The Long Roll
This war would crumble like that, if, with all the white men gone, there
were on the plantations faithlessness to trust, hatred, violence,
outrage--if there were among us, in Virginia alone, half a million
incendiaries! There aren't, thank God! Instead we owe a great debt of
gratitude to a dark foster-brother. The world knows pretty well what are
the armies in the field. But for the women, Miss Cary, I doubt if the
world knows that the women keep plantations, servants, armies, and
Confederacy going!"
"I think," said Judith, "that the surgeons should have a noble statue."
"Even if we do cut off limbs that might have been saved--hey? God knows,
they often might! and that there's haste and waste enough!--Here's Sam,
bringing in a visitor. A general, too--looks like a Titian I saw once."
"It is my father," said Judith. "He told me he would come for me."
A little later, father and daughter, moving through the ward, found the
man from Albemarle--not one of those who would go away to-morrow. He lay
gaunt and shattered, with strained eyes and fingers picking at the
sheet. "Don't you know me, Mocket?"
Mocket roused himself for one moment. "Course I know you, general! Crops
mighty fine this year! Never saw such wheat!" The light sank in his
eyes; his face grew as it was before, and his fingers picked at the
sheet. He spoke in a monotone. "We've had such a hard time since we left
home--We've had such a hard time since we left home--We've had such a
hard time since we left home--We--"
Judith dashed her hand across her eyes. "Come away! He says just that
all the time!"
They moved through the ward, Warwick Cary speaking to all. "No, men! I
can't tell you just when will be the battle, but we must look for it
soon--for one or for many. Almost any day now. No, I cannot tell you if
General Jackson is coming. It is not impossible. 'Washington Artillery?'
That's a command to be proud of. Let me see your Tiger Head." He looked
at the badge with its motto _Try Us_, and gave it back smilingly. "Well,
we do try you, do we not?--on every possible occasion!--Fifth North
Carolina? Wounded at Williamsburg!--King William Artillery?--Did you
hear what General D. H. Hill said at Seven Pines? He said that he would
rather be captain of the King William Artillery than President of the
Confederate States.--Barksdale's Mississippians? Why, men, you are all
by-words!"
The men agreed with him happily. "You've got pretty gallant fellows
yourself, general!" The King William man cleared his throat. "He's got a
daughter, too, that I'd like to--I'd like to _cheer_!"
"That's so, general!" said the men. "That's so! She's a chip of the old
block."
Father and daughter laughed and went on--out of this ward and into
another, quite empty. The two stood by the door and looked, and that
sadly enough. "All the cots, all the pallets," said Cary, in a low
voice. "And out in the lines, they who will lie upon them! And they
cannot see them stretching across their path. I do not know which place
seems now the most ghostly, here or there."
"It was hard to get mattresses enough. So many hospitals--and every one
has given and given--and beds must be kept for those who will be taken
to private houses. So, at last, some one thought of pew cushions. They
have been taken from every church in town. See! sewed together, they do
very well."
They passed into a room where a number of tables were placed, and from
this into another where several women were arranging articles on broad
wooden shelves. "If you will wait here, I will go slip on my outdoor
dress." One of the women turned. "Judith!--Cousin Cary!--come look at
these quilts which have been sent from over in Chesterfield!" She was
half laughing, half crying. "Rising Suns and Morning Stars and Jonah's
Gourds! Oh me! oh me! I can see the poor souls wrapped in them! The
worst of it is, they'll all be used, and we'll be thankful for them, and
wish for more! Look at this pile, too, from town! Tarletan dresses cut
into nets, and these surgeons' aprons made from damask tablecloths! And
the last fringed towels that somebody was saving, with the monogram so
beautifully done!" She opened a closet door. "Look! I'll scrape lint in
my sleep every night for a hundred years! The young girls rolled all
these bandages--" Another called her attention. "Will you give me the
storeroom key? Mrs. Haxall has just sent thirty loaves of bread, and
says she'll bake again to-morrow. There's more wine, too, from
Laburnum."
The first came back. "The room seems full of things, and yet we have
seen how short a way will go what seems so much! And every home gets
barer and barer! The merchants are as good as gold. They send and send,
but the stores are getting bare, too! Kent and Paine gave bales and
bales of cotton goods. We made them up into these--" She ran her hand
over great piles of nightshirts and drawers. "But now we see that we
have nothing like enough, and the store has given as much again, and in
every lecture room in town we are sewing hard to get more and yet more
done in time. The country people are so good! They have sent in
quantities of bar soap--and we needed it more than almost anything!--and
candles, and coarse towelling, and meal and bacon--and hard enough to
spare I don't doubt it all is! And look here, Cousin Cary!" She
indicated a pair of crutches, worn smooth with use. To one a slip of
paper was tied with a thread. Her kinsman bent forward and read it: "_I
kin mannedge with a stick_."
Judith returned, in her last year's muslin, soft and full, in the shady
Eugenie hat which had been sent her from Paris two years ago. It went
well with the oval face, the heavy bands of soft dark hair, the mouth of
sweetness and strength, the grave and beautiful eyes. Father and
daughter, out they stepped into the golden, late afternoon.
Main Street was crowded. A battery, four guns, each with six horses,
came up it with a heavy and jarring sound over the cobblestones. Behind
rode a squad or two of troopers. The people on the sidewalk called to
the cannoneers cheerful greetings and inquiries, and the cannoneers and
the troopers returned them in kind. The whole rumbled and clattered by,
then turned into Ninth Street. "Ordered out on Mechanicsville
pike--that's all they know," said a man.
The two Carys, freeing themselves from the throng, mounted toward the
Capitol Square, entered it, and walked slowly through the terraced,
green, and leafy place. There was passing and repassing, but on the
whole the place was quiet. "I return to the lines to-morrow," said
Warwick Cary. "The battle cannot be long postponed. I know that you will
not repeat what I say, and so I tell you that I am sure General Jackson
is on his way from the Valley. Any moment he may arrive."
"And then there will be terrible fighting?"
"Yes; terrible fighting--Look at the squirrels on the grass!"
As always in the square, there were squirrels in the great old trees,
and on the ground below, and as always there were negro nurses, bright
turbaned, aproned, ample formed, and capable. With them were their
charges, in perambulators, or, if older, flitting like white butterflies
over the slopes of grass. A child of three, in her hand a nut for the
squirrel, started to cross the path, tripped and fell. General Cary
picked her up, and, kneeling, brushed the dust from her frock, wooing
her to smiles with a face and voice there was no resisting. She
presently fell in love with the stars on his collar, then transferred
her affection to his sword hilt. Her mammy came hurrying. "Ef I des'
tuhn my haid, sumpin' bound ter happen, 'n' happen dat minute! Dar now!
You ain' hut er mite, honey, 'n' you's still got de goober fer de
squirl. Come mek yo' manners to de gineral!"
Released, the two went on. "Have you seen Edward?"
"Yes. Three days ago--pagan, insouciant, and happy! The men adore him.
Fauquier is here to-day."
"Oh!--I have not seen him for so long--"
"He will be at the President's to-night. I think you had best go with
me--"
"If you think so, father--"
"I know, dear child!--That poor brave boy in his cadet grey and
white.--But Richard is a brave man--and their mother is heroic. It is of
the living we must think, and this cause of ours. We are on the eve of
something terrible, Judith. When Jackson comes General Lee will have
eighty-five thousand men. Without reinforcements, with McDowell still
away, McClellan must number an hundred and ten thousand. North and
South, we are going to grapple, in swamp, and poisoned field, and dark
forest. We are gladiators stripped, and which will conquer the gods
alone can tell! But we ourselves can tell that we are determined--that
each side is determined--and that the grapple will be of giants. Well!
to-night, I think the officers who chance to be in town will go to the
President's House with these thoughts in mind. To-morrow we return to
the lines; and a great battle chant will be written before we tread
these streets again. For us it may be a paean or it may be a dirge, and
only the gods know which! We salute our flag to-night--the government
that may last as lasted Greece or Rome, or the government which may
perish, not two years old! I think that General Lee will be there for a
short time. It is something like a recognition of the moment--a
libation; and whether to life or to death, to an oak that shall live a
thousand years or to a dead child among nations, there is not one living
soul that knows!"
"I will go, father, of course. Will you come for me?"
"I or Fauquier. I am going to leave you here, at the gates. There is
something I wish to see the governor about, at the mansion."
He kissed her and let her go; stood watching her out of the square and
across the street, then with a sigh turned away to the mansion. Judith,
now on the pavement by St. Paul's, hesitated a moment. There was an
afternoon service. Women whom she knew, and women whom she did not know,
were going in, silent, or speaking each to each in subdued voices. Men,
too, were entering, though not many. A few were in uniform; others as
they came from the Capitol or from office or department. Judith, too,
mounted the steps. She was very tired, and her religion was an
out-of-door one, but there came upon her a craving for the quiet within
St. Paul's and for the beautiful, old, sonorous words. She entered,
found a shadowy pew beneath the gallery, and knelt a moment. As she rose
another, having perhaps marked her as she entered, paused at the door of
the pew. She saw who it was, put out a hand and drew her in. Margaret
Cleave, in her black dress, smiled, touched the younger woman's forehead
with her lips, and sat beside her. The church was not half filled; there
were no people very near them, and when presently there was singing, the
sweet, old-world lines beat distantly on the shores of their
consciousness. They sat hand in hand, each thinking of battlefields; the
one with a constant vision of Port Republic, the other of some
to-morrow's vast, melancholy, smoke-laden plain.
As was not infrequently the case in the afternoon, an army chaplain read
the service. One stood now before the lectern. "Mr. Corbin Wood,"
whispered Judith. Margaret nodded. "I know. We nursed him last winter in
Winchester. He came to see me yesterday. He knew about Will. He told me
little things about him--dear things! It seems they were together in an
ambulance on the Romney march."
Her whisper died. She sat pale and smiling, her beautiful hands lightly
folded in her lap. For all the years between them, she was in many ways
no older than Judith herself. Sometimes the latter called her "Cousin
Margaret," sometimes simply "Margaret." Corbin Wood read in a mellow
voice that made the words a part of the late sunlight, slanting in the