The Long Roll
He passed John Agnor lying dead by the gateway, and he reached somehow
the foot of the hill and the wide fields between the embattled ridges
and the Valley pike, the woods and the Front Royal road. He now could
see the Federal line of battle, drawn on both sides of the pike, but
preponderantly to the westward. They were there, horse and foot and
bellowing artillery, and they did not look panic-stricken. Their flags
were flying, their muskets gleaming. They had always vastly more and
vastly better bands than had the grey, and they used them more
frequently. They were playing now--a brisk and stirring air, sinking and
swelling as the guns boomed or were silent. The mist was up, the sun
shone bright. "Gawd!" thought Steve. "I'd better be there than here! We
ain't a-goin' to win, anyhow. They've got more cannon, and a bigger
country, and all the ships, and pockets full of money. Once't I had a
chance to move North--"
He had landed in a fringe of small trees by a little runlet, and now,
under this cover, he moved irresolutely forward. "Ef I walked toward
them with my hands up, they surely wouldn't shoot. What's that?--Gawd!
Look at Old Jack a-comin'! Reckon I'll stay--Told them once't on Thunder
Run I wouldn't move North for nothing! _Yaaaihhhh! Yaaaaihhh_--"
_Yaaihhhhh! Yaaihhhhh! Yaaaihh! Yaaaaaaaihhhh!_ Ten thousand grey
soldiers with the sun on their bayonets--
* * * * *
There came by a riderless horse, gentle enough, unfrightened, wanting
only to drink at the little stream. Steve caught him without
difficulty, climbed into the saddle and followed the army. The army was
a clanging, shouting, triumphant thing to follow--to follow into the
Winchester streets, into a town that was mad with joy. A routed army was
before it, pouring down Loudoun Street, pouring down Main Street,
pouring down every street and lane, pouring out of the northern end of
the town, out upon the Martinsburg pike, upon the road to the frontier,
the road to the Potomac. There was yet firing in narrow side streets, a
sweeping out of single and desperate knots of blue. Church bells were
pealing, women young and old were out of doors, weeping for pure joy,
laughing for the same, praising, blessing, greeting sons, husbands,
lovers, brothers, friends, deliverers. A bearded figure, leaf brown, on
a sorrel nag, answered with a gravity strangely enough not without
sweetness the acclamation with which he was showered, sent an aide to
hasten the batteries, sent another with an order to General George H.
Steuart commanding cavalry, jerked his hand into the air and swept on in
pursuit out by the Martinsburg pike. The infantry followed him,
hurrahing. They tasted to-day the sweets of a patriot soldiery relieving
a patriot town. The guns came thundering through, the horses doing well,
the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving caps and hats, bowing to
half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, praises, blessings. Ewell's
division poured through--Ewell on the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing
his men forward, pithily answering the happy people, all the while the
church bells clanging. The town was in a clear flame of love,
patriotism, martial spirit, every heart enlarged, every house thrown
open to the wounded whom, grey and blue alike, the grey surgeons were
bringing in.
For fear to keep him, Steve had left his captured horse's back and let
him go loose. Now on foot and limping terribly, trying to look equal
parts fire-eater and woe-begone, he applied to a grey-headed couple in
the dooryard of a small clean home. Would they give a hurt soldier a bed
and something to eat? Why, of course, of course they would! Come right
in! What command?
"The Stonewall Brigade, sir. You see, 'twas this a-way. I was helping
serve a gun, most of the gunners being strewed around dead--and we
infantrymen having to take a hand, and a thirty pound Parrott came and
burst right over us! I was stooping, like this, my thumb on the vent,
like that--and a great piece struck me in the back! I just kin hobble.
Thank you, ma'am! You are better to me than I deserve."
CHAPTER XXIII
MOTHER AND SON
Margaret Cleave drew her arms gently from under the wounded boy she had
been tending. He was asleep; had gone to sleep calling her "Maman" and
babbling of wild-fowl on the bayou. She kissed him lightly on the
forehead "for Will"--Will, somewhere on the Martinsburg pike, battling
in heat and dust, battling for the Confederacy, driving the foe out of
Virginia, back across the Potomac--Will who, little more than a year
ago, had been her "baby," whom she kissed each night when he went to
sleep in his little room next hers at Three Oaks. She straightened
herself and looked around for more work. The large room, the "chamber"
of the old and quiet house in which she and Miriam had stayed on when in
March the army had withdrawn from Winchester, held three wounded. Upon
the four-post bed, between white valance and tester, lay a dying
officer. His wife was with him, and a surgeon, who had found the ball
but could not stop the hemorrhage. A little girl sat on the bed, and
every now and then put forth a hand and timidly stroked her father's
clay-cold wrist. On the floor, on a mattress matching the one on which
the boy lay, was stretched a gaunt giant from some backwoods or mountain
clearing. Margaret knelt beside him and he smiled up at her. "I ain't
much hurt, and I ain't sufferin' to amount to nothin'. Ef this pesky
butternut wouldn't stick in this here hurt place--" She cut the shirt
from a sabre wound with the scissors hanging at her waist, then bringing
water bathed away the grime and dried blood. "You're right," she said.
"It isn't much of a cut. It will soon heal." They spoke in whispers, not
to disturb the central group. "But you don't look easy. You are still
suffering. What is it?"
"It ain't nothing. It's my foot, that a shell kind of got in the way of.
But don't you tell anybody--for fear they might want to cut it off,
ma'am."
She looked and made a pitying sound. The officer on the bed had now
breathed his last. She brought the unneeded surgeon to the crushed
ankle, summoned to help him another of the women in the house, then
moved to the four-poster and aided the tearless widow, young and soon
again to become a mother, to lay the dead calm and straight. The little
girl began to shake and shudder. She took her in her arms and carried
her out of the room. She found Miriam helping in the storeroom. "Get the
child's doll and take her into the garden for a little while. She is
cold as ice; if she begins to cry don't stop her. When she is better,
give her to Hannah and you go sit beside the boy who is lying on the
floor in the chamber. If he wakes, give him water, but don't let him
lift himself. He looks like Will."
In the hall a second surgeon met her. "Madam, will you come help? I've
got to take off a poor fellow's leg." They entered a room together--the
parlour this time, with the windows flung wide and the afternoon
sunlight lying in pools among the roses of the carpet. Two mahogany
tables had been put together, and the soldier lay atop, the crushed leg
bared and waiting. The surgeon had an assistant and the young man's
servant was praying in a corner. Margaret uttered a low, pained
exclamation. This young lieutenant had been well liked last winter in
Winchester. He had been much at this house. He had a good voice and she
had played his accompaniments while he sang--oh, the most sentimental of
ditties! Miriam had liked him very well--they had read together--"The
Pilgrims of the Rhine"--Goldsmith--Bernardin de Saint Pierre. He had a
trick of serenading--danced well. She put her cheek down to his hand.
"My poor, poor boy! My poor, brave boy!"
The lieutenant smiled at her--rather a twisted smile, shining out of a
drawn white face. "I've got to be brave on one leg. Anyhow, Mrs. Cleave,
I can still sing and read. How is Miss Miriam?"
The assistant placed a basin and cloths. The surgeon gave a jerk of his
head. "You come on this side, Mrs. Cleave."
"No chloroform?"
"No chloroform. Contraband of war. Damned chivalric contest."
Late in the afternoon, as she was crossing the hall upon some other of
the long day's tasks she heard a group of soldiers talking. There were
infantry officers from the regiments left in town, and a dusty
cavalryman or two--riders from the front with dispatches or orders. One
with an old cut glass goblet of water in his hand talked and drank,
talked and drank.
"The aide came to George H. Steuart and said, 'General Jackson orders
you to pursue vigorously. He says lose no time. He says kill and
capture; let as few as possible get to the Potomac. Do your best.'" He
filled his glass again from the pitcher standing by. "Steuart answers
that he's of General Ewell's Division. Must take his orders from General
Ewell."
"West Point notions! Good Lord!"
"Says the aide, 'General Jackson commands General Ewell, and so may
command you. His orders are that you shall pursue vigorously'--Says
Steuart, 'I will send a courier to find General Ewell. If his orders are
corroboratory I will at once press forward--'"
"Good God! did he think Banks would wait?"
"Old Dick was in front; he wasn't behind. Took the aide two hours to
find him, sitting on Rifle, swearing because he didn't see the cavalry!
Well, he made the air around him blue, and sent back highly
'corroboratory' orders. Steuart promptly 'pressed forward vigorously,'
but Lord! Banks was halfway to the Potomac, his troops streaming by
every cow path, Stonewall and the infantry advance behind him--but
Little Sorrel couldn't do it alone." He put down the glass. "Steuart'll
catch it when Old Jack reports. We might have penned and killed the
snake, and now it's gotten away!"
"Never mind! It's badly hurt and it's quitting Virginia at a high rate
of speed. It's left a good bit of its skin behind, too. Hawks says he's
damned if the army shan't have square meals for a week, and
Crutchfield's smiling over the guns--"
"Falligant says the men are nigh dead, officers nodding in their
saddles, giving orders in their sleep. Falligant says--"
Margaret touched one of the group upon the arm. He swung round in the
hall that was darkening toward sunset and swept off his hat. "Do you
think, sir, that there will be fighting to-night?"
"I think not, madam. There may be skirmishes of course--our men may cut
off parties of the enemy. But there will be no general battle. It is
agreed that General Banks will get across the Potomac. The troops will
bivouac this side of Martinsburg."
The wounded in the house slept or did not sleep. The young widow sat
beside the dead officer. She would not be drawn away--said that she was
quite comfortable, not unhappy, there was so much happiness to remember.
Hannah found a nook for the little girl and put her to bed. The officers
went away. There were a thousand things to do, and, also, they must
snatch some sleep, or the brain would reel. The surgeon, hollow-eyed,
grey with fatigue, dropping for sleep, spoke at the open front door to
the elderly lady of the house and to Margaret Cleave. "Lieutenant Waller
will die, I am afraid, though always while there is life there is hope.
No, there is nothing--I have given Mrs. Cleave directions, and his boy
is a good nurse. I'll come back myself about midnight. That Louisiana
youngster is all right. You might get two men and move him from that
room. No; the other won't lose the foot. He, too, might be moved, if you
can manage it. I'll be back--"
"I wish you might sleep yourself, doctor."
"Shouldn't mind it. I don't expect you women do much sleeping either.
Got to do without like coffee for a while. Funny world, funny life,
funny death, funny universe. Could give whoever made it a few points