The Long Roll
"Whether, when you move, you move north or west or south or east, is, I
suppose, sir, purely a matter of conjecture?"
"Purely, sir."
"But the _morale_ of the army, its efficiency and spirit, may be freely
praised and imparted?"
"Yes, sir, freely. Upon your return I shall want from you your
impression of General Ewell and the troops he commands." He drew toward
him a map which lay on the table. "You will ride through Massanutton Gap
by Conrad's Store and Swift Run Gap. Thence you will make a detour to
Charlottesville. There are stores there that I wish reported upon and
sent on to Major Harman at Staunton. You will spend one day upon that
business, then go on to Ewell."
CHAPTER XVII
CLEAVE AND JUDITH
The hospital at Charlottesville, unlovely and lovely, ghastly and vital,
brutal, spiritual, a hell of pain and weakness, another region of
endeavour and helpfulness, a place of horror, and also of strange
smiling, even of faint laughter, a country as chill as death and as warm
as love--the hospital at Charlottesville saw the weary morning grow to
weary noon, the weary noon change toward the weary latter day. The women
who nursed the soldiers said that it was lovely outside, and that all
the peach trees were in bloom. "We'll raise you a little higher," they
said, "and you can see for yourself. And look! here is your broth, so
good and strengthening! And did you hear? We won on the Peninsula
to-day!"
At four o'clock Judith Cary gave to another her place beside a typhoid
pallet and came out into the emerald and rose, the freshness and
fragrance of the spring. The Greenwood carriage was waiting. "We'll go,
Isham," said Judith, "by the University for Miss Lucy."
Isham held open the door. "No'm, Miss Judith. Miss Lucy done sont wuhd
dat de ladies'll be cuttin' out nuniforms clean 'twel dark. She say don'
wait fer her--Mrs. Carter'll bring her home."
Judith entered the carriage. An old acquaintance, passing, paused to
speak to her. "Isn't there a greater stir than usual?" she asked.
"Some of General Ewell's men are over from Gordonsville. There goes
General Dick Taylor now--the one in grey and white! He's a son, you
know, of Zachary--Old Rough and Ready. General Jackson, too, has an
officer here to-day, checking the stores that came from Richmond.--How
is it at the hospital?"
"It is very bad," said Judith. "When the bands begin to play I laugh and
cry like all the rest, and I wave and clap my hands, and I would fight
on and on like the rest of you, and I do not see that, given people as
they are, the war could have been avoided, and I would die to win, and I
am, I hope, a patriot--and yet I do not see any sense in it! It hurts me
as I think it may hurt the earth. She would like, I believe, something
better than being a battlefield.--There is music again! Yesterday a man
died, crying for the band to hush. He said it drowned something he
needed to hear."
"Yes, yes," replied her friend, nodding his head. "That is perfectly
true. That is very true, indeed!--That band's coming from the station.
They're looking for a regiment from Richmond.--That's a good band! What
are they playing--?"
"Bright flowers spring from the hero's grave,
The craven knows no rest,--
Thrice cursed the traitor and the knave,
The hero thrice is blessed--"
The Greenwood carriage rolled out of the town into the April country.
The fruit trees were in bloom, the woods feathering green, the quiet and
the golden light inestimable after the moaning wards. The carriage went
slowly, for the roads were heavy; moreover the former carriage horses
were gone to the war. These were two from the farm, somewhat old and
stiff, willing, but plodders. They went half asleep in the soft
sunshine, and Isham on the box went half asleep too. Judith would have
been willing to sleep, but she could not. She sat with her gaze upon the
fair spring woods and the amethystine hills rising to blue skies. The
carriage stopped. Isham bent down from the box. "Miss Judith, honey, er
gent'man's on de road behin' us, ridin' ter overtek de kerridge."
"Wait for him, then," said Judith. "There is some message, perhaps."
While they waited she sat with folded hands, her eyes upon the purple
hills, her thoughts away from Albemarle. The sound that Isham made of
surprise and satisfaction did not reach her. Until she saw Cleave's face
at the window she thought him somewhere in the Valley--fighting,
fighting! in battle and danger, perhaps, that very day.
Her eyes widened, her face had the hush of dawn; it was turned toward
him, but she sat perfectly still, without speaking. Only the door was
between them, the glass down. He rested his clasped hands on the ledge,
and his dark, moved face looked in upon her. "Judith," he said, "I did
not know.--I thought it was one of the others.... I hope that you are a
little glad to see me."
Judith looked at him a moment longer, then swayed a little forward. She
bent her head. Her cheek touched his clasped hands, he felt her kiss
upon them, and her forehead resting there.
There was a moment's silence, deep, breathless, then Cleave spoke.
"Judith ... Am I mad?"
"I believe that you love me," she said. "If you do not, it does not
matter.... I have loved you for two years."
"Maury Stafford?"
"I have never believed that you understood--though what it was that made
you misunderstand I have never guessed.... There is no Maury Stafford.
There never was."
He opened the door. "Come out," he said. "Come out with me into the
light. Send the carriage on."
She did so. The road was quiet, deserted, a wide bright path between the
evening hills. Dundee following them, they walked a little way until
they came to a great rock, sunk in the velvet sward that edged a wood.
Here they sat down, the gold light bathing them, behind them fairy
vistas, fountains of living green, stars of the dogwood and purple
sprays of Judas tree. "How I misunderstood is no matter now," said
Cleave. "I love you, and you say that you love me. Thank God for it!"
They sat with clasped hands, their cheeks touching, their breath
mingling. "Judith, Judith, how lovely are you! I have seen you always,
always!... Only I called it 'vision,' 'ideal.' At the top of every deed
I have seen your eyes; from the height of every thought you have
beckoned further! Now--now--It is like a wonderful home-coming ... and
yet you are still there, above the mountains, beckoning, drawing--There
and here, here in my arms!... Judith--What does 'Judith' mean?"
"It means 'praised.' Oh, Richard, I heard that you were wounded at
Kernstown!"
"It was nothing. It is healed.... I will write to your father at once."
"He will be glad, I think. He likes you.... Have you a furlough? How
long can you stay?"
"Love, I cannot stay at all. I am on General Jackson's errand. I must
ride on to Gordonsville--It would be sweet to stay!"
"When will you come again?"
"I do not know. There will be battles--many battles, perhaps--up and
down the Valley. Every man is needed. I am not willing to ask even a
short furlough."
"I am not willing that you should.... I know that you are in danger
every day! I hear it in the wind, I see it in every waving bough.... Oh,
come back to me, Richard!"
"I?" he answered, "I feel immortal. I will come back."
They rose from the rock. "The sun is setting. Would you rather I went on
to the house? I must turn at once, but I could speak to them--"
"No. Aunt Lucy is in town, Unity, too.... Let's say good-bye before we
reach the carriage."
They went slowly by the quiet road beneath the flowering trees. The
light was now only on the hilltops; the birds were silent; only the
frogs in the lush meadows kept up their quiring, a sound quaintly
mournful, weirdly charming. A bend of the road showed them Isham, the
farm horses, and the great old carriage waiting beneath a tulip tree.
The lovers stopped, took hands, moved nearer each to the other, rested
each in the other's arms. Her head was thrown back, his lips touched her
hair, her forehead, her lips. "Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
He put her in the carriage, kissed her hands as they lay on the door
ledge, and stood back. It was not far to the Greenwood gates; the old,
slow horses moved on, the carriage rounded a leafy turn, the road was
left to the soldier and his horse.
Cleave rode to Gordonsville that night as though he carried Heaven with
him. The road was fair, the moon was high. Far-flung, beautiful odours
filled the air; the red ploughed earth sent its share, the flowering
fruit trees theirs, the flowers in the wood, the mint by the stream. A
light wind swung them as from a censer; the moved air touched the young
man's forehead. He took off his hat; he rode rapidly with head held
high. He rode for hours, Dundee taking the way with even power, a
magnificently silent friend. Behind, on an iron grey, came the orderly.
Riding thus together, away from organization and discipline, the
relations between the two men, officer and private, were perfectly
democratic. From Rude's Hill across the Massanuttons and from Swift Run
Gap to Charlottesville they had been simply comrades and fellow
Virginians. They were from adjoining counties, where the one had
practised law and the other had driven a stage. There were differences
in breeding, education, and employment; but around these, recognized by
both, stretched the enormous plane of humanity. They met there in simple
brotherliness. To-night, however, Cleave had spoken for silence. "I want
to be quiet for a while, Harris.--There is something I have to think
of."
The night was all too short for what he had to think of. The pink flush
of dawn, the distant view of Ewell's tents, came too soon. It was hard
to lower the height and swell of the mind, to push back the surging
thoughts, to leave the lift and wonder, the moonlight, and the flowering
way. Here, however, were the pickets; and while he waited for the
corporal of the guard, standing with Harris on a little hill, before
them the pink sky, below them a peach orchard, pink too, with a
lace-like mist wreathing the trees, he put golden afternoon and
moonlight night in the bottom of his heart and laid duty atop.
Ewell's camp, spread over the rolling hills and lighted by a splendid
sunrise, lay imposingly. To the eyes of the men from the Valley the
ordered white tents of Trimble's and Taylor's and the Maryland line had
an air luxuriously martial. Everything seemed to gleam and shine. The
guns of the parked batteries gave back the light, the colours seemed
silken and fine, the very sunrise gun had a sonorousness lacking to
Chew's Blakeley, or to McLaughlin's six-pounders, and the bugles blowing
reveille a silvery quality most remarkable. As for the smoke from the
camp-fires--"Lord save us!" said Harris, "I believe they're broiling
partridges! Of all the dandy places!"
Cleave laughed. "It's not that they are so fine, but that we are so
weather-beaten and rusty! They're only in good working-day trim. We'll
have to polish up at Rude's Hill."
"This is the 1st Maryland on the hillside," said the guide the corporal
had given; "there with the blue flag. Mighty fine feathers, but I reckon
they're gamecocks all right! Elzey's Brigade's over beside the
woods--Virginian to the backbone. Trimble's got a fine lot--Georgians
and Alabamians and Mississippians. Here come some of the 2d Virginia
Cavalry! Ain't they pretty?"
They were. But Harris stood up for the absent Valley. "Huh! Ashby's good
enough for me! Ashby's got three stallions--the white he's fondest of,
and a black like a piece of coal, and a red roan--"
The guide nodded energetically. "Oh, we think a heap of Ashby ourselves!