The Long Roll
myself. Excuse me, ladies, I hardly know what I am saying. Yes, thank
you, I see the step. I'll come back about midnight."
The old yards up and down the old street were much trampled, shrubbery
broken, fences down, the street thick dust, and still strewn with
accoutrements that had been thrown away, with here and there a broken
wagon. Street and pavement, there was passing and repassing--the life of
the rear of an army, and the faring to and fro on many errands of the
people of the relieved town. There were the hospitals and there were the
wounded in private houses. There were the dead, and all the burials for
the morrow--the negroes digging in the old graveyard, and the children
gathering flowers. There were the living to be cared for, the many
hungry to be fed. All the town was exalted, devoted, bent on service--a
little city raised suddenly to a mountain platform, set in a strange,
high light, fanned by one of the oldest winds, and doing well with a
clear intensity.
Miriam came and stood beside her mother, leaning her head upon the
other's breast. The two seemed like elder and younger sister, no more.
There was a white jasmine over the porch, in the yard the fireflies were
beginning to sparkle through the dusk. "Dear child, are you very tired?"
"I am not tired at all. That Louisiana boy called me
'Zephine'--'Zephine!' 'Zephine, your eyes are darker, but your lips are
not so red.' He said he kept all my letters over his heart--only he tore
them up before the battle, tore them into little bits and gave them to
the wind, so that if he fell into his hands 'l'ennemi' might not read
them."
"The doctor says that he will do well."
"He is like Will. Oh, mother, I feel ten thousand years old! I feel as
though I had always lived."
"I, too, dear. Always. I have always borne children and they have always
gone forth to war. They say there will be no fighting to-night."
She put her daughter slightly from her and leaned forward, listening.
"That is Richard. His foot strikes that way upon the street."
In the night, in his mother's chamber Cleave waked from three hours of
dreamless sleep. She stood beside him. "My poor, dead man, I hated to
keep my word."
He smiled. "It would have been as hard to wake up at the end of a
week!--Mother, I am so dirty!"
"The servants have brought you plenty of hot water, and we have done the
best we could with your uniform. Here is fresh underwear, and a
beautiful shirt. I went myself down to the officer in charge of captured
stores. He was extremely good and let me have all I wished. Tullius is
here. He came in an hour ago with Dundee. I will send him up. When you
are dressed come into the hall. I will have something there for you to
eat."
Richard drew her hand to his lips. "I wonder who first thought of so
blessed an institution as a mother? Only a mother could have thought of
it, and so there you are again in the circle!"
When he was dressed he found in the wide upper hall without his door,
spread upon a small leaf table, a meal frugal and delicate. A breeze
came through the open window, and with it the scent of jasmine. The wind
blew the candle flame until his mother, stepping lightly, brought a
glass shade and set it over the silver stick. Small moths flew in and
out, and like a distant ground swell came the noise of the fevered town.
The house itself was quiet after the turmoil of the day; large halls and
stair in dimness, the ill or wounded quiet or at least not loudly
complaining. Now and then a door softly opened or closed; a woman's
figure or that of some coloured servant passed from dimness to dimness.
They passed and the whole was quiet again. Mother and son spoke low. "I
will not wake Miriam until just time to say good-bye. She is
overwrought, poor child! She had counted so on seeing Will."
"We will press on now, I think, to Harper's Ferry. But events may bring
us this way again. The 2d is bivouacked by a little stream, and I saw
him fast asleep. He is growing strong, hardy, bronzed. It is striking
twelve. Tullius is saddling Dundee."
"There will be no fighting in the morning?"
"No. Not, perhaps, until we reach Harper's Ferry. Banks will get across
to Williamsport to-night. For the present he is off the board. Saxton at
Harper's Ferry has several thousand men, and he will be at once heavily
reinforced from Washington. It is well for us and for Richmond that that
city is so nervous."
"General Jackson is doing wonderful work, is he not, Richard?"
"Yes. It is strange to see how the heart of the army has turned to him.
'Old Jack' can do no wrong. But he is not satisfied with to-day's work."
"But if they are out of Virginia--"
"They should be in Virginia--prisoners of war. It was a cavalry
failure.--Well, it cannot be helped."
"Will you cross at Harper's Ferry?"
"With all my heart I wish we might! Defensive war should always be waged
in the enemy's territory. But I am certain that we are working with the
explicit purpose of preventing McDowell's junction with McClellan and
the complete investment of Richmond which would follow that junction. We
are going to threaten Washington. The government there may be trusted, I
think, to recall McDowell. Probably also they will bring upon our rear
Fremont from the South Branch. That done, we must turn and meet them
both."
"Oh, war! Over a year now it has lasted! There are so many in black, and
the church bells have always a tolling sound. And then the flowers
bloom, and we hear laughter as we knit."
"All colours are brighter and all sounds are deeper. If there is horror,
there is also much that is not horror. And there is nobility as well as
baseness. And the mind adapts itself, and the ocean is deeper than we
think. Somewhere, of course, lies the shore of Brotherhood, and beyond
that the shore of Oneness. It is not unlikely, I think, that we may
reinforce Johnston at Richmond."
"Then Miriam and I will make our way there also. How long will it last,
Richard--the war?"
"It may last one year and it may last ten. The probability is perhaps
five."
"Five years! All the country will be grey-haired."
"War is a forge, mother. Many things will be forged--more of iron
perhaps than of gold."
"You have no doubt of the final victory?"
"If I ever have I put it from me. I do not doubt the armies nor the
generals--and, God knows, I do not doubt the women at home! If I am not
so sure in all ways of the government, at least no man doubts its
integrity and its purpose. The President, if he is clear and narrow
rather than clear and broad, if he sometimes plays the bigot, if he is a
good field officer rather than the great man of affairs we need--yet he
is earnest, disinterested, able, a patriot. And Congress does its
best--is at least eloquent and fires the heart. Our crowding needs are
great and our resources small; it does what it can. The departments work
hard. Benjamin, Mallory, Randolph, Meminger--they are all good men. And
the railroad men and the engineers and the chemists and the
mechanics--all so wonderfully and pathetically ingenious, labouring day
and night, working miracles without material, making bricks without
straw. Arsenals, foundries, powder-mills, workshop, manufactories--all
in a night, out of the wheat fields! And the runners of blockades, and
the river steamer men, the special agents, the clerks, the workers of
all kind--a territory large as Europe and every man and woman in the
field in one aspect or another! If patriotism can save and ability,
fortitude, endurance, we are saved. And yet I think of my old
'Plutarch's Lives,' and of all the causes that have been lost. And
sometimes in the middle of the night, I see all our blocked ports--and
the Mississippi, slipping from our hands. I do not believe that England
will come to our help. There is a sentiment for us, undoubtedly, but
like the island mists it stays at home."
He rose from the table. "And yet the brave man fights and must hope.
Hope is the sky above him--and the skies have never really fallen. I do
not know how I will come out of war! I know how I went into it, but no
man knows with what inner change he will come out. Enough now, being in,
to serve with every fibre."
She shaded her eyes with her hand. With her soft brown hair, with her
slender maturity, with the thin fine bit of lace at her neck, against
the blowing curtains and in the jasmine scent she suggested something
fine and strong and sweet, of old time, of all time. "I know that you
will serve with every fibre," she said. "I know it because I also shall
serve that way." Presently she dropped her hand and looked up at him
with a face, young, soft, and bright, lit from within. "And so at last,
Richard, you are happy in the lovely ways!"
He put something in her hand. "Would you like to see it? She sent it to
me, two weeks ago. It does not do her justice."
Margaret laughed. "They never do! But I agree with you--and yet, it is
lovely! Her eyes were always wonderful, and she smiles like some old
picture. I shall love her well, Richard."
"And she you. Mother, the country lies on my heart. I see a dark'ning
sky and many graveyards, and I hear, now 'Dixie,' now a Dead March. And
yet, through it all there runs a singing stream, under a blue Heaven--"
A little later, Miriam having waked, he said a lingering, fond good-bye,
and leaving them both at the gate in the dead hour before the dawn, rode
away on Dundee, Tullius following him, down the pike, toward the
sleeping army. He passed the pickets and came to the first regiment
before dawn; to the 65th just as the red signals showed in the east. It
was a dawn like yesterday's. Far and wide lay the army, thousands of
men, motionless on the dew-drenched earth, acorns fallen from the tree
of war. He met an officer, plodding through the mist, trying to read in
the dim light a sheaf of orders which he carried. "Good-morning,
adjutant."
"Good-morning. Richard Cleave, isn't it? Hear you are going to be a
general. Hear Old Jack said so."
Cleave laughed, a vibrant sound, jest and determination both. "Of course
I am! I settled that at sixteen, one day when I was ploughing corn. How
they all look, scattered wide like that!"
"Reveille not until six. The general's going to beat the devil round the
stump. Going to have a Sunday on a Monday. Rest, clean up, divine
service. Need all three, certainly need two. Good record the last few
weeks--reason to be thankful. Well, good-bye! Always liked you, Cleave!"
Reveille sounded, and the army arose. Breakfast was a sumptuous thing,
delicately flavoured with compliments upon the taste, range, and
abundance of the Federal commissariat. Roll call followed, with the
moment's full pause after names that were not answered to. A general
order was read.
_Within four weeks this army has made long and rapid marches, fought
six combats and two battles, signally defeating the enemy in each
one, captured several stands of colours and pieces of artillery,
with numerous prisoners and vast medical, ordnance, and army stores;
and finally driven the host that was ravaging our country into utter
rout. The general commanding would warmly express to the officers
and men under his command, his joy in their achievements and his
thanks for their brilliant gallantry in action and their patient
obedience under the hardship of forced marches; often more painful
to the brave soldier than the dangers of battle. The explanation of
the severe exertions to which the commanding general called the
army, which were endured by them with such cheerful confidence in
him, is now given, in the victory of yesterday. He receives this
proof of their confidence in the past with pride and gratitude, and