The Long Roll
slipped on her dressing-gown, brushed and braided her dusky hair,
rippling, long and thick, then fed again the fire, took letters from her
rosewood box, and in the light from the hearth read them for the
thousandth time. There was none from Richard Cleave after July, none,
none! Sitting in a low chair that had been her mother's, she bowed
herself over the June-time letters, over the May-time letters. There had
been but two months of bliss, two months! She read them again, although
she had them all by heart; she held her hand as though it held a pen and
traced the words so that she might feel, "Here and so, his hand rested";
she put the paper to her cheek, against her lips; she slipped to her
knees, laid her arms along the seat of the chair and her head upon them,
and prayed. "O God! my lover hast Thou put far from me.--O God! my lover
hast Thou put far from me."
She knelt there long; but at last she rose, laid the letters in the box,
and took from another compartment Margaret Cleave's. These were since
July, a letter every fortnight. Judith read again the later ones, the
ones of the late summer. "Dear child--dearest child, I cannot tell you!
Only be forever sure that wherever he is, at Three Oaks or elsewhere, he
loves you, loves you! No; I do not know that his is the course that I
should take, but then women are different. I do not think I would ever
think of pride or of the world and the world's opinion. If you cried to
me I would go, and the world should not hold me back. But men have been
trained to uphold that kind of pride. I did not think that Richard had
it, but I see now all his father in him. Darling child, I do not think
that it will last, but just now, oh, just now, you must possess your
heart in patience!"
The words blurred before Judith's eyes. She sunk her head upon her
knees. "Possess my heart in patience--Possess my heart in patience--Oh,
God, I am not old enough yet to do it!"
She read another letter, one of later date. "Judith, I promised. I
cannot tell you. But he is well, oh, believe that! and believe, too,
that he is doing his work. He is not the kind to rest from work, he must
work. And slowly, slowly that brings salvation. You are a noble woman.
Be noble still--and wait awhile--and wait awhile! It _will_ come right.
Miriam is better. The woods about Three Oaks are gorgeous."
She read another. "Child, he is not at Three Oaks. Now you must
rest--rest and wait."
Judith put the letters in the rosewood box. She arose, locked her hands
behind her head and walked softly up and down the room. "Rest--rest and
wait. Patience--quietude--tranquillity--strength--fortitude--endurance.
--Rest--patience--calm quietude--"
It worked but partially. Presently, when she lay down it was to lie
still enough, but sleepless. Late in the night she slept, but it was to
dream again, much as she had dreamed during the Seven Days, great and
tragic visions. Dawn waked her. She lay, staring at the white ceiling;
then she arose. It was not cold. The earth lay still at this season, yet
wrapped and warmed and softened with the memories of summer. Judith
looked out of the window. There was a glow in the eastern sky, the trees
were motionless, the brown path over the hills showed like a beckoning
finger. She dressed, put a cloak about her, went softly downstairs and
left the house.
The path across the meadow, through the wood, up the lone tree hill--she
would see the sunrise, she would get above the world. She walked
quickly, lightly, through the dank stillness. There was mist in the
meadow, above the little stream. The wood was shadowy; mist, like
ghosts, between the trees. She passed through it and came out on the
bare hillside, rising dome-like to the one tree with the bench around
it. The eastern sky was burning gold. Judith stood still. There was a
man seated upon the bench, on the side that overlooked Greenwood. He sat
with his head buried in his hands. She could not yet tell, but she
thought he was in uniform.
With the thought she moved onward. She never remembered afterwards,
whether she recognized him then, or whether she thought, "A soldier
sleeping through the night up here! Why did he not come to the house?"
She made no noise on the bare, moist earth of the path. She was within
thirty feet of the bench when Cleave lifted his head from his hands,
rose, stood still a moment, then with a gesture, weary and determined,
turned to descend the hill--on the side away from Greenwood, toward a
cross-country road. She called to him. "Richard!"
It was rapture--all beneath the rising sun forgotten save only this
gold-lit hilltop, with its tree from Eden garden! But since it was
earth, and Paradise not yet real, and there were checks and bars enough
in their human lot, they came back from that seraph flight. This was the
lone tree hill above Greenwood, and a November day, though gold-touched,
and Philip Deaderick must get back to the section of Pelham's artillery
refitting at Gordonsville.--"What do you mean? You are a soldier--you
are back in the army?--but you have another name? Oh, Richard, I see, I
see! Oh, I might have known! A gunner with Pelham. Oh, my gunner with
Pelham, why did you not come before?"
Cleave wrung her hands, clasped in his, then bent and kissed them.
"Judith, I will speak to you as to a comrade, because you would be the
truest comrade ever man had! What would you do--what would you have
done--in my place? What would you do now, in my place, but say--but say,
'I love you; let me go'?"
"I?" said Judith. "What would I have done? I would have reentered the
army as you have reentered it. I would serve again as you are serving
again. If it were necessary--Oh, I see that it was necessary!--I would
serve disguised as you are disguised. But--but--when it came to Judith
Cary--"
"Judith, say that it was not you and I, but some other disgraced soldier
and one of your sisters--"
"You are not a disgraced soldier. The innocent cannot be disgraced."
"Who knows that I was innocent? My mother, and you, Judith, know it; my
kinspeople and certain friends believe it; but all the rest of the
country--the army, the people--they don't believe it. Let my name be
known to-morrow, and by evening a rougher dismissal than before! Do you
not see, do you not see, Judith?"
"I see partly. I see that you must serve. I see that you walk with
dangers. I see that--that you could not even write. I see that I must
possess my soul in patience. I see that we must wait--Oh, God, it is all
waiting, waiting, waiting! But I do not see--and I _refuse_ to see,
Richard--anything at the end of it all but love, happiness, union, home
for you and me!"
He held her close. "Judith, I do not know the right. I am not sure that
I see the right, my soul is so tempest-tossed. That day at White Oak
Swamp. If I could cleanse that day, bring it again into line with the
other days of my life, poor and halting though they may have been,
though they may be, if I could make all men say 'His life was a
whole--one life, not two. He had no twin, a disobedient soldier, a liar
and betrayer, as it was said he had.'--If I could do that, Judith! I do
not see how I will do it, and yet it is my intention to do it. That
done, then, darling, darling! I will make true love to you. If it is not
done--but I will not think of that. Only--only--how to do it, how to do
it! That maddens me at times--"
"Is it that? Then we must think of that. They are not all dead who could
tell?--"
"Maury Stafford is not dead."
"Maury Stafford!--What has he to do with it?"
Cleave laughed, a sound sufficiently grim. "What has he not to do with
it?--with that order which he carried from General Jackson to General
Winder, and from General Winder--not, before God! to me! Winder is dead,
and the courier who could have told is dead, and others whom I might
have called are dead--dead, I will avow, because of my choice of action,
though still--given that false order--I justify that choice! And now we
hear that Major Stafford was among those taken prisoner at Sharpsburg."
Judith stood upright, her hand at her breast, her eyes narrowed. "Until
this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask.
I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these
months I have thought of it as a mistake--as one of those
misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that
wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for
what it was till now!"
She looked about her, still with an intent and narrowed gaze. "The lone
tree hill. It is a good place to see it from. There is nothing to be
done but to join this day to a day last June--the day of Port Republic."
Raising her hands she pressed them to her eyes as though to shut out a
veritable lightning glare, then dropped them. She stood very straight,
young, slender, finely and strongly fibred. "He said he would do the
worst he could, and he has done it. And I said, 'At your peril!' and at
his peril it shall be! And the harm that he has done, he shall undo it!"
She turned. "Richard! he shall undo it."
Cleave stood beside her. "Love, love! how beautiful the light is over
Greenwood! I thought, sitting here, 'I will not wait for the sunshine; I
will go while all things are in shadow.' And I turned to go. And then
came the sunshine. I must go now--away from the sunshine. I had but an
hour, and half of it was gone before the sunshine came."
"How shall I know," she said, "if you are living? There is a battle
coming."
"Yes. Judith, I will not write to you. Do not ask me; I will not. But
after each battle I have managed somehow to get a line to my mother. She
will tell you that I am living, well and living. I do not think that I
shall die--no, not till Maury Stafford and I have met again!"
"He is in prison. They say so many die there.... Oh, Richard, write to
me--"
But Cleave would not. "No! To do that is to say, 'All is as it was, and
I let her take me with this stain!' I will not--I will not. Circumstance
has betrayed us here this hour. We could not help it, and it has been a
glory, a dream. That is it, a dream. I will not wake till I have said
good-bye!"
They said good-bye, still in the dream, as lovers might, when one goes
forth to battle and the other stays behind. He released her, turned
short and sharp, and went down from the lone tree hill, down the side
from Greenwood, to the country road. A piece of woods hid him from
sight.
Judith stood motionless for a time, then she sat down upon the bench.
She sat like a sibyl, elbows on knees, chin in hands, her gaze narrowed
and fixed. She spoke aloud, and her voice was strange in her own ears.
"Maury Stafford in prison. Where, and how long?"
CHAPTER XLVI
FREDERICKSBURG
Snow lay deep on the banks of the Rappahannock, in the forest, up and
down the river, on the plain about the little city, on the bold heights
of the northern shore, on the hills of the southern, commanding the
plain. The snow was deep, but somewhat milder weather had set in.
December the eleventh dawned still and foggy.
General Burnside with a hundred and twenty thousand blue troops
appointed this day to pass the Rappahannock, a stream that flowed across
the road to Richmond. He had been responsible for choosing this route to
the keep of the fortress, and he must make good his reiterated, genial
assurances of success. The Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, and a line of
hills masked the onward-going road and its sign, _This way to Richmond_.
"Well, the Rappahannock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying
the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford
Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak and
desolate with fir woods?--hares and snow birds are all the life over