The Long Roll
Up and up and over Massanutton wound the 2d Corps. The air was still,
not cold. The gold leaves drifted on the troops, and the red. From the
top of the pass the view was magnificent. Down and down wound the column
to the cold, swift Shenandoah. The men forded the stream. "Oh,
Shenandoah! Oh, Shenandoah! when will we ford you again?"
Up and up the steeps of the Blue Ridge to Fisher's Gap! All the air was
dreamy, the sun sloping to the west, the crows cawing in the mountain
clearings. The column was leaving the Valley, and a silence fell upon
it. Stonewall Jackson rode ahead, on the mountain path, in the last gold
light. At the summit of the pass there was a short halt. It went by in a
strange quietness. The men turned and gazed. "The Valley of Virginia!
The Valley of Virginia! _Which of us will not see you again?_"
The Alleghenies lay faint, faint, beneath the flooding light. The sun
sent out great rays of purple and rose. Between the mountain ranges the
vast landscape lay in shadow, though here and there a high hilltop, a
mountain spur had a coronet of gold. The 2d Corps, twenty-five thousand
men, high on the Blue Ridge, looked and looked. "Some of us will not see
you again. Some of us will not see you again, O loved Valley of
Virginia!" _Column Forward! Column Forward!_
CHAPTER XLV
THE LONE TREE HILL
The three beautiful Carys walked together from the road gate toward the
house. Before them, crowning the low hill, showed the white pillars
between oaks where the deep coloured leaves yet clung. The sun was down,
the air violet, the negro children burning brush and leaves in the
hollow behind the house quarter. Halfway to the pillars, there ran back
from the drive a long double row of white chrysanthemums. The three
sisters paused to gather some for the vases.
Unity and Molly gathered them. Judith sat down on the bank by the road,
thick with dead leaves. She drew her scarf about her. Molly came
presently and sat beside her. "Dear Judith, dear Judith!" she said, in
her soft little voice, and stroked her sister's dress.
Judith put her arm about her, and drew her close. "Molly, isn't it as
though the earth were dying? Just the kind of fading light and hush one
thinks of going in--I don't know why, but I don't like chrysanthemums
any more."
"I know," said Molly, "there's a feel of mould in them, and of dead
leaves and chilly nights. But the soldiers are so used to lying out of
doors! I don't believe they mind it much, or they won't until the snow
comes. Judith--"
"Yes, honey."
"The soldiers that I have dreadful dreams about are the soldiers in
prison. Judith, I dreamed about Major Stafford the other night! He had
blood upon his forehead and he was walking up and down, walking up and
down in a place with a grating."
"You mustn't dream so, Molly.--Oh, yes, yes, yes! I'm sorry for him. On
the land and on the sea and for them that are in prison--"
Unity joined them, with her arm full of white bloom. "Oh, isn't there a
dreadful hush? How gay we used to be, even at twilight! Judith, Judith,
let us do something!"
Judith looked at her with a twisted smile. "This morning, very early, we
went with Aunt Lucy over the storeroom and the smoke-house, and then we
went down to the quarter and got them all together, and told them how
careful now we would all have to be with meal and bacon. And Susan's
baby had died in the night, and we had to comfort Susan, and this
afternoon we buried the baby. After breakfast we scraped almost the last
of the tablecloths into lint, and Molly made envelopes, and Daddy Ben
and I talked about shoes and how we could make them at home. Then Aunt
Lucy and I went into town to the hospitals. There is a rumour of
smallpox, but I am sure it is only a rumour. It has been a hard day. A
number of sick were brought in from Fredericksburg. So much pneumonia!
An old man and woman came up from North Carolina looking for their son.
I took them through the wards. Oh, it was pitiful! No, he was not
there. Probably he was killed. And Unity went to the sewing-rooms, and
has been there sewing hard all day. And then we came home, and found
Julius almost in tears, and Molly triumphant with the parlour carpet all
up and ready to be cut into squares--soldiers sleeping in the snowy
winter under tulips and roses. And then we read father's letter, and
that was a comfort, a comfort! And then we took Susan's little baby and
buried it, and did what we could for Susan; and then we walked down to
the gate and stopped to gather chrysanthemums. And now we are going back
to the house, and I dare say there'll be some work to do between now and
bedtime. We're doing something pretty nearly all the time, Unity."
Unity lifted with strength the mass of bloom above her head. "I know, I
know! But it's in me to want a brass band to do it by! I want to see the
flag waving! I want to hear the _sound_ of our work. Oh, I know I am
talking foolishness!" She took Judith by the hands, and lifted her to
her feet. "Anyhow, you're brave enough, Judith, Judith darling! Come,
let us race to the house."
The three were country-bred, fleet of foot. They ran, swiftly, lightly,
up the long drive. Twilight was around them, the leaves drifting down,
the leaves crisp under foot. The tall white pillars gleamed before them;
through the curtainless windows showed, jewel-like, the flame of a wood
fire. They reached the steps almost together, soberly mounted them, and
entered the hall. Miss Lucy called to them from the library. "The papers
have come."
The old room, quiet, grave, book-lined, stored with records of old
struggles, lent itself with fitness to the papers nowadays. The
Greenwood Carys sat about the wood fire, Judith in an old armchair,
Unity on an old embroidered stool, Molly in the corner of a great old
sofa. Miss Lucy pushed her chair into the ring of the lamplight and read
aloud in her quick, low, vibrant voice. The army at Fredericksburg--that
was what they thought of now, day and night. She read first of the army
at Fredericksburg--of Lee on the southern side of the Rappahannock, and
Burnside on the northern, and the cannon all planted, and of the women
and children beginning to leave. She read all the official statements,
all the rumours, all the guesses, all the prophecies of victory and the
record of suffering. Then she read the news of elsewhere in the vast,
beleaguered fortress--of the fighting on the Mississippi, in Louisiana,
in Arkansas, in the Carolinas; echoes from Cumberland Gap, echoes from
Corinth. She read all the Richmond news--hot criticism, hot defence of
the President, of the Secretary of War, of the Secretary of State;
echoes from the House, from the Senate; determined optimism as to
foreign intervention; disdain, as determined, of Burnside's "On to
Richmond"; passionate devotion to the grey armies in the field--all the
loud war song of the South, clear and defiant! She read everything in
the paper. She read the market prices. Coffee $4 per lb. Tea $20 per lb.
Wheat $5 per bushel. Corn $15 per barrel. Bacon $2 per lb. Sugar $50 per
loaf. Chickens $10. Turkeys $50.
"Oh," cried Molly. "We have chickens yet, beside what we send to the
hospitals! And we have eggs and milk and butter, and I was looking at
the turkeys to-day. I feel _wicked_!"
"A lot of the turkeys will die," said Unity consolingly. "They always
do. I spoke to Sam about the ducks and the guinea-hens the other day. I
told him we were going to send them to Fredericksburg. He didn't like
it. 'Miss Unity, what fer you gwine ter send all dem critturs away lak
dat? You sen' 'em from Greenwood, dey gwine die ob homesickness!' And we
don't use many eggs ourselves, honey, and we've no way to send the
milk."
Miss Lucy having read the paper through, the Greenwood ladies went to
supper. That frugal meal over, they came back to the library, the
parlour looking somewhat desolate with the carpet up and rolled in one
corner, waiting for the shears to-morrow. "The shepherds and
shepherdesses look," said Unity, "as though they were shivering a
little. I don't suppose they ever thought they'd live to see a Wilton
carpet cut into blankets for Carys and other soldiers gone to war! It's
impossible not to laugh when you think of Edward drawing one of those
coverlets over him! Oh, me!"
"If Edward gets a furlough this winter," said Judith suddenly, "we must
give him a party. With the two companies in town, and some of the
surgeons, there will be men enough. Then Virginia and Nancy and Deb and
Maria and Betty and Agatha and all the refugeeing girls--we could have a
real party once more--"
"Just leaving out the things to eat," said Unity; "and wearing very old
clothes. We'll do it, won't we, Aunt Lucy?"
Aunt Lucy thought it an excellent idea. "We mustn't get old before our
time! We must keep brightness about the place. I have seen my mother
laugh and look all the gayer out of her beautiful black eyes when other
folk would have been weeping!--I hear company coming, now! It's Cousin
William, I think."
Cousin William it was, not gone to the war because of sixty-eight years
and a rich inheritance of gout. He came in, ruddy as an apple, ridden
over to cheer up the Greenwood folk and hear and tell news from the
front. He had sons there himself, and a letter which he would read for
the thirtieth time. When Judith had made him take the great armchair,
and Miss Lucy had rung for Julius and a glass of wine, and Unity had
trimmed the light, and Molly replenished the fire, he read, and as in
these days no one ever read anything perfunctorily, the reading was more
telling than an actor could have made it. In places Cousin William
himself and his hearers laughed, and in places reader and listener
brushed hand across eyes. "Your loving son," he read, and folded the
sheets carefully, for they were becoming a little worn. "Now, what's
your news, Lucy? Have you heard from Fauquier?"
"Yes, yesterday. He has reached Fredericksburg from Winchester. It is
one of his old, dry, charming letters, only--only a little hard to make
out in places, because he's not yet used to writing with his left hand."
Miss Lucy's face worked for a moment; then she smiled again, with a
certain high courage and sweetness, and taking the letter from her
work-basket read it to Cousin William. He listened, nodding his head at
intervals. "Yes, yes, to be sure, to be sure! You can't remember Uncle
Edward Churchill, Lucy, but I can. He used to read Swift to me, though I
didn't care for it much, except for Gulliver. Fauquier reminds me of him
often, except that Uncle Edward was bitter--though it wasn't because of
his empty sleeve; it was for other things.--Fredericksburg! There'll be
another terrible battle. And Warwick?"
"We heard from him to-day--a short letter, hurriedly written; but oh!
like Warwick--like Warwick!"
She read this, too. It was followed by a silence in the old Greenwood
library. Then said Cousin William softly, "It is worth while to get such
letters. There aren't many like Warwick Cary. He's the kind that proves
the future--shows it isn't just a noble dream. And Edward?"
"A letter three days ago, just after you were here the last time."
The room smiled. "It was what Edward calls a screed," said Molly; "there
wasn't a thing about war in it."
Unity stirred the fire, making the sparks go up chimney. "Five pages
about Massanutton in her autumn robes, and a sonnet to the Shenandoah! I
like Edward."
At ten o'clock Cousin William rode away. The Greenwood women had
prayers, and then, linked together, they went up the broad, old shallow
stairs to the gallery above, and kissed one another good-night.
In her own room Judith laid pine knots upon the brands. Up flared the
light, and reddened all the pleasant chamber. She unclad herself,