The Long Roll
"Greenwood," said Judith, "will be lonely without old friends." As she
spoke, she moved toward the house door. In passing a great porch chair
her dress caught on the twisted wood. Both men started forward, but
Stafford was much the nearer to her. Released, she thanked him with
grave kindness, went on to the doorway, and there turned, standing a
moment in her drapery of dim blue, in the two lights. She had about her
a long scarf of black lace, and now she drew it closer, holding it
beneath her chin with a hand slender, fine, and strong. "Good-night,"
she said. "It is not long to morning, now. Good-night, Mr. Stafford.
Good-night, Richard."
The "good-night" that Stafford breathed after her needed no commentary.
It was that of the lover confessed. Cleave, from his side of the porch,
looked across and thought, "I will be a fool no longer. She was merely
kind to me--a kindness she could afford. 'Do not go till morning--_dear
cousin_!'" There was a silence on the Greenwood porch, a white-pillared
rose-embowered space, paced ere this by lovers and rivals. It was broken
by Mr. Corbin Wood, returning from the fields and mounting the moonlit
steps. "I have thought it out," he said. "I am going as chaplain." He
touched Stafford, of whom he was fond, on the shoulder. "It's the
sweetest night, and as I came along I loved every leaf of the trees and
every blade of grass. It's home, it's fatherland, it's sacred soil, it's
mother, dear Virginia--"
He broke off, said good-night, and entered the house.
The younger men prepared to follow. "The next time that we meet," said
Stafford, "may be in the thunder of the fight. I have an idea that I'll
know it if you're there. I'll look out for you."
"And I for you," said Cleave. Each had spoken with entire courtesy and a
marked lack of amity. There was a moment's pause, a feeling as of the
edge of things. Cleave, not tall, but strongly made, with his thick dark
hair, his tanned, clean shaven, squarely cut face, stood very straight,
in earnest and formidable. The other, leaning against the pillar, was
the fairer to look at, and certainly not without his own strength. The
one thought, "I will know," and the other thought, "I believe you to be
my foe of foes. If I can make you leave this place early, without
speaking to her, I will do it."
Cleave turned squarely. "You have reason to regret leaving Greenwood--"
Stafford straightened himself against the pillar, studied for a moment
the seal ring which he wore, then spoke with deliberation. "Yes. It is
hard to quit Paradise for even such a tourney as we have before us. Ah
well! when one comes riding back the welcome will be the sweeter!"
They went indoors. Later, alone in a pleasant bedroom, the man who had
put a face upon matters which the facts did not justify, opened wide the
window and looked out upon moon-flooded hill and vale. "Do I despise
myself?" he thought. "If it was false to-night I may yet make it truth
to-morrow. All's fair in love and war, and God knows my all is in this
war! Judith! Judith! Judith! look my way, not his!" He stared into the
night, moodily enough. His room was at the side of the house. Below lay
a slope of flower garden, then a meadow, a little stream, and beyond, a
low hilltop crowned by the old Greenwood burying-ground. "Why not
sleep?... Love is war--the underlying, the primeval, the immemorial....
All the same, Maury Stafford--"
In her room upon the other side of the house, Judith had found the
candles burning on the dressing-table. She blew them out, parted the
window curtains of flowered dimity, and curling herself on the
window-seat, became a part of the April night. Crouching there in the
scented air, beneath the large, mild stars, she tried to think of
Virginia and the coming war, but at the end of every avenue she came
upon a morning hour. Perhaps it would be in the flower garden, perhaps
in the summer-house, perhaps in the plantation woods where the
windflower and the Judas tree were in bloom. Her heart was hopeful. So
lifted and swept was the world to-night, so ready for great things, that
her great thing also ought to happen, her rose of happiness ought to
bloom. "After to-morrow," she said to herself, "I will think of
Virginia, and I'll begin to help."
Toward daybreak, lying in the large four-post bed beneath the white
tasselled canopy, she fell asleep. The sun was an hour high when she
awoke. Hagar, the girl who waited upon her, came in and flung wide the
shutters. "Dar's er mockin' bird singin' mighty neah dish-yer window!
Reckon he gwine mek er nes' in de honeysuckle."
"I meant to wake up very early," said Judith. "Is any one downstairs
yet, Hagar?--No, not that dress. The one with the little flowers."
"Dar ain' nobody down yit," said Hagar. "Marse Richard Cleave, he done
come down early, 'way 'bout daybreak. He got one of de stable-men ter
saddle he horse an' he done rode er way. Easter, she come in de house
jes' ez he wuz leaving en he done tol' her ter tell marster dat he'd
done been thinkin' ez how dar wuz so much ter do dat he'd better mek an
early start, en he lef' good-bye fer de fambly. Easter, she ax him won't
he wait 'twel the ladies come down, en he say No. 'Twuz better fer him
ter go now. En he went. Dar ain' nobody else come down less'n hits Marse
Maury Stafford.--Miss Judith, honey, yo' ain' got enny mo' blood in yo'
face than dat ar counterpane! I gwine git yo' er cup er coffee!"
CHAPTER V
THUNDER RUN
Allan Gold, teaching the school on Thunder Run, lodged at the tollgate
halfway down the mountain. His parents were dead, his brothers moved
away. The mountain girls were pretty and fain, and matches were early
made. Allan made none; he taught with conscientiousness thirty
tow-headed youngsters, read what books he could get, and worked in the
tollgate keeper's small, bright garden. He had a passion for flowers. He
loved, too, to sit with his pipe upon the rude porch of the toll-house,
fanned by the marvellous mountain air, and look down over ridges of
chestnut and oak to the mighty valley below, and across to the far blue
wall of the Alleghenies.
The one-roomed, log-built schoolhouse stood a mile from the road across
the mountains, upon a higher level, in a fairy meadow below the mountain
clearings. A walnut tree shaded it, Thunder Run leaped by in cascades,
on either side the footpath Allan had planted larkspur and marigolds.
Here, on a May morning, he rang the bell, then waited patiently until
the last free-born imp elected to leave the delights of a minnow-filled
pool, a newly discovered redbird's nest, and a blockhouse in process of
construction against imaginary Indians. At last all were seated upon the
rude benches in the dusky room,--small tow-headed Jacks and Jills, heirs
to a field of wheat or oats, a diminutive tobacco patch, a log cabin, a
piece of uncleared forest, or perhaps the blacksmith's forge, a small
mountain store, or the sawmill down the stream. Allan read aloud the
Parable of the Sower, and they all said the Lord's Prayer; then he
called the Blue Back Speller class. The spelling done, they read from
the same book about the Martyr and his Family. Geography followed, with
an account of the Yang-tse-Kiang and an illustration of a pagoda, after
which the ten-year-olds took the front bench and read of little Hugh and
old Mr. Toil. This over, the whole school fell to ciphering. They
ciphered for half an hour, and then they had a history lesson, which
told of one Curtius who leaped into a gulf to save his country. History
being followed by the writing lesson, all save the littlest present
began laboriously to copy a proverb of Solomon.
Half-past eleven and recess drawing on! The scholars grew restless.
Could the bird's nest still be there? Were the minnows gone from the
pool? Had the blockhouse fallen down? Would writing go on forever?--The
bell rang; the teacher, whom they liked well enough, was speaking. _No
more school!_ Recess forever--or until next year, which was the same
thing! No more geography, reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling; no
more school! Hurrah! Of course the redbird's nest was swinging on the
bough, and the minnows were in the pool, and the blockhouse was
standing, and the sun shining with all its might! "All the men about
here are going to fight," said Allan. "I am going, too. So we'll have to
stop school until the war is over. Try not to forget what I've taught
you, children, and try to be good boys and girls. You boys must learn
now to be men, for you'll have to look after things and the women. And
you girls must help your mothers all you can. It's going to be hard
times, little folk! You've played a long time at fighting Indians, and
latterly I've noticed you playing at fighting Yankees. Playtime's over
now. It's time to work, to think, and to try to help. You can't fight
for Virginia with guns and swords, but every woman and child, every
young boy and old man in Virginia can make the hearts easier of those
who go to fight. You be good boys and girls and do your duty here on
Thunder Run, and God will count you as his soldiers just the same as if
you were fighting down there in the valley, or before Richmond, or on
the Potomac, or wherever we're going to fight. You're going to be good
children; I know it!" He closed the book before him. "School's over now.
When we take in again we'll finish the Roman History--I've marked the
place." He left his rude old desk and the little platform, and stepping
down amongst his pupils, gave to each his hand. Then he divided among
them the scanty supply of books, patiently answered a scurry of
questions, and outside, upon the sunshiny sward, with the wind in the
walnut tree and the larkspur beginning to bloom, said good-bye once
more. Jack and Jill gave no further thought to the bird's nest, the
minnows in the pool, the unfinished blockhouse. Off they rushed, up the
side of the mountain, over the wooded hills, along Thunder Run, where it
leaped from pool to pool. They must be home with the news! No more
school--no more school! And was father going--and were Johnny and Sam
and Dave? Where were they going to fight? As far as the big sawmill? as
far away as the _river_? Were the dogs going, too?
Allan Gold, left alone, locked the schoolhouse door, walked slowly along
the footpath between the flowers he had planted, and, standing by
Thunder Run, looked for awhile at the clear, brown water, then, with a
long breath and a straightening of the shoulders, turned away.
"Good-bye, little place!" he said, and strode down the ravine to the
road and the toll-house.
The tollgate keeper, old and crippled, sat on the porch beside a wooden
bucket of well-water. The county newspaper lay on his knee, and he was
reading the items aloud to his wife, old, too, but active, standing at
her ironing-board within the kitchen door. A cat purred in the sunshine,
and all the lilac bushes were in bloom. "'Ten companies from this
County,'" read the tollgate keeper; "'Ten companies from Old
Botetourt,--The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle Rifles, the Botetourt
Dragoons, the Zion Hill Company, the Roaring Run men, the Thunder Run--'
Air you listenin', Sairy?"
Sairy brought a fresh iron from the stove. "I am a-listenin', Tom.
'Pears to me I ain't done nothing but listen sence last December! It's
got to be sech a habit that I ketch myself waking up at night to listen.
But I've got to iron as well as listen, or Allan Gold won't have any
shirts fit to fight in! Go on reading, I hear ye."
"It's an editorial," said Tom weightily. "'Three weeks have passed since
war was declared. At once Governor Letcher called for troops; at once
the call was answered. We have had in Botetourt, as all over Virginia,
as through all the Southern States, days of excitement, sleepless