The Long Roll
It was seaweed about her arms. The booming grew louder, rattled the
window-glass. She opened her eyes, pushed her dark loosened hair from
her arms and bosom, and sat up. "The cannon again!"
She looked at her watch. It was two o'clock. Rising, she put on her
dark, thin muslin, and took her shady hat. The room seemed to throb to
the booming guns. All the birds had flown from the tulip tree outside.
She went downstairs and tapped at her cousin's door. "How is
he?"--"Conscious now, thank God, my dear! The doctor says he will be
spared. How the house shakes! And Walter and Ronald out there. You are
going back?"
"Yes. Do not look for me to-night. There will be so much to be done--"
"Yes, yes, my dear. Louder and louder! And Ronald is so reckless! You
must have something to eat."
"Shirley will give me a glass of milk. Tell Rob to get well. Good-bye."
She kissed her cousin, drank her glass of milk in the dining-room where
the silver was jingling on the sideboard, and went out into the hot,
sound-filled air. At three she was at her post in the hospital.
The intermittent thunder, heavier than any on the continent before, was
stilled at last,--at nine, as had happened the night before. The mazed
city shook the mist from before its eyes, and settled to the hot night's
work, with the wagons, bringing the dead and the wounded, dull on the
cobblestones to the ear, but loud, loud to the heart. All that night the
Stonewall Hospital was a grisly place. By the next morning every
hospital in town was choked with the wounded, and few houses but had
their quota. The surgeons looked like wraiths, the nursing women had
dark rings beneath their eyes, set burningly in pale faces, the negroes
who valiantly helped had a greyish look. More emotional than the whites,
they burst now and then into a half wail, half chant. So heavy was the
burden, so inadequate the small, beleaguered city's provision for the
weight of helpless anguish, that at first there was a moment of
paralysis. As easy to strive with the tornado as with this wind of pain
and death! Then the people rallied and somewhat outstripped a people's
best.
From the troops immediately about the city came the funeral escorts. All
day the Dead March from "Saul" wailed through the streets, out to
Hollywood. The churches stayed open; old and young, every man in the
city, white or black, did his part, and so did all the women. The need
was so great that the very young girls, heretofore spared, found place
now in hospital or house, beside the beds, the pallets, the mere
blanket, or no blanket, on the floor. They could keep away the
tormenting flies, drawn by the heat, the glare, the blood and effluvia,
could give the parched lips water, could watch by the less terrifically
hurt. All the city laboured; putting aside the personal anguish, the
private loss known, suspected, or but fearfully dreaded. Glad of the
victory but with only calamity beneath its eyes, the city wrestled with
crowding pain, death, and grief.
Margaret Cleave was at one of the great hospitals. An hour later came,
too, Miriam and Christianna. "Yes, you can help. Miriam, you are used to
it. Hold this bandage so, until the doctor comes. If it grows
blood-soaked--like this one--call some one at once. Christianna, you are
strong.--Mrs. Preston, let her have the bucket of water. Go up and down,
between the rows, and give water to those who want it. If they cannot
lift themselves, help them--so!"
Christianna took the wooden bucket and the tin dipper. For all she
looked like a wild rose she was strong, and she had a certain mountain
skill and light certainty of movement. She went down the long room,
giving water to all who moaned for it. They lay very thick, the wounded,
side by side in the heat, the glare of the room, where all the light
possible must be had. Some lay outstretched and rigid, some much
contorted. Some were delirious, others writhed and groaned, some were
most pathetically silent and patient. Nearly all were thirsty; clutched
the dipper with burning fingers, drank, with their hollow eyes now on
the girl who held it, now on mere space. Some could not help themselves.
She knelt beside these, raised the head with one hand, put water to the
lips with the other. She gained her mountain steadiness and did well,
crooning directions in her calm, drawling voice. This bucket emptied,
she found where to fill it again, and pursued her task, stepping lightly
between the huddled, painful rows, among the hurrying forms of nurses
and surgeons and coloured helpers.
At the very end of the long lane, she came upon a blanket spread on the
blood-stained floor. On it lay a man, blond and straight, closed eyes
with a line between them, hand across his breast touching his shirt
where it was stiff with dried blood. "Air you thirsty?" began
Christianna, then set the bucket suddenly down.
Allan opened his eyes. "Very thirsty.... I reckon I am light-headed. I'm
not on Thunder Run, am I?"
The frightful day wore on to late afternoon. No guns shook the air in
these hours. Richmond understood that, out beyond the entrenchments,
there was a pause in the storm. McClellan was leaving his own wonderful
earthworks. But would he retreat down the Peninsula by the way he had
come, or would he strike across and down the James to his gunboats by
Westover? The city gathered that General Lee was waiting to find out. In
the meantime the day that was set to the Dead March in "Saul" passed
somehow, in the June heat and the odour of flowers and blood.
Toward five o'clock Judith left the Stonewall Hospital. She had not
quitted it for twenty-four hours, and she came now into the light and
air like a form emerging from Hades, very palely smiling, with the grey
of the underworld, its breath and its terror still about her. There was
hardly yet a consciousness of fatigue. Twelve hours before she had
thought, "If I do not rest a little, I shall fall." But she had not been
able to rest, and the feeling had died. For the last twelve she had
moved like an automaton, swift, sure, without a thought of herself. It
was as though her will stood somewhere far above and swayed her body
like a wand. Even now she was going home, because the will said she
must; must rest two hours, and come back fresher for the night.
As she came out into the golden light, Cleave left the group of young
and old about the door and met her. In the plane along which life now
moved, nothing was unnatural; certainly Richmond did not find it so,
that a lover and his beloved should thus encounter in the street, a
moment between battles. Her dark eyes and his grey ones met. To find him
there seemed as natural as it had been in her dream; the street was no
more to her than the lonely beach. They crossed it, went up toward the
Capitol Square, and, entering, found a green dip of earth with a bench
beneath a linden tree. Behind them rose the terraced slope to the
pillared Capitol; as always, in this square children's voices were heard
with their answering nurses, and the squirrels ran along the grass or
upon the boughs above. But the voices were somewhat distant and the
squirrels did not disturb; it was a leafy, quiet nook. The few men or
women who passed, pale, distrait, hurrying from one quarter of the city
to another, heeded as little as they were heeded. Lovers'
meetings--lovers' partings--soldiers--women who loved them--faces pale
and grave, yet raised, hands in hands, low voices in leafy places--man
and woman together in the golden light, in the breathing space before
the cannon should begin again--Richmond was growing used to that. All
life was now in public. For the most part a clear altruism swayed the
place and time, and in the glow smallness of comment or of thought was
drowned. Certainly, it mattered not to Cleave and Judith that it was the
Capitol Square, and that people went up and down.
"I have but the shortest while," he said. "I came this morning with
Allen's body--the colonel of the 2d. I ride back directly. I hope that
we will move to-night."
"Following McClellan?"
"To get across his path, if possible."
"There will be another battle?"
"Yes. More than one, perhaps."
"I have believed that you were safe. I do not see that I could have
lived else."
"Many have fallen; many are hurt. I found Allan Gold in the hospital. He
will not die, however.... Judith, how often do I see your face beside
the flag!"
"When I was asleep I dreamed of you. We were drifting together, far out
at sea--your arm here--" She lifted his hand, drew his arm about her,
rested her head on his breast. "I love you--I love you--I love you."
They stayed in the leafy place and the red-gold light for half an hour,
speaking little, sitting sometimes with closed eyes, but hand in hand.
It was much as though they were drifting together at sea, understanding
perfectly, but weary from battling, and with great issues towering to
the inner vision. They would have been less nobly minded had their own
passion inexorably claimed them. All about them were suffering and death
and the peril of their cause. For one half-hour they drew happiness from
the darkly gigantic background, but it was a quiet and lofty form,
though sweet, sweet! with whom they companioned. When the time was
passed the two rose, and Cleave held her in his arms. "Love--Love--"
When he was gone she waited awhile beneath the trees, then slowly
crossed the Capitol Square and moved toward the small room behind the
tulip tree. The streets were flooded with a sunset glow. Into Franklin
from Main came marching feet, then, dull, dull! the muffled drums.
Soldiers and furled colours and the coffin, atop it the dead man's cap
and gauntlets and sword; behind, pacing slowly, his war horse, stirrups
crossed over saddle. Soldiers, soldiers, and the drums beating like
breaking hearts. She moved back to a doorstep and let the Dead March
from "Saul" go by.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE RAILROAD GUN
The troops, moving at dawn to the Chickahominy, over a road and through
woods which testified in many ways of the blue retreat, found the
Grapevine Bridge a wreck, the sleepers hacked apart, framework and
middle structure cast into the water. Fitz John Porter and the 5th Army
Corps were across, somewhere between the river and Savage Station,
leaving only, in the thick wood above the stream, a party of
sharpshooters and a battery. When the grey pioneers advanced to their
work, these opened fire. The bridge must be rebuilt, and the grey worked
on, but with delays and difficulties. D. H. Hill, leading Jackson's
advance, brought up two batteries and shelled the opposite side. The
blue guns and riflemen moved to another position and continued, at short
intervals, to fire on the pioneers. It was Sunday the twenty-ninth;
fearfully hot by the McGehee house, and on Turkey Hill, and in the dense
midsummer woods, and in the mosquito-breeding bogs and swamps through
which meandered the Chickahominy. The river spread out as many arms as
Briareus; short, stubby creeks, slow waters prone to overflow and creep,
between high knotted roots of live-oak and cypress, into thickets of bog
myrtle. The soil hereabouts was black and wet, further back light and
sandy. The Valley troops drew the most uncomplimentary comparisons. To a
man they preferred mountains, firm rolling champaign, clean rivers with
rocky bottoms, sound roads, and a different vegetation. They were not in
a good humour, anyhow.
Ewell was at Dispatch Station, seven miles below, guarding Bottom's
Bridge and tearing up the York River Railroad. Stuart was before him,
sweeping down on the White House, burning McClellan's stations and
stores, making that line of retreat difficult enough for an encumbered
army. But McClellan had definitely abandoned any idea of return upon