Part 71 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sed it cheered General Lee. He lifted his hat. ”Thank you, men. Do your best to-day--do your best.”

”We'll mind you, Ma.r.s.e 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 ma.s.sed 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 sa.s.safras, while a brigade from the rear roared by. Edward looked at his fingers. ”Barrel burn them?” asked a neighbour.

”Reckon they use red-hot muskets in h.e.l.l? Wish you could see your lips, Edward! Round black O. Biting cartridges for a living--and it used to be when you read Plutarch that you were all for the peaceful heroes! You haven't a lady-love that would look at you now!

”'Take, oh, take those lips away That so blackly are enshrined--'

Here comes a lamp-post--a lamp-post--a lamp-post!”

The gunboats on the river threw the ”lamp-posts.” The long and horrible sh.e.l.ls arrived with a noise that was indescribable. A thousand shrieking rockets, perhaps, with at the end an explosion and a rain of fragments like rocks from Vesuvius. They had a peculiar faculty for getting on the nerves. The men watched their coming with something like shrinking, with raised arms and narrowed eyes. ”Look out for the lamp-post--look out for the lamp-post--look out--Aaahhhh!”

Before long the regiment was moved a hundred yards nearer the wheat-field. Here it became entangled in the ebb of a charge--the brigade which had rushed by coming back, piecemeal, broken and driven by an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now there was confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dreadful, beneath the orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and billowed, a curtain of strange texture, now parting, now closing, and when it parted disclosing immemorial Death and Wounds with some attendant martial pageantry. The commands were split as by wedges, the uneven ground driving them asunder, and the belching guns. They went up to h.e.l.l mouth, brigade by brigade, even regiment by regiment, and in the breaking and reforming and twilight of the smoke, through the falling of officers and the surging to and fro, the troops became interwoven, warp of one division, woof of another. The sound was shocking; when, now and then there fell a briefest interval it was as though the world had stopped, had fallen into a gulf of silence.

Edward Cary found beside him a man from another regiment, a small, slight fellow, young and simple. A shock of wheat gave both a moment's protection. ”Hot work!” said Edward, with his fine camaraderie. ”You made a beautiful charge. We almost thought you would take them.”

The other looked at him vacantly. ”I added up figures in the old warehouse,” he said, in a high, thin voice. ”I added up figures in the old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I added up figures in the old warehouse--Don't you remember Hotspur? I always liked him, and that part--