Part 13 (1/2)
”He is acting just now as aide to General Jackson. You have been all this while with General Magruder on the Peninsula?”
”Yes, until lately. We missed Mana.s.sas.” He stood beside the garden wall, his gauntleted hand on the gatepost. A creeper bearing yet a few leaves hung from a tree above, and one of the crimson points touched his grey cap. ”I am now on General Loring's staff. Where he goes at present I go. And where General Jackson goes, apparently we all go! Heigho! How do you like war, Miss Miriam?”
Miriam regarded him with her air of a brown and gold gilliflower. She thought him very handsome, and oh, she liked the gold-braided cap and the fine white gauntlet! ”There is something to be said on both sides,”
she stated sedately. ”I should like it very much did not you all run into danger.”
Stafford looked at her, amused. ”But some of us run out again--Ah!”
Cleave came from the house and down the path to the gate, moving in a red sunset glow, beneath trees on which yet hung a few russet leaves. He greeted his mother and sister, then turned with courtesy to Stafford.
”Sandy Pendleton told me you were in town. From General Loring, are you not? You low-countrymen are gathering all our mountain laurels! Gauley River and Greenbriar and to-day, news of the Allegheny engagement--”
”You seem to be bent,” said Stafford, ”on drawing us from the Monterey line before we can gather any more! We will be here next week.”
”You do not like the idea?”
The other shrugged. ”I? Why should I care? It is war to go where you are sent. But this weather is much too good to last, and I fail to see what can be done to the northward when winter is once let loose! And we leave the pa.s.ses open. There is nothing to prevent Rosecrans from pus.h.i.+ng a force through to Staunton!”
”That is the best thing that could happen. Draw them into the middle valley and they are ours.”
Stafford made a gesture. ”_Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame!_ Mrs. Cleave, there is no help for it! We are bewitched--and all by a stone wall in an old cadet cap!”
Cleave laughed. ”No, no! but it is, I think, apparent--You will not go in? I will walk with you, then, as far as the hotel.”
Margaret Cleave held out her hand. ”Good-bye, Major Stafford. We think day and night of all you soldiers. G.o.d bless you all, wherever you may be!”
In the sunset light the two men turned their faces toward the Taylor House. ”It is a good thing to have a mother,” said Stafford. ”Mine died when I was a little boy.--Well, what do you think of affairs in general?”
”I think that last summer we won a Pyrrhic victory.”
”I share your opinion. It was disastrous. How confident we are with our 'One to Four,' our 'Quality, not Quant.i.ty,' our contempt for 'Brute Ma.s.s'! To listen to the newspapers one would suppose that the fighting animal was never bred north of the Potomac--Maryland, alone, an honourable exception! France and England, too! They'll be our active allies not a minute later than April Fool's Day!”
”You are bitter.”
”It is the case, is it not?”
”Yes,” said Cleave gravely. ”And the blockade is daily growing more effective, and yet before we are closed in a ring of fire we do not get our cotton out nor our muskets in! Send the cotton to Europe and sell it and so fill the treasury with honest gold!--not with this delusion of wealth, these sheafs of Promises to Pay the Government is issuing. Five million bales of cotton idle in the South! With every nerve strained, with daring commensurate to the prize, we could get them out--even now!
To-morrow it will be too late. The blockade will be complete, and we shall rest as isolated as the other side of the moon. Well! Few countries or men are wise till after the event.”
”You are not bitter.”
Cleave shook his head. ”I do not believe in bitterness. And if the government is not altogether wise, so are few others. The people are heroic. We will see what we will see. I had a letter from the Peninsula the other day. Fauquier Cary is there with his legion. He says that McClellan will organize and organize and organize again until springtime. It's what he does best. Then, if only he can be set going, he will bring into the field an army that is an army. And if he's not thwarted by his own government he'll try to reach Richmond from the correct direction--and that's by sea to Old Point and up both banks of the James. All of which means heavy fighting on the Peninsula. So Cary thinks, and I dare say he knows his man. They were cla.s.smates and served together in Mexico.”
They approached the old colonnaded hotel. Stafford's horse stood at the rack. A few soldiers were about the place and down the street, in the warm dusk a band was playing. ”You ride up the valley to-night?” said Cleave. ”When you return to Winchester you must let me serve you in any way I can.”
”You are very good. How red the sunsets are! Look at that bough across the sky!”
”Were you,” asked Cleave, ”were you in Albemarle this autumn?”
”Yes. For one day in October. The country looked its loveliest. The old ride through the woods, by the mill--”