. If anything
could induce me to be a damn Yankee 'twould be them guns of their'n!
Yes, sirree, bob! we fought and fought, and ten o'clock came and there
wasn't any moon, and we stopped. And in the night-time the damn Yankees
continued to retreat away. There was an awful noise of gun-wheels all
the night long--so the sentries said, and the surgeons and the wounded
and, I reckon, the generals. The rest of us, we were asleep. I don't
reckon there ever was men any more tired. Malvern Hill was--I can't
swear because there are ladies nursing us, but Malvern Hill was--Well,
dawn blew at reveille--No, doctor, I ain't getting light-headed. I just
get my words a little twisted. Reveille blew at dawn, and there were
sheets of cold pouring rain, and everywhere there were dead men, dead
men, dead men lying there in the wet, and the ambulances were wandering
round like ghosts of wagons, and the wood was too dripping to make a
fire, and three men out of my mess were killed, and one was a boy that
we'd all adopted, and it was awful discouraging. Yes, we were right
tired, damn Yankees and all of us.... Doctor, if I was you I wouldn't
bother about that leg. It's all right as it is, and you might hurt
me.... Oh, all right! Kin I smoke?... Yuugh! Well, boys, the damn
Yankees continued their retreat to Harrison's Landing, where their
hell-fire gunboats could stand picket for them.... Say, ma'am, would you
kindly tell me why that four-post bed over there is all hung with
wreaths of roses?--'Isn't any bed there?' But there is! I see it....
Evelington Heights--and Stuart dropping shells into the damn Yankees'
camp.... They _are_ roses, the old Giants of Battle by the beehive....
Evelington Heights. Eveling--Well, the damn Yankees dragged their guns
up there, too.... If the beehive's there, then the apple tree's
here--Grandma, if you'll ask him not to whip me I'll never take them
again, and I'll hold your yarn every time you want me to--"
The ward heard no more about Evelington Heights. It knew, however, that
it had been no great affair; it knew that McClellan with his exhausted
army, less many thousand dead, wounded, and prisoners, less fifty-two
guns and thirty-five thousand small arms, less enormous stores captured
or destroyed, less some confidence at Washington, rested down the James
by Westover, in the shadow of gunboats. The ward guessed that, for a
time at least, Richmond was freed from the Northern embrace. It knew
that Lee and his exhausted army, less even more of dead and wounded than
had fallen on the other side, rested between that enemy and Richmond.
Lee was watching; the enemy would come no nearer for this while. For all
its pain, for all the heat, the blood, the fever, thirst and woe, the
ward, the hospital, all the hospitals, experienced to-day a sense of
triumph. It was so with the whole city. Allan knew this, lying, looking
with sea-blue eyes at the blue summer sky and the old and mellow roofs.
The city mourned, but also it rejoiced. There stretched the black
thread, but twisted with it was the gold. A paean sounded as well as a
dirge. Seven days and nights of smoke and glare upon the horizon, of the
heart-shaking cannon roar, of the pouring in of the wounded, of
processions to Hollywood, of anguish, ceaseless labour, sick waiting,
dizzy hope, descending despair.... Now, at last, above it all the bells
rang for victory. A young girl, coming through the ward, had an armful
of flowers,--white lilies, citron aloes, mignonette, and phlox--She gave
her posies to all who stretched out a hand, and went out with her
smiling face. Allan held a great stalk of garden phlox, white and sweet.
It carried him back to the tollgate and to the log schoolhouse by
Thunder Run.... Twelve o'clock. Was not Christianna coming at all?
This was not Judith Cary's ward, but now she entered it. Allan, watching
the narrow path between the wounded, saw her coming from the far door.
He did not know who she was; he only looked from the flower in his hand
and had a sense of strength and sweetness, of something noble
approaching nearer. She paused to ask a question of one of the women;
answered, she came straight on. He saw that she was coming to the
cut-off corner by the stair, and instinctively he straightened a little
the covering over him. In a moment she was standing beside him, in her
cool hospital dress, with her dark hair knotted low, with a flower at
her breast. "You are Allan Gold?" she said.
"Yes."
"My name is Judith Cary. Perhaps you have heard of me. I have been to
Lauderdale and to Three Oaks."
"Yes," said Allan. "I have heard of you. I--"
There was an empty box beside the wall. Judith drew it nearer to his bed
and sat down. "You have been looking for Christianna? I came to tell you
about poor little Christianna--and--and other things. Christianna's
father has been killed."
Allan uttered an exclamation. "Isham Maydew! I never thought of his
going!... Poor child!"
"So she thought she ought not to come to-day. Had there been strong
reason, many people dependent upon her, she would have come."
"Poor Christianna--poor wild rose!... It's ghastly, this war! There is
nothing too small and harmless for its grist."
"I agree with you. Nothing too great; nothing too small. Nothing too
base, as there is nothing too noble."
"Isham Maydew! He was lean and tough and still, like Death in a picture.
Where was he killed?"
"It was at White Oak Swamp. At White Oak Swamp, the day before Malvern
Hill."
Allan looked at her. There was more in her voice than the non-coming of
Christianna, than the death of Isham Maydew. She had spoken in a clear,
low, bell-like tone that held somehow the ache of the world. He was
simple and direct, and he spoke at once out of his thought. He knew that
all the men of her house were at the front. "You have had a loss of your
own?--"
She shook her head. "I? No. I have had no loss."
"Now," thought Allan, "there's something proud in it." He looked at her
with his kindly, sea-blue eyes. In some chamber of the brain there
flashed out a picture--the day of the Botetourt Resolutions, winter dusk