Part 73 (1/2)

He did not know who she was; he only looked from the flower in his hand and had a sense of strength and sweetness, of something n.o.ble approaching nearer. She paused to ask a question of one of the women; answered, she came straight on. He saw that she was coming to the cut-off corner by the stair, and instinctively he straightened a little the covering over him. In a moment she was standing beside him, in her cool hospital dress, with her dark hair knotted low, with a flower at her breast. ”You are Allan Gold?” she said.

”Yes.”

”My name is Judith Cary. Perhaps you have heard of me. I have been to Lauderdale and to Three Oaks.”

”Yes,” said Allan. ”I have heard of you. I--”

There was an empty box beside the wall. Judith drew it nearer to his bed and sat down. ”You have been looking for Christianna? I came to tell you about poor little Christianna--and--and other things. Christianna's father has been killed.”

Allan uttered an exclamation. ”Isham Maydew! I never thought of his going!... Poor child!”

”So she thought she ought not to come to-day. Had there been strong reason, many people dependent upon her, she would have come.”

”Poor Christianna--poor wild rose!... It's ghastly, this war! There is nothing too small and harmless for its grist.”

”I agree with you. Nothing too great; nothing too small. Nothing too base, as there is nothing too n.o.ble.”

”Isham Maydew! He was lean and tough and still, like Death in a picture.

Where was he killed?”

”It was at White Oak Swamp. At White Oak Swamp, the day before Malvern Hill.”

Allan looked at her. There was more in her voice than the non-coming of Christianna, than the death of Isham Maydew. She had spoken in a clear, low, bell-like tone that held somehow the ache of the world. He was simple and direct, and he spoke at once out of his thought. He knew that all the men of her house were at the front. ”You have had a loss of your own?--”

She shook her head. ”I? No. I have had no loss.”

”Now,” thought Allan, ”there's something proud in it.” He looked at her with his kindly, sea-blue eyes. In some chamber of the brain there flashed out a picture--the day of the Botetourt Resolutions, winter dusk after winter sunset and Cleave and himself going homeward over the long hilltop--with talk, among other things, of visitors at Lauderdale. This was ”the beautiful one.” He remembered the lift of Cleave's head and his voice. Judith's large dark eyes had been raised; transparent, showing always the soul within as did his own, they now met Allan's. ”The 65th,”

she said, ”was cut to pieces.”

The words, dragged out as they were, left a shocked silence. Here, in the corner by the stair, the arch of wood partially obscuring the ward, with the still blue sky and the still brick gables, they seemed for the moment cut away from the world, met on desert sands to tell and hear a dreadful thing. ”Cut to pieces,” breathed Allan. ”The 65th cut to pieces!”

The movement which he made displaced the bandage about his shoulder. She left the box, kneeled by him and straightened matters, then went back to her seat. ”It was this way,” she said,--and told him the story as she had heard it from her father and from Fauquier Cary. She spoke with simplicity, in the low, bell-like tone that held the ache of the world.

Allan listened, with his hand over his eyes. His regiment that he loved!... all the old, familiar faces.

”Yes, he was killed--Hairston Breckinridge was killed, fighting gallantly. He died, they say, before he knew the trap they were caught in. And Christianna's father was killed, and others of the Thunder Run men, and very many from the county and from other counties. I do not know how many. Fauquier called it slaughter, said no worse thing has happened to any single command. Richard got what was left back across the swamp.”

Allan groaned. ”The 65th! General Jackson himself called it 'the fighting 65th!' Just a remnant of it left--left of the 65th!”

”Yes. The roll was called, and so many did not answer. They say other Stonewall regiments wept.”

Allan raised himself upon the bench. She started forward. ”Don't do that!” and with her hand pressed him gently down again. ”I knew,” she said, ”that you were here, and I have heard Richard speak of you and say how good and likable you were. And I have worked hard all the morning, and just now I thought, 'I must speak to some one who knows and loves him or I will die.' And so I came. I knew that the ward might hear of the 65th any moment now and begin to talk of it, so I was not afraid of hurting you. But you must lie quiet.”

”Very well, I will. I want to know about Richard Cleave--about my colonel.”

Her dark eyes met the sea-blue ones fully. ”He is under arrest,” she said. ”General Jackson has preferred charges against him.”

”Charges of what?”

”Of disobedience to orders--of sacrificing the regiment--of--of retreating at last when he should not have done so and leaving his men to perish--of--of--. I have seen a copy of the charge. _Whereas the said colonel of the 65th did shamefully_--”