The Long Roll
somewhat chilly courtesy, by temperament a theorist, able with the
ability of the field marshal or the scholar in the study, not with that
of the reader and master of men, the hardest of workers, devoted,
honourable, single-minded, a figure on which a fierce light has beaten,
a man not perfect, not always just, nor always wise, bound in the toils
of his own personality, but yet an able man who suffered and gave all,
believed in himself, and in his cause, and to the height of his power
laboured for it day and night--Mr. Davis stood speaking of Indian
affairs and of the defences of the Western waters.
Warwick Cary, his daughter on his arm, spoke to the President's wife, a
comely, able woman, with a group about her of strangers whom she was
putting at their ease, then moved with Judith to the windows. The
President stepped a little forward to meet them. "Ah, General Cary, I
wish you could bring with you a wind from the Blue Ridge this stifling
night! We must make this good news from the Mississippi refresh us
instead! I saw your troops on the Nine-Mile road to-day. They cheered
me, but I felt like cheering them! Miss Cary, I have overheard six
officers ask to-night if Miss Cary had yet come."
Warwick began to talk with Judge Campbell. Judith laughed. "It was not
of me they were asking, Mr. President! There is Hetty Cary entering now,
and behind her Constance, and there are your six officers! I am but a
leaf blown from the Blue Ridge."
"Gold leaf," said Wade Hampton.
The President used toward all women a stately deference. "I hope," he
said, "that, having come once to rest in this room, you will often let a
good wind blow you here--" Other guests claimed his attention. "Ah, Mrs.
Stanard--Mrs. Enders--Ha, Wigfall! I saw your Texans this afternoon--"
Judith found General Stuart beside her. "Miss Cary, a man of the Black
Troop came back to camp yesterday. Says he, 'They've got an angel in the
Stonewall Hospital! She came from Albemarle, and her name is Judith. If
I were Holofernes and a Judith like that wanted my head, by George, I'd
cut it off myself to please her!'--Yes, yes, my friend!--Miss Cary, may
I present my Chief of Staff, Major the Baron Heros von Borcke? Talk
poetry with him, won't you?--Ha, Fauquier! that was a pretty dash you
made yesterday! Rather rash, I thought--"
The other withered him with a look. "That was a carefully planned,
cautiously executed manoeuvre; modelled it after our old
reconnoissance at Cerro Gordo. You to talk of rashness!--Here's A. P.
Hill."
Judith, with her Prussian soldier of fortune, a man gentle, intelligent,
and brave, crossed the room to one of the groups of men and women. Those
of the former who were seated rose, and one of the latter put out an arm
and claimed her with a caressing touch. "You are late, child! So am I.
They brought in a bad case of fever, and I waited for the night nurse.
Sit here with us! Mrs. Fitzgerald's harp has been sent for and she is
going to sing--"
Judith greeted the circle. A gentleman pushed forward a chair. "Thank
you, Mr. Soule. My father and I stay but a little while, Mrs. Randolph,
but it must be long enough to hear Mrs. Fitzgerald sing--Yes, he is
here, Colonel Gordon--there, speaking with Judge Campbell and General
Hill.--How is the general to-day, Mrs. Johnston?"
"Better, dear, or I should not be here. I am here but for a moment. He
made me come--lying there on Church Hill, staring at that light in the
sky!--Here is the harp."
Its entrance, borne by two servants, was noted. The violins were hushed,
the groups turned, tended to merge one into another. A voice was heard
speaking with a strong French accent--Colonel the Count Camille de
Polignac, tall, gaunt, looking like a Knight of Malta--begging that the
harp might be placed in the middle of the room. It was put there. Jeb
Stuart led to it the lovely Louisianian. Mrs. Fitzgerald drew off her
gloves and gave them to General Magruder to hold, relinquished her fan
to Mr. Jules de Saint Martin, her bouquet to Mr. Francis Lawley of the
London _Times_, and swept her white hand across the strings. She was a
mistress of the harp, and she sang to it in a rich, throbbingly sweet
voice, song after song as they were demanded. Conversation through the
large room did not cease, but voices were lowered, and now and then came
a complete lull in which all listened. She sang old Creole ditties and
then Scotch and Irish ballads.
Judith found beside her chair the Vice-President. "Ah, Miss Cary, when
you are as old as I am, and have read as much, you will notice how
emphatic is the testimony to song and dance and gaiety on the eve of
events which are to change the world! The flower grows where in an hour
the volcano will burst forth; the bird sings in the tree which the
earthquake will presently uproot; the pearly shell gleams where will
pass the tidal wave--" He looked around the room. "Beauty, zeal, love,
devotion--and to-morrow the smoke will roll, the cannon thunder, and the
brute emerge all the same--just as he always does--just as he always
does--stamping the flower into the mire, wringing the bird's neck,
crushing the shell! Well, well, let's stop moralizing. What's she
singing now? Hm! 'Kathleen Mavourneen.' Ha, Benjamin! What's the news
with you?"
Judith, turning a little aside, dreamily listened now to the singer, now
to phrases of the Vice-President and the Secretary of State. "After
this, if we beat them now, a treaty surely.... Palmerston--The
Emperour--The Queen of Spain--Mason says ... Inefficiency of the
blockade--Cotton obligations--Arms and munitions...." Still talking,
they moved away. A strident voice reached her from the end of the
room--L. Q. C. Lamar, here to-night despite physicians. "The fight had
to come. We are men, not women. The quarrel had lasted long enough. We
hate each other, so the struggle had to come. Even Homer's heroes, after
they had stormed and scolded long enough, fought like brave men, long
and well--"
"Ye banks and braes and streams around
The castle o' Montgomery--"
sang Mrs. Fitzgerald.
There was in the room that slow movement which imperceptibly changes a
well-filled stage, places a figure now here, now there, shifts the
grouping and the lights. Now Judith was one of a knot of younger women.
In the phraseology of the period, all were "belles"; Hetty and Constance
Cary, Mary Triplett, Turner MacFarland, Jenny Pegram, the three Fishers,
Evelyn Cabell, and others. About them came the "beaux,"--the younger
officers who were here to-night, the aides, the unwedded legislators.
Judith listened, talked, played her part. She had a personal success in
Richmond. Her name, her beauty, the at times quite divine expression of
her face, made the eye follow, after which a certain greatness of mind
was felt and the attention became riveted. The pictures moved again,
Mrs. Fitzgerald singing "positively, this time, the last!" Some of the
"belles," attended by the "beaux," drifted toward the portico, several
toward the smaller room and its softly lowered lights. A very young man,
an artillerist, tall and fair, lingered beside Judith. "'Auld lang
Syne!' I do not think that she ought to sing that to-night! I have
noticed that when you hear music just before battle the strain is apt to
run persistently in your mind. She ought to sing us 'Scots wha hae--'"
A gentleman standing near laughed. "That's good, or my name isn't Ran
Tucker! Mrs. Fitzgerald, Captain Pelham does not wish to be left in such
'a weavin' way.' He says that song is like an April shower on a bag of
powder. The inference is that it will make the horse artillery
chicken-hearted. I move that you give John Pelham and the assemblage
'Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled'--"
The singing ended, there was a wider movement through the room. Judith,
with Pelham still beside her, walked on the portico, in the warm,
rose-laden air. There was no moon, and the light in the east was very
marked. "If we strike McClellan's right," said the artillerist, "all
this hill and the ground to the north of it will be the place from which
to watch the battle. If it lasts after nightfall, you will see the
exploding shells beautifully." They stood at the eastern end, Judith
leaning against one of the pillars. Here a poet and editor of the
_Southern Literary Messenger_ joined them; with him a young man, a
sculptor, Alexander Galt. A third, Washington the painter, came, too.
The violins had begun again--Mozart now--"The Magic Flute." "Oh, smell
the roses!" said the poet. "To-night the roses, to-morrow the
thorns--but roses, too, among the thorns, deep and sweet! There will
still be roses, will there not, Miss Cary?"
"Yes, still," said Judith. "If I could paint, Mr. Washington, I would
take that gleam on the horizon."
"Yes, is it not fine? It is a subject, however, for a mystic. I have an
idea myself for a picture, if I can get the tent-cloth to paint it on,
and if some brushes and tubes I sent for ever get through the block."
"If I had a tent I certainly would give it to you," said Pelham. "What
would you paint?"
"A thing that happened ten days ago. The burial of Latane. The women
buried him, you know. At Summer Hill.--Mrs. Brockenborough, and her
daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Somebody read me a letter about
it--so simple it wrung your heart! 'By God,' I said, 'what Roman things
happen still!' And I thought I'd like to paint the picture."
"I read the letter, too," said the poet. "I am making some verses about
it--see if you like them--
"For woman's voice, in accents soft and low,
Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read
O'er his hallowed dust the ritual for the dead:
"'Tis sown in weakness, it is raised in power'--
Softly the promise floated on the air,
While the low breathings of the sunset hour
Came back responsive to the mourner's prayer.
Gently they laid him underneath the sod
And left him with his fame, his country and his God!"
"Yes," said Judith, sweetly and gravely. "How can we but like them? And
I hope that you will find the tent-cloth, Mr. Washington."
Reentering, presently, the large room, they found a vague stir, people
beginning to say good-night, and yet lingering. "It is growing late,"
said some one, "and yet I think that he will come." Her father came up
to her and drew her hand through his arm. "Here is General Lee now. We
will wait a moment longer, then go."
They stood in the shadow of the curtains watching the Commander-in-Chief
just pausing to greet such and such an one in his progress toward the
President. An aide or two came behind; the grand head and form moved on,
simple and kingly. Judith drew quicker breath. "Oh, he looks so great a
man!"
"He looks what he is," said Warwick Cary. "Now let us go, too, and say
good-night."
CHAPTER XXXI
THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS
Miriam and Christianna sat at the window, watching. The day was
parching, the sky hot blue steel, the wind that blew the dust through
the streets like a breath from the sun himself. People went by, all
kinds of people, lacking only soldiers. There seemed no soldiers in
town. Miriam, alternately listless and feverishly animated, explained
matters to the mountain girl. "When there's to be a battle, every one
goes to the colours.--Look at that old, old, old man, hobbling on his
stick. You'd think that death was right beside him, wouldn't you?--ready
to tap him on the shoulder and say, 'Fall, fall, old leaf! But it isn't
so; death is on the battlefield looking for young men. Listen to his
stick--tap, tap, tap, tap, tap--"
Christianna rose, looked at the clock, which was about to strike noon,