Part 85 (1/2)

”Stay any longer and I will be killed or taken.”

The hand closed desperately, both hands now. ”For G.o.d's sake! I don't believe you've got so hard a heart. Take it and stamp it and mail it. If they don't know they'll never understand and I'll die knowing they'll never understand. For G.o.d's sake!”

Stafford knelt beside him, opened the grey jacket, and took out the letter. Blood was upon it, but the address was legible. ”Die easy. I'll stamp and mail it. I will send a word with it, too, if you like.”

A light came into the boy's face. ”Tell them that I was like the prodigal son, but that I'm going home--I'm going home--”

The arms fell, the breast ceased to heave, the head drew backward. Death came and stamped the light upon the face. Before Stafford could get to his feet, the blue wave had plunged into the trough. He remembered using his pistol, and he remembered a dizziness of being borne backward. He remembered that a phrase had gone through his mind ”the instability of all material things.” Then came a blank. He did not a.s.sume that he had lost consciousness, but simply he could not remember. He had been wrecked in a turbulent, hostile ocean. It had made him and others captives, and now they were together at a place which he remembered was called the Roulette House. An hour might have pa.s.sed, two hours; he really could not tell. There were a number of prisoners, most of them badly wounded. They lay in the back yard of the place, on the steps of out-houses, with blue soldiers for guards. A surgeon came through the yard, and helped a little the more agonizedly hurt. He glanced at Stafford's star and sash, came across and offered to bind up the cut across his forehead. ”An awful field,” he said. ”This war is getting horrible. You're a Virginian, aren't you?”

”Yes.”

”Used to know a lot of Virginia doctors. Liked them first rate! Now we are enemies, and it seems to me a pity. Guess it's as Shakespeare says, 'What fools these mortals be!' I know war's getting to seem to me an awful foolishness. That cornfield out there is sickening--Now! that bleeding's stopped--”

On the left, around and before the Dunkard church, the very fury of the storm brought about at last a sudden failing, a stillness and cessation that seemed like those of death. Sound enough there was undoubtedly, and in the centre the battle yet roared, but by comparison there seemed a dark and sultry calm. Far and near lay the fallen. It was now noon, and since dawn twelve thousand men had been killed or wounded on this left, attacked by Fighting Joe Hooker, held by Stonewall Jackson. Fifteen general officers were dead or disabled. Hardly a brigade, not many regiments, were officered as they had been when the sun rose. There was an exhaustion. Franklin had entered on the field, and one might have thought that the grey would yet be overpowered. But all the blue forces were broken, disorganized; there came an exhaustion, a la.s.situde.

McClellan sent an order forbidding another attack. Cornfield and wood lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still.

Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him.

”General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not like hospitals--but would you come and look, sir?”

The general shook his head. ”What is the use of looking? There have to be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor.”

”I have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they are so overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles in our rear--I have thought that we might manage to get the less badly hurt across. If they attack again and the day should end in defeat--”

”What have you got there?” asked Jackson. ”Apples?”

”Yes, sir. I pa.s.sed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. Would you like--”

”Yes. I breakfasted very early.” He took the rosy fruit and began to eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed the scene before him,--trampled wood where the sh.e.l.ls had cut through bough and branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed that a whirlwind had pa.s.sed, his resting, shattered commands, the dead and the dying, the dead horses, the disabled guns, the drifting sulphurous smoke, and, across the turnpike, in the fields and by the east wood, the ma.s.ses of blue, overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. ”Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst. And never use the word defeat.”

He jerked his hand into the air. ”Do your best for the wounded, doctor, do all that is humanly possible, but do it _here_! I am going now to the centre to see General Lee.”

Behind the wood, in a gra.s.sy hollow moderately sheltered from the artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical director. ”Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws.

They've just brought their colonel in--Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish you would look at his arm.”

The two looked. ”There's but one thing, colonel.”

”Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with.” He straightened himself on the boards where the men had laid him. ”Sedgwick, too!

Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't remember him,--my father and mother loved to talk of him--old Uncle Edward. All right--it's all right.”

The two doctors were talking together. ”Only a few ounces left. Better use it here?”

”Yes, yes!--One minute longer, colonel. We've got a little chloroform.”

The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. ”Is that all you've got?”

”Yes. We took a fair quant.i.ty at Mana.s.sas, but G.o.d only knows the amount we could use! Now.”

The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that had not been torn by the exploding sh.e.l.l. ”No, no! I don't want it. Keep it for some one with a leg to cut off!” He smiled, a charming, twisted smile, shading into a grimace of pain. ”No chloroform at Yorktown! I'll be as much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! Yes, yes, I'm in earnest, doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; I'm ready.”