The Battle Ground Part 45

"He's a nice old chap," responded Dan, easily, for in the first years of the Army of Northern Virginia the question of rank presented itself only upon the parade ground, and beyond the borders of the camp a private had been known to condescend to his own Colonel. "A gentleman fights for his country as he pleases, a plebeian as he must," the Governor would have explained with a touch of his old oratory. "He's a nice old chap himself, but, by George, the discipline fits like a straight-jacket," pursued Dan, as he finished his coffee. "Why, here we are three miles below Winchester in a few threadbare tents, and they make as much fuss about our coming into town as if we were the Yankees themselves. Talk about Romney! Why, it's no colder at Romney than it was here last week, and yet Loring's men are living in huts like princes."

"Show me a volunteer and I'll show you a grumbler," put in the Governor, laughing.

"Oh, I'm not grumbling, I'm merely pointing out the facts," protested Dan; then he rose and stood holding Virginia's hand as he met her upward glance with his unflinching admiration. "Come again! Why, I should say so," he declared. "I'll come as long as I have a collar left, and then--well, then I'll pa.s.s the time of day with you over the hedge. Good-by, Colonel, remember I'm not a grumbler, I'm merely a man of facts."

The door closed after him and a moment later they heard his clear whistle in the street.

"The boy is like his father," said the Governor, thoughtfully, "like his father with the devil broken to harness. The Montjoy blood may be bad blood, but it makes big men, daughter." He sighed and drew his small figure to its full height.

Virginia was looking into the fire. "I hope he will come again," she returned softly, thinking of Betty.

But when he called again a week later Virginia did not see him. It was a cold starlit night, and the big yellow house, as he drew near it, glowed like a lamp amid the leafless trees. Beside the porch a number of cavalry horses were fastened to the pillars, and through the long windows there came the sound of laughter and of gay "good-bys."

The "fringe of the army," as Dan had once jeeringly called it, was merrily making ready for a raid.

As he listened he leaned nearer the window and watched, half enviously, the men he had once known. His old life had been a part of theirs and now, looking in from the outside, it seemed very far away--the poetry of war beside which the other was mere dull history in which no names were written. He thought of Prince Rupert, and of his own joy in the saddle, and the longing for the raid seized him like a heartache. Oh, to feel again the edge of the keen wind in his teeth and to hear the silver ring of the hoofs on the frozen road.

"Jine the cavalry, Jine the cavalry, If you want to have a good time jine the cavalry."

The words floated out to him, and he laughed aloud as if he had awakened from a comic dream.

That was the romance of war, but, after all, he was only the man who bore the musket.

VIII

THE ALTAR OF THE WAR G.o.d

With the opening spring Virginia went down to Richmond, where Jack Morson had taken rooms for her in the house of an invalid widow whose three sons were at the front. The town was filled to overflowing with refugees from the North and representatives from the South, and as the girl drove through the crowded streets, she exclaimed wonderingly at the festive air the houses wore.

"Why, the doors are all open," she observed. "It looks like one big family."

"That's about what it is," replied Jack. "The whole South is here and there's not a room to be had for love or money. Food is getting dear, too, they say, and the stranger within the gates has the best of everything." He stopped short and laughed from sheer surprise at Virginia's loveliness.

"Well, I'm glad I'm here, anyway," said the girl, pressing his arm, "and Mammy Riah's glad, too, though she won't confess it.--Aren't you just delighted to see Jack again, Mammy?"

The old negress grunted in her corner of the carriage. "I ain' seed no use in all dis yer fittin'," she responded. "W'at's de use er fittin' ef dar ain' sumpen' ter fit fer dat you ain' got a'ready?"

"That's it, Mammy," replied Jack, gayly, "we're fighting for freedom, and we haven't had it yet, you see."

"Is dat ar freedom vittles?" scornfully retorted the old woman. "Is it close? is it wood ter bu'n?"

"Oh, it will soon be here and you'll find out," said Virginia, cheerfully, and when a little later she settled herself in her pleasant rooms, she returned to her a.s.surances.

"Aren't you glad you're here, Mammy, aren't you glad?" she insisted, with her arm about the old woman's neck.

"I'd des like ter git a good look at ole Miss agin," returned Mammy Riah, softening, "caze ef you en ole Miss ain' des like two peas in a pod, my eyes hev done crack wid de sight er you. Dar ain' been nuttin' so pretty es you sence de day I dressed ole Miss in 'er weddin' veil."

"You're right," exclaimed Jack, heartily. "But look at this, Virginia, here's a regular corn field at the back. Mrs. Minor tells me that vegetables have grown so scarce she has been obliged to turn her flower beds into garden patches." He threw open the window, and they went out upon the wide piazza which hung above the young corn rows.

During the next few weeks, when Jack was often in the city, an almost feverish gayety possessed the girl. In the war-time parties, where the women wore last year's dresses, and the wit served for refreshment, her gentle beauty became, for a little while, the fas.h.i.+on. The smooth bands of her hair were copied, the curve of her eyelashes was made the subject of some verses which _The Examiner_ printed and the English papers quoted later on. It was a bright and stately society that filled the capital that year; and on pleasant Sundays when Virginia walked from church, in her Leghorn bonnet and white ruffles flaring over crinoline as they neared the ground, men, who had bled on fields of honour for the famous beauties of the South, would drop their talk to follow her with warming eyes. Cities might fall and battles might be lost and won, but their joy in a beautiful woman would endure until a great age.

At last Jack Morson rode away to service, and the girl kept to the quiet house and worked on the little garments which the child would need in the summer. She was much alone, but the delicate widow, who had left her couch to care for the sick and wounded soldiers, would sometimes come and sit near her while she sewed.

"This is the happiest time--before the child comes," she said one day, and added, with the observant eye of mothers, "it will be a boy; there is a pink lining to the basket."

"Yes, it will be a boy," replied Virginia, wistfully.

"I have had six," pursued the woman, "six sons, and yet I am alone now.

Three are dead, and three are in the army. I am always listening for the summons that means another grave." She clasped her thin hands and smiled the patient smile that chilled Virginia's blood.

"Couldn't you have kept one back?" asked the girl in a whisper.

The woman shook her head. Much brooding had darkened her mind, but there was a peculiar fervour in her face--an inward light that shone through her faded eyes.

"Not one--not one," she answered. "When the South called, I sent the first two, and when they fell, I sent the others--only the youngest I kept back at first--he is just seventeen. Then another call came and he begged so hard I let him go. No, I gave them all gladly--I have kept none back."

She lowered her eyes and sat smiling at her folded hands. Weakened in body and broken by many sorrows as she was, with few years before her and those filled with inevitable suffering, the fire of the South still burned in her veins, and she gave herself as ardently as she gave her sons. The pity of it touched Virginia suddenly, and in the midst of her own enthusiasm she felt the tears upon her lashes. Was not an army invincible, she asked, into which the women sent their dearest with a smile?

Through the warm spring weather she sat beside the long window that gave on the street, or walked slowly up and down among the vegetable rows in the garden. The growing of the crops became an unending interest to her and she watched them, day by day, until she learned to know each separate plant and to look for its unfolding. When the drought came she carried water from the hydrant, and a.s.sisted by Mammy Riah sprinkled the young tomatoes until they shot up like weeds. "It is so much better than war," she would say to Jack when he rode through the city. "Why will men kill one another when they might make things live instead?"

Beside the piazza, there was a high magnolia tree, and under this she made a little rustic bench and a bed of flowers. When the hollyhocks and the sunflowers bloomed it would look like Uplands, she said, laughing.

Under the magnolia there was quiet, but from her front window, while she sat at work, she could see the whole overcrowded city pa.s.sing through sun and shadow. Sometimes distinguished strangers would go by, men from the far South in black broadcloth and slouch hats; then the President, slim and erect and very grave, riding his favourite horse to one of the encampments near the city; and then a noted beauty from another state, her chin lifted above the ribbons of her bonnet, a smile tucked in the red corners of her lips. Following there would surge by the same eager, staring throng--men too old to fight who had lost their work; women whose husbands fought in the trenches for the money that would hardly buy a sack of flour; soldiers from one of the many camps; noisy little boys with tin whistles; silent little girls waving Confederate flags. Back and forth they pa.s.sed on the bright May afternoons, filling the street with a ceaseless murmur and the blur of many colours.

And again the crowd would part suddenly to make way for a battalion marching to the front, or for a single soldier riding, with m.u.f.fled drums, to his grave in Hollywood. The quick step or the slow gait of the riderless horse; the wild cheers or the silence on the pavement; the "Bonnie Blue Flag" or the funeral dirge before the coffin; the eager faces of men walking to where death was or the fallen ones of those who came back with the dead; the bold flags taking the wind like sails or the banners furled with crepe as they drooped forward--there was not a day when these things did not go by near together. To Virginia, sitting at her window, it was as if life and death walked on within each other's shadow.

Then came the terrible days when the city saw McClellan sweeping toward it from the Chickahominy, when senators and clergymen gathered with the slaves to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the G.o.d of battles--sooner or later he would declare for the Confederacy and until then--well, there was always General Lee to stand between. Her chief regret was that the lines had closed and her mother could not come to her as she had promised.

In the intense heat that hung above the town she sat at her southern window, where the river breeze blew across the garden, and watched placidly the palm-leaf fan which Mammy Riah waved before her face. The magnolia tree had flowered in great white blossoms, and the heavy perfume mingled in Virginia's thoughts with the yellow suns.h.i.+ne, the fretful clamour, and the hot dust of the city. When at the end of May a rain storm burst overhead and sent the wide white petals to the earth, it was almost a relief to see them go. But by the morrow new ones had opened, and the perfume she had sickened of still floated from the garden.

That afternoon the sound of the guns rolled up the Williamsburg road, and in the streets men shouted hoa.r.s.ely of an engagement with the enemy at Seven Pines. With the noise Virginia thrilled to her first feeling of danger, starting from a repose which, in its unconsciousness, had been as profound as sleep. The horror of war rushed in upon her at the moment, and with a cry she leaned out into the street, and listened for the next roll of the cannon.

A woman, with a scared face, looked up, saw her, and spoke hysterically.

"There's not a man left in the city," she cried. "They've taken my father to defend the breastworks and he's near seventy. If you can sew or wash or cook, there'll be work enough for you, G.o.d knows, to-morrow!"

She hurried on and Virginia, turning from the window, buried herself in the pillows upon the bed, trying in vain to shut out the noise of the cannonading and the perfume of the magnolia blossoms which came in on the southern breeze. With night the guns grew silent and the streets empty, but still the girl lay sleepless, watching with frightened eyes the shadow of Mammy Riah's palm-leaf fan.

At dawn the restless murmur began again, and Virginia, looking out in the hot sunrise, saw the crowd hastening back to the hospitals lower down. They were all there, all as they had been the day before--old men limping out for news or returning beside the wounded; women with trembling lips and arms filled with linen; ambulances pa.s.sing the corner at a walk, surrounded by men who had staggered after them because there was no room left inside; and following always the same curious, pallid throng, fresh upon the scent of some new tragedy. Presently the ambulances gave out, and yet the wounded came--some walking, and moaning as they walked, some borne on litters by devoted servants, some drawn in market wagons pressed into use. The great warehouses and the churches were thrown open to give them shelter, but still they came and still the cry went up, "Room, more room!"

Virginia watched it all, leaning out to follow the wagons as they pa.s.sed the corner. The sight sickened her, but something that was half a ghastly fascination, and half the terror of missing a face she knew, kept her hour after hour motionless upon her knees. At each roll of the guns she gave a nervous s.h.i.+ver and grew still as stone.

Then, as she knelt there, a man, in clerical dress, came down the pavement and stopped before her window. "I hope your husband's wound was not serious, Mrs. Morson," he said sympathetically. "If I can be of any a.s.sistance, please don't hesitate to call on me."