The Long Roll
and laid about him--he was that gallant. The men ought to 'lect him
back. He sure did well."
The nearest house flung open its doors. "Bring him right in here--oh,
poor soldier! Right here in the best room!--Run, Maria, and turn down
the bed. Oh, poor boy! He looks like my Robert down at Richmond! This
way--get a little blackberry wine, Betty, and the scissors and my roll
of lint--"
Billy laid him on the bed in the best room. "Thar now! You air all
right. The doctor'll come just as soon as I can find him, 'n' then I'll
get back to the boys--Wait--I didn't hear, I'll put my ear down. You
couldn't lose all that blood and not be awful weak--"
"I'd be ashamed to report now!" whispered Coffin. "Maybe I was wrong--"
"Sho!" said Billy. "We're all wrong more or less. Here, darn you, drink
your wine, and stop bothering!"
Across the Shenandoah Stonewall Jackson and the 37th Virginia came down
from the heights with the impetuosity of a torrent. Behind them poured
other grey troops. On the cliff heads Poague and Carpenter came into
position and began with grape and canister. The blue Parrott, full
before the bridge mouth, menacing the lane within, answered with a
shriek of shells. The 37th and Jackson left the road, plunged down the
ragged slope of grass and vines, and came obliquely toward the dark
tunnel. Jackson and Little Sorrel had slipped into their battle aspect.
You would have said that every auburn hair of the general's head and
beard was a vital thing. His eyes glowed as though there were lamps
behind, and his voice rose like a trumpet of promise and doom.
"Halt!--Aim at the gunners!--Fire! Fix bayonets! Charge!"
The 37th rushed in column through the bridge. The blue cavalry fired one
volley. The unwounded among the blue artillerymen strove to plant a
shell within the dusky lane. But most of the gunners were down, or the
fuse was wrong. The grey torrent leaped out of the tunnel and upon the
gun. They took it and turned it against the horsemen. The blue cavalry
fled. On the bluff heads above the river three grey batteries came into
action. The 37th Virginia began to sweep the streets of Port Republic.
The blue cavalry, leaving the guns, leaving prisoners they had taken and
their wounded, turned alike from the upper end of the village and rode,
pell-mell, for the South Fork. One and all they splashed through, not
now in covering mist, but in hot sunshine, the 37th volleying at their
heels and from the bluffs above the Shenandoah, Poague and Carpenter and
Wooding strewing their path with grape and canister.
A mile or two in the deep woods they met Shields's infantry advance.
There followed a movement toward the town--futile enough, for as the
vanguard approached, the Confederate batteries across the river limbered
up, trotted or galloped to other positions on the green bluff heads, and
trained the guns on the ground between Port Republic and the head of the
Federal column. Winder's brigade came also and took position on the
heights commanding Lewiston, and Taliaferro's swung across the bridge
and formed upon the townward side of South Fork. Shields halted. All
day he halted, listening to the guns at Cross Keys.
Sitting Little Sorrel at the northern end of the bridge, Stonewall
Jackson watched Taliaferro's men break step and cross. A staff officer
ventured to inquire what the general thought General Shields would do.
"I think, sir, that he will stay where he is."
"All day, sir?"
"All day."
"He has ten thousand men. Will he not try to attack?"
"No, sir! No! He cannot do it. I should tear him to pieces."
A heavy sound came into being. The staff officer swung round on his
horse. "Listen, sir!"
"Yes. Artillery firing to the northwest. Fremont will act without
Shields."
A courier came at a gallop. "General Ewell's compliments, sir, and the
battle of Cross Keys is beginning."
"Good! good! My compliments to General Ewell, and I expect him to win
it."
CHAPTER XXVII
JUDITH AND STAFFORD
The cortege bearing Ashby to his grave wound up and up to the pass in
the Blue Ridge. At the top it halted. The ambulance rested beside a grey
boulder, while the cavalry escort dismounted and let the horses crop the
sweet mountain grass. Below them, to the east, rolled Piedmont Virginia;
below them to the west lay the great Valley whence they had come. As
they rested they heard the cannon of Cross Keys, and with a glass made
out the battle smoke.
For an hour they gazed and listened, anxious and eager; then the
horsemen remounted, the ambulance moved from the boulder, and all went
slowly down the long loops of road. Down and down they wound, from the
cool, blowing air of the heights into the warm June region of red roads,
shady trees and clear streams, tall wheat and ripening cherries, old
houses and gardens. They were moving toward the Virginia Central, toward
Meechum's Station.
A courier had ridden far in advance. At Meechum's was a little crowd of
country people. "They're coming! That's an ambulance!--Is he in the
ambulance? Everybody take off their hats. Is that his horse behind? Yes,
it is a horse that he sometimes rode, but the three stallions were
killed. How mournful they come! Albert Sidney Johnston is dead, and Old
Joe may die, he is so badly hurt--and Bee is dead, and Ashby is dead."
Three women got out of an old carryall. "One of you men come help us
lift the flowers! We were up at dawn and gathered all there were--"
The train from Staunton came in--box cars and a passenger coach. The
coffin, made at Port Republic, was lifted from the ambulance, out of a
bed of fading flowers. It was wrapped in the battle-flag. The crowd
bowed its head. An old minister lifted trembling hand. "God--this Thy
servant! God--this Thy servant!" The three women brought their lilies,
their great sprays of citron aloes. The coffin was placed in the aisle
of the passenger coach, and four officers followed as its guard. The
escort was slight. Never were there many men spared for these duties.
The dead would have been the first to speak against it. Every man in
life was needed at the front. The dozen troopers stalled their horses in
two of the box cars and themselves took possession of a third. The bell
rang, slowly and tollingly. The train moved toward Charlottesville, and
the little crowd of country folk was left in the June sunshine with the
empty ambulance. In the gold afternoon, the bell slowly ringing, the
train crept into Charlottesville.
In this town, convenient for hospitals and stores, midway between
Richmond and the Valley, a halting place for troops moving east and
west, there were soldiers enough for a soldier's escort to his resting
place. The concourse at the station was large, and a long train followed
the bier of the dead general out through the town to the University of
Virginia, and the graveyard beyond.
There were no students now at the University. In the white-pillared
rotunda surgeons held council and divided supplies. In the ranges, where
were the cell-like students' rooms, and in the white-pillared
professors' houses, lay the sick and wounded. From room to room, between
the pillars, moved the nursing women. To-day the rotunda was cleared.
Surgeons and nurses snatched one half-hour, and, with the families from
the professors' houses, and the men about the place and the servants,
gathered upon the rotunda steps, or upon the surrounding grassy slopes,
to watch the return of an old student. It was not long before they heard
the Dead March.
For an hour the body lay between the white columns before the rotunda
that Jefferson had built. Soldiers and civilians, women and children,
passing before the bier, looked upon the marble face and the hand that
clasped the sword. Then, toward sunset, the coffin lid was closed, the
bearers took the coffin up, the Dead March began again, and all moved
toward the graveyard.
Dusk gathered, soft and warm, and filled with fireflies. The Greenwood
carriage, with the three sisters and Miss Lucy, drew slowly through the
scented air up to the dim old house. Julius opened the door. The ladies
stepped out, and in silence went up the steps. Molly had been crying.
The little handkerchief which she dropped, and which was restored to her
by Julius, was quite wet.
Julius, closing the carriage door, looked after the climbing figures:
"Fo' de Lawd, you useter could hear dem laughin' befo' dey got to de big
oaks, and when dey outer de kerriage an' went up de steps dey was
chatterin' lak de birds at daybreak! An' now I heah dem sighin' an' Miss
Molly's handkerchief ez wet ez ef 't was in de washtub! De ol' times is
evaporated."
"Dat sholy so," agreed Isham, from the box. "Des look at me er-drivin'
horses dat once I'd er scorned to tech!--An' all de worl' er-mournin'.
Graveyards gitting full an' ginerals lyin' daid. What de use of dis heah
war, anyhow? W'ite folk ought ter hab more sence."
In the Greenwood dining-room they sat at table in silence, scarcely
touching Car'line's supper, but in the parlour afterward Judith turned
at bay. "Even Aunt Lucy--of all people in the world! Aunt Lucy, if you
do not smile this instant, I hope all the Greenwood shepherdesses will
step from out the roses and disown you! And Unity, if you don't play,
sing, look cheerful, my heart will break! Who calls it loss this
afternoon? He left a thought of him that will guide men on! Who doubts
that to-morrow morning we shall hear that Cross Keys was won? Oh, I know
that you are thinking most of General Ashby!--but I am thinking most of
Cross Keys!"
"Judith, Judith, you are the strongest of us all--"
"Judith, darling; nothing's going to hurt Richard! I just feel it--"
"Hush, Molly! Judith's not afraid."
"No. I am not afraid. I think the cannon have stopped at Cross Keys, and
that they are resting on the field.--Now, for us women. I do not think
that we do badly now. We serve all day and half the night, and we keep
up the general heart. I think that if in any old romance we read of
women like the women of the South in this war we would say, 'Those women
were heroic.' We have been at war for a year and two months. I see no
end of it. It is a desert, and no one knows how wide it is. We may
travel for years. Beside every marching soldier, there marches invisible
a woman soldier too. We are in the field as they are in the field, and
doing our part. No--we have not done at all badly, but now let us give
it all! There is a plane where every fibre is heroic. Let us draw to
full height, lift eyes, and travel boldly! We have to cross the desert,
but from the desert one sees all the stars! Let us be too wise for such
another drooping hour!" She came and kissed her aunt, and clung to her.
"I wasn't scolding, Aunt Lucy! How could I? But to-night I simply have
to be strong. I have to look at the stars, for the desert is full of
terrible shapes. Some one said that the battle with Shields may be
fought to-morrow. I have to look at the stars." She lifted herself. "We
finished 'Villette,' didn't we?--Oh, yes! I didn't like the ending.
Well, let us begin 'Mansfield Park'--Molly, have you seen my knitting?"
Having with his fellows of the escort from Port Republic seen the earth
heaped over the dead cavalry leader, Maury Stafford lay that night in
Charlottesville at an old friend's house. He slept little; the friend
heard him walking up and down in the night. By nine in the morning he
was at the University. "Miss Cary? She'll be here in about half an hour.
If you'll wait--"
"I'll wait," said Stafford. He sat down beneath an elm and, with his
eyes upon the road by which must approach the Greenwood carriage, waited
the half-hour. It passed; the carriage drew up and Judith stepped from
it. Her eyes rested upon him with a quiet friendliness. He had been her