The Long Roll
deserting? Come out!" There was a pause; then Steve Dagg emerged.
"Major, I ain't either stragglin' or desertin'. I was just seperated--I
got seperated last night. The regiment's jes' down there--I crept down
an' saw it jes' now. I'm goin' back an' join right away--send me to hell
if I ain't!--though Gawd knows my foot's awful sore--"
Stafford regarded him closely. "I've seen you before. Ah, I remember! On
the Valley pike, moving toward Winchester.... Poor scoundrel!"
Steve, his back against a swamp magnolia, undertook to show that he,
too, remembered, and that gratefully. "Yes, sir. You saved me from
markin' time on a barrel-head, major--an' my foot _was_ sore--an' I
wasn't desertin' that time any more'n this time--an' I was as obleeged
to you as I could be. The colonel's awful hard on the men."
"Is he?" said Stafford gratingly. "They seem to like him."
He sat his horse before the laurel thicket and despised himself for
holding conference with this poor thief; or, rather, some fibre in his
brain told him that, out of this jungle, if ever he came out of it, he
would despise himself. Had he really done so now, he would have turned
away. He did not so; he sat in the heart of the jungle and compared
hatreds with Steve.
The latter glanced upward a moment with his ferret eyes, then turned his
head aside and spat. "If there's any of my way of thinkin' they don't
like him--But they're all fools! Crept down through the swamp a little
ago an' heard it! 'Colonel, get us across, somehow, won't you? We'll
fight like hell!' 'I can't, men. I haven't any orders.' Yaah! I wish
he'd take the regiment over without them, and then be court-martialled
and shot for doing it!" Steve spat again. "I seed long ago that you
didn't like him either, major. He gets along too fast--all the prizes
come his way."
"Yes," said Stafford, from the heart of the jungle. "They come his
way.... And he's standing there at the edge of the water, hoping for
orders to cross."
Steve, beneath the swamp magnolia, had a widening of the lips. "Luck's
turned agin him one way, though. He's out of favour with Old Jack. The
regiment don't know why, but it saw it mighty plain day before
yesterday, after the big battle! Gawd knows I'd like to see him so deep
in trouble he'd never get out--and so would you, major. Prizes would
stop coming his way then, and he might lose those he has--"
"If I entertain a devil," said Stafford, "I'll not be hypocrite enough
to object to his conversation. Nor, if I take his suggestion, is there
any sense in covering him with reprobation. So go your way, miserable
imp! while I go mine!"
But Steve kept up with him, half-running at his stirrup. "I got to
rejoin, 'cause it's jest off one battlefield on to another, and there
ain't nowhere else to go! This world's a sickenin' place for men like
me. So I've got to rejoin. Ef there's ever anything I kin do for you,
major--"
At the head of the dividing arm of the creek they heard behind them a
horseman, and waited for a courier to come up. "You are going on to the
65th?"
"Yes, sir. I belong there. I was kept by General Winder for some special
duty, and I'm just through it--"
"I have an order," said Stafford, "from General Winder to Colonel
Cleave. There are others to carry and time presses. I'll entrust it to
you. Listen now, and get it straight."
He gave an order. The courier listened, nodded energetically, repeated
it after him, and gathered up the reins. "I am powerfully glad to carry
that order, sir! It means 'Cross,' doesn't it?"
He rode off, southward to the stream, in which direction Steve had
already shambled. Stafford returned, through wood and swamp, to the road
by the bridge. Above and around the deep inner jungle his intellect
worked. He knew that he had done a villainy; knew it and did not repent.
A nature, fine enough in many ways, lay bound hand and foot, deep in
miasmas and primal heat, captive to a master and consuming passion. To
create a solitude where he alone might reach one woman's figure, he
would have set a world afire. He rode back now, through the woods, to a
general commanding who never forgave nor listened overmuch to
explanations, and he rode with quietude, the very picture of a gallant
soldier.
Back on the edge of White Oak Swamp, Richard Cleave considered the order
he had received. He found an ambiguity in the wording, a choice of
constructions. He half turned to send the courier again to Winder, to
make absolutely sure that the construction which he strongly preferred
was correct. As he did so, though he could not see the brigade beyond
the belt of trees, he heard it in motion, _coming down through the woods
to cross the stream in the rear of the 65th_. He looked at the ford and
the silent woods beyond. From Frayser's Farm, so short a distance away,
came a deeper roll of thunder. It had a solemn and a pleading sound,
_How long are we to wait for any help?_ Cleave knit his brows; then,
with a decisive gesture of his hand, he dismissed the doubt and stepped
in front of his colour company. _Attention! Into column. Forward!_
On the road leading down to the bridge Stafford met his own division
general, riding Rifle back to his command. "Hello, Major Stafford!" said
Old Dick. "I thought I had lost you."
"General Jackson detained me, general."
"Yes, yes, you aren't the only one! But let me tell you, major, he's
coming out of his spell!"
"You think it was a spell, then, sir?"
"Sure of it! Old Jackson simply hasn't been here at all. D. H. Hill
thinks he's been broken down and ill--and somebody else is poetical and
says his star never shines when another's is above it, which is
nonsense--and somebody else thinks he thought we did enough in the
Valley, which is damned nonsense--eh?"
"Of course, sir. Damned nonsense."
Ewell jerked his head. "Yes, sir. No man's his real self all the
time--whether he's a Presbyterian or not. Old Jackson simply hasn't been
in this cursed low country at all! But ----! I've been trying to give
advice down there, and, by God, sir, he's approaching! If it was a
spell, it's lifting! That bridge'll be built pretty soon, I reckon, and
when we cross at last we'll cross with Stonewall Jackson going on
before!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
MALVERN HILL
Star by star the heavens paled. The dawn came faintly and mournfully up
from the east. Beneath it the battlefield of Frayser's Farm lay hushed
and motionless, like the sad canvas of a painter, the tragic dream of a
poet. It was far flung over broken ground and strewn with wrecks of war.
Dead men and dying--very many of them, for the fighting had been
heavy--lay stretched in the ghostly light, and beside them dead and
dying horses. Eighteen Federal guns had been taken. They rested on
ridged earth, black against the cold, grey sky. Stark and silent, far
and wide, rolled the field beneath the cold, mysterious, changing light.
Beside the dead men there were sleeping troops, regiments lying on their
arms, fallen last night where they were halted, slumbering heavily
through the dew-drenched summer night. As the sky grew purple and the
last star went out, the bugles began to blow. The living men rose. If
the others heard a reveille, it was in far countries.
Edward Cary, lying down in the darkness near one of the guns, had put
out a hand and touched a bedfellow. The soldier seemed asleep, and
Edward slept too, weary enough to have slept in Hades. Now, as the
bugles called, he sat up and looked at his companion--who did not rise.
"I thought you lay very still," said Edward. He sat a moment, on the
dank earth, beside the still, grey figure. The gun stood a little above
him; through a wheel as through a rose window he saw the flush of dawn.
The dead soldier's eyes were open; they, too, stared through the
gun-wheel at the dawn. Edward closed them. "I never could take death
seriously," he said; "which is fortunate, I suppose."
Two hours later his regiment, moving down the Quaker road, came to a
halt before a small, pillared, country church. A group of officers sat
their horses near the portico. Lee was in front, quiet and grand. Out of
the cluster Warwick Cary pushed his horse across to the halted regiment.
Father and son were presently holding converse beneath a dusty roadside
cedar. "I am thankful to see you!" said Edward. "We heard of the great
charge you made. Please take better care of yourself, father!"
"The past week has been like a dream," answered the other; "one of those
dreams in which, over and over, some undertaking, vital to you and
tremendous, is about to march. Then, over and over, comes some pettiest
obstacle, and the whole vast matter is turned awry."
"Yesterday should have been ours."
"Yes. General Lee had planned as he always plans. We should have crushed
McClellan. Instead, we fought alone--and we lost four thousand men; and
though we made the enemy lose as many, he has again drawn himself out
of our grasp and is before us. I think that to-day we will have a
fearful fight."
"Jackson is over at last."
"Yes, close behind us. Whiting is leading; I saw him a moment. There's a
report that one of the Stonewall regiments crossed and was cut in pieces
late yesterday afternoon--"
"I hope it wasn't Richard's!"
"I hope not. I have a curious, boding feeling about it.--There beat your
drums! Good-bye, again--"
He leaned from his saddle and kissed his son, then backed his horse
across the road to the generals by the pillared church. The regiment
marched away, and as it passed it cheered General Lee. He lifted his
hat. "Thank you, men. Do your best to-day--do your best."
"We'll mind you, Marse Robert, we'll mind you!" cried the troops, and
went by shouting.
Somewhere down the Quaker Road the word "Malvern Hill" seemed to drop
from the skies. "Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. They're all massed on
Malvern Hill. Three hundred and forty guns. And on the James the
gunboats. Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill."
A man in line with Edward described the place. "My last year at William
and Mary I spent Christmas at Westover. We hunted over all Malvern Hill.
It rises one hundred and fifty feet, and the top's a mile across. About
the base there are thick forests and swamps, and Turkey Creek goes
winding, winding to the James. You see the James--the wide, old, yellow
river, with the birds going screaming overhead. There were no gunboats
on it that day, no Monitors, or Galenas, or Maritanzas, and if you'd
told us up there on Malvern Hill that the next time we climbed it--! At
Westover, after supper, they told Indian stories and stories of
Tarleton's troopers, and in the night we listened for the tap of Evelyn
Byrd's slipper on the stair. We said we heard it--anyhow, we didn't hear
gunboats and three hundred thirty-two pounders!"
"'When only Beauty's eyes did rake us fore and aft,
When only Beaux used powder, and Cupid's was the shaft--'"
sang Edward,
"'Most fatal was the war and pleasant to be slain--'"
_Malvern Hill_, beat out the marching feet. _Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill.
Malvern Hill._
There was a deep wood, out from which ran like spurs shallow ravines,
clad with briar and bush and young trees; there was a stretch of rail
fence; and there was a wheat field, where the grain stood in shocks.
Because of the smoke, however, nothing could be seen plainly; and
because of the most awful sound, few orders were distinctly heard.
Evidently officers were shouting; in the rents of the veil one saw waved
arms, open mouths, gesticulations with swords. But the loud-mouthed guns
spoke by the score, and the blast bore the human voice away. The
regiment in which was Edward Cary divined an order and ceased firing,
lying flat in sedge and sassafras, while a brigade from the rear roared