CHAPTER LXVI.

Four years have passed since our story opened, and the autumn of 1864 is upon us. For more than three years Virginia has been devastated by war. Most of Leicester’s pleasant homes have been broken up. My grandfather, however, trusting to his gray hairs, had remained at Elmington. The Poythresses were refugees in Richmond. Charley, who was now a major, commanding a battalion of artillery in the army defending Richmond, had, two months before, been taken in an ambulance-wagon to Mr. Carter’s. A bullet had passed through his body, but he was now convalescent. Any bright morning you might see him sunning himself in the garden. The house was crowded to overflowing with refugee relatives and friends from the invaded districts.

And illumined by a baby.

“He was born the very day I was wounded,” said Charley. “I remember how anxious I was to see him before I died.”

“I knew you wouldn’t die,” said Alice; “and you didn’t!”

“I am here,” said Charley.

So, fair reader, Charley, in the last week of September, 1864, was a father two months old. As for the baby (and I hereby set the fashion of introducing one or more into every romance[[1]]), his mother had already discovered whom he was like. He was a Carter, every inch of him, especially his nose. But he had his father’s sense of humor,—there was not the slightest doubt of that. For when Charley, who, in speaking to the infant, always alluded to himself in those words,—when Charley, chucking him gingerly under the chin, would ask him what he thought of his venerable p-p-p-p-pop, he could be seen to smile, with the naked eye. To smile that jerky, sudden-spreading, sudden-shrinking smile of babyhood. You see it,—’tis gone! Ah, can it be that even then we dimly discern how serious a world this is to be born into!

Major Frobisher’s battalion was in front of Richmond. The Don and I were under General Jubal Early, in the lower valley,—he a captain in command of the skirmishers of the Stonewall Division, I a staff-officer of the same rank.

I know nothing which makes one’s morning paper more interesting than the news of a great battle. It’s nice to read, between sips of coffee, how the grape and canister mowed ’em down; and the flashing of sabres is most picturesque, and bayonets glitter delightfully, in the columns of a well-printed journal. Taking a hand in it—that’s different. Then the bodily discomfort and mental inanition of camp-life. Thinking is impossible. This, perhaps, does not bear hard upon professionals, with whom, for the most part, abstention from all forms of thought is normal and persistent; but to a civilian, accustomed to give his faculties daily exercise, the routine-life of a soldier is an artesian bore. So, at least, I found it. No doubt, with us, the ever-present consciousness that we were enormously outnumbered made a difference. One boy, attacked by three or four, may be plucky. It is rather too much to expect him to be gay. I was not gay.

It was different with our friend, Captain Smith. He was one of the half-dozen men I knew in those days who actually rejoiced in war. He longed for death, my lovely and romantic reader is anxious to be told; but I am sorry I cannot give her any proofs of this. It was Attila’s gaudium certaminis that inspired him. He was never tired of talking of war, which, with Hobbes, he held to be the natural state of man. At any rate, said he, one day, drawing forth his Iliad and tapping it affectionately, they have been hard at it some time.

This little volume was on its last legs. He had read it to pieces, and could recite page after page of it in the original. How closely, he would say, we skirmishers resemble the forefighters of Homer. He never spoke of his own men save as Myrmidons.

He had become an ardent student, too, of the art of war, and had Dumont and Jomini at his fingers’ ends. Indeed, I am convinced that he would have risen to high rank had he not begun, and for two years remained, a private in the ranks. At the time of which we speak, his capacity and courage were beginning to attract attention; and more than one general officer looked upon Captain Smith as a man destined to rise high.

It remains for me to say that he and Mary have never met since that farewell letter. What his feelings are towards her I can only conjecture; for, although he frequently speaks of the old times, her name never passes his lips. An analytical writer could tell you every thought that had crossed his mind during all these years, and, in twenty pages of Insight, work him up, by slow degrees, from a state of tranquil bliss to one of tumultuous jimjams. But, if you wish to know what my characters feel and think, you must listen to what they say, and see what they do; which I find is the only way I have of judging of people in real life. I should say, therefore (for guessing is inexpensive), that the captain’s lips were sealed, either by deep, sorrowing love, or else by implacable resentment. Choose for yourself, fair reader. I told you, long ago, that this book is but the record of things seen or heard by Charley, or by Alice, supplemented occasionally by facts which chanced to fall under my own observation. Even where I seemed to play analytical, through those weary chapters touching Mary’s religious misgivings, I was not swerving from the line I had laid down. Every word therein written down is from the lips of Mary herself, as reported to me by Alice. Now, Charley tells me that never once did Captain Smith mention Mary’s name, even to him. How, then, am I to know what were his feelings towards her? I remember, indeed, that once a young lieutenant of his, returning from furlough, greeted him with warmth; adding, almost with his first breath, that he had met a friend of his—a lady—in Richmond,—Miss Rolfe—Leigh Street—I spent an evening there—we talked a great deal of you—

The captain touched the visor of his cap.

Here was a chance of finding out what he thought!

“She said she—she said she—”

The young fellow had met a siren during his furlough, and fallen horribly in love himself (as he told me, a few moments afterwards, in a burst of confidence), and would willingly have invented a tender phrase for the consolation of his captain, whom he adored; but truth forbade.

“She said she was glad to hear you were well.”

“Miss Rolfe is very kind,” replied the captain, again touching his cap.

The young officer glanced at his chief, and instantly fell back upon the weather. “I think there is a storm brewing,” he faltered.

“Very likely,” replied the captain of the Myrmidons.

[1] Is this the language of a bachelor?—Ed.

CHAPTER LXVII.
[LETTER FROM CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH TO MAJOR CHARLES FROBISHER.]

Fisher’s Hill, September 21, 1864.

My dear Charley:

Many thanks to your dear wife for the frequent bulletins she has found time to send me in the intervals of nursing you, getting well herself, and worshipping King Charles II. Have you agreed upon a name yet? Or, rather, has Alice settled upon one? For I am told women claim the right of naming the first.

Old boy, when I heard that a bullet had gone clean through you I thought I had seen the last of you; and here you are on your pins again! A far slighter wound would have sufficed to make “darkness veil the eyes” of the stoutest of Homer’s heroes. What pin-scratches used to send them to Hades!

And now, Patroklus, I will tell you why I refused, at the opening of the war, to enter the same company of artillery with you. Your feelings were wounded at the time, and I wanted to tell you why I was so obstinate, but could not. To confess the honest truth, I had not the pluck to place myself where I might have to see you die before my eyes. It would have been different were we warring around Troy. There, I could have helped you, on a pinch, and you me. But these winged messengers of death, who can ward them off, even from the dearest friend!

I had a cruel trial in last week’s battle. When it became necessary to order Edmund’s company to advance, my heart sank within me. [Edmund was Mr. Poythress’s youngest child, a lad of barely sixteen summers, who had chafed and pined till he had wrung from his mother a tearful consent to his joining the army.] “If I do not come back,” he whispered in my ear, “tell mother that her ‘baby’ was man enough to do his duty,—for I am going to do it.” “Your company is moving,” I replied, in as stern a voice as I could muster; for I felt a rush of tears coming; and he bounded into his place. I have seen fair women in my day, and lovely landscapes, and noble chargers; but never have my eyes beheld anything so surpassingly beautiful as that ingenuous boy springing forward, under a rain of bullets, with a farewell to his mother on his lips, and the light of battle on his brow. I held my breath till he disappeared within the wood. Why is it that we all shudder at the dangers of those we love, and yet can be calm when our own lives hang by a thread? Is it not because, while we know that the loss of a true friend is one never to be repaired, and which casts a shadow upon our lives that can never be lifted [Charley keeps this letter, with another little note, which you will read later on, in a blue satin case, that Alice has embroidered with forget-me-nots. He showed it to me on the nineteenth of last October. The satin is all faded (and spotted, here and there) but time has not dulled the colors of the flowers], there is a profound, though veiled conviction, deep down in the heart of hearts of all of us, that, as for ourselves, it were better were we at rest? It seems to me that it is only the instinctive fear of death, which we share with the lower animals, and that conscience which makes brave men, not cowards of us all, that nerves such of us as have the cruel gift of thought to bear up to the end, against the slings and arrows of the most favored life, even. But it is a shame that I should write thus to a man with a brand-new baby!

I cannot picture to myself Alice as a mother; though, thanks to her graphic pen, I have a very clear conception of you as pater familias. I have laughed till I cried over her accounts of you sunning the youngster in the garden while the nurse was at her dinner, and the way you held him, and the extraordinary observations you see fit to make to him. I can’t blame him for smiling. The andante in Mozart’s D minor quartet is very beautiful; but never did I expect to hear of Charles Frobisher extemporizing words to it as a lullaby, while he rocked his infant to sleep!

But it is time I gave you some account of our late disastrous battle at Winchester. In order to understand it, you must have before your mind a picture of the region in which it was fought.

The valley of Virginia is a narrow ribbon of land, as it were, stretching diagonally across the State, between the Blue Ridge and Alleghany Mountains. As its fertility attracted settlers at an early date, its forests have mostly fallen years ago. This is especially true of the region around Winchester, which is situated in the midst of a broad, fertile plain, broken by rolling hills, crowned, here and there, by the fair remains of singularly noble forests. One would say, standing upon an eminence, and surveying the smiling landscape, that this lovely plain was fashioned by the hand of the Creator as the abode of plenty and eternal peace. Yet a poet, remembering that it is not peace, but war that man loves, could not, in his dreams, picture to himself a more beautiful battle-field. And if I have to fall, may it be on one of thy sunny slopes, valiant little Winchester; and may the last thing my eyes behold be the handkerchiefs waving from thy housetops. Such women are worth dying, yes, even worth living for.

Observe, therefore, that the plains of Winchester are admirably adapted for the rapid and intelligent manœuvring of large masses of troops. Artillery, infantry, cavalry,—every arm of the service may move in any direction with perfect facility. And I need not tell an old soldier that such a field gives overwhelming advantage to a greatly superior force. When a general, as his troops advance to the attack, can see just where the enemy are, and how far they extend,—can see their reserves hurrying forward, and knows that when they are all hotly engaged he can push heavy masses of fresh troops around both flanks, and attack in the rear men who are already outnumbered in front, what can save the weaker army from annihilation? And yet, on the nineteenth of this month, Early’s little army of ten thousand troops withstood, in front of Winchester, in the open field, without breastworks, from dawn till late in the afternoon, the assaults of forty thousand of the enemy. [Note.—This is an error on the part of the captain, but I retain his statement of the numbers engaged, just as he gives them, simply to show what was the universal belief of our soldiers at the time,—that they were outnumbered four to one. The true figures show that Early had fifteen thousand, Sheridan forty-five thousand men,—or only three to one. J. B. W.][[1]] How a solitary man of us escaped I shall never be able to understand.

Possibly you have not seen in the papers that on the seventeenth Early sent our division down the valley to Martinsburg (twenty-two miles) to make a reconnoissance. We did a little skirmishing there, and on the next day encamped, on our return, at a place called Bunker’s Hill,—named, I presume, in honor of the Bunker’s Hill on which Boston, with a magnanimity unparalleled in history, has erected an imposing monument to commemorate the gallant storming of Breed’s Hill by the British. Here we lay down to rest. I will not say to sleep; for never, since the beginning of the war, had I felt so profoundly anxious. Picture to yourself our situation.

There we were, twelve miles down the valley, twenty-five hundred men; while, near Berryville, over against our main body of about eight thousand men at Winchester, lay an army forty thousand strong. Suppose Sheridan should attack in our absence? True, Early had marched over to Berryville, a few days before, and offered him battle in vain. But suppose he did attack? Could he not in an hour’s time (for forty thousand against eight is rather too much) drive Early’s force pell-mell across the pike, and, with his immense force of cavalry, capture the last man he had? And then we would have nothing to do but march up the valley, like a covey of partridges, into a net.

Such were the thoughts which flashed across my mind, with painful intensity, at dawn next morning. Weary with anxious thinking, I had fallen to sleep at last. The boom of a cannon swept down from Winchester. We are lost, was my first thought. Our army will be annihilated. Sheridan will set out on his march to the rear of Richmond to-morrow morning.

I rose without a word, as did others around me, and completed my toilet by buckling on my sword and pistols. There, on my blanket, lay Edmund, sleeping the sweet, deep sleep of boyhood. I could hardly make up my mind to arouse him. “Get up,” said I, touching his shoulder; “they are fighting at Winchester.” “They are!” cried he, leaping to his feet. The gaudium certaminis was in his eyes. The boy is every inch a soldier.

We hurried up the turnpike without thinking of breakfast, the roar of the battle growing louder as we advanced. Edmund chattered the whole way, asking me, again and again, whether I thought it would be all over before we got there. He had not yet been in a battle, and was full of eager courage. I told him I thought he would have a chance at them, though I actually thought that all would be over before we reached the ground. And what do you suppose we learned as we neared the field? That Ramseur, with his twelve hundred men covering our front with hardly more than a skirmish line, had held in check the heavy masses of the enemy all this time! They had been attacked at dawn; we had marched twelve miles; and there they were still, Ramseur and his heroic little band of North Carolinians. And I single out the North Carolinians by name, not so much because of their courage, as of their modesty.

Well, we were beaten that day, and badly beaten. That we were not annihilated is what I cannot comprehend. And why we are allowed to rest here and recuperate, with a vastly superior army, flushed with victory, in our front, is equally difficult to understand. Why were we not attacked at dawn next day? Yet, that he has not done so does not surprise me, after what I saw of his generalship at the close of the late battle. Put yourself beside me, and see what I saw on the afternoon of September 19th.

We are standing on an open hill, just in rear of where our troops have fought so stubbornly the livelong day. Where is our army? It no longer exists. It has been hammered to pieces. Here and there you see a man slowly retiring, and loading his rifle as he falls back. Every now and then he turns and fires. One here, and one there,—this is all the army we have.

Now look over there, at that field, to the left of the position lately held by us. Those are the enemy’s skirmishers, advancing from a wood. Their long line stretches far away, and is lost to view behind that rise in the hill. At whom are they firing? Heaven knows, for there is no enemy in their front. And now the dense masses of their infantry appear, in rear of the skirmishers, and glide slowly across the hill, like the shadow of a black cloud. Come, Edmund, cheer up, and have a crack at them. (The boy is standing apart, his powder-begrimed face streaked with decorous tears.) Set your sight at six hundred yards. Come here, and let me give you a rest on my hip. Yes, the man with the flag. Ah, you have made a stir among them. The line moves on, but one man lies stretched upon the field, with two others kneeling beside him. There is the making of a sharpshooter in the boy!

And what ponderous form is this that comes towards us, limping and disconsolate? ’Tis our friend Jack. He, I need hardly tell you, ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ But he lost heart when his powerful charger fell beneath him, disembowelled by a cannon-ball. Poor Bucephalus! He had carried him through twenty battles as though he were a feather; and where was he to find another horse that could carry him at all! (Edmund tells a good story of Jack. He says that while he stood lamenting the death of his valiant steed, one of our advancing brigades, first staggering under the heavy fire, then halting, were beginning to give way. “Boys,” cried Jack (he will have his joke), “boys, follow me! If they can’t hit me, they can’t hit anybody!” Edmund says that some of the soldiers laughed; and that as they followed the burly captain he heard one of them say to his neighbor, “Mind now; if they do hit him, I claim his breeches as a winter-quarters tent.”)

Look, now, at those dark masses, halted in full view on that rising ground to our right. They are as near Winchester as we are. What are they doing there? Surely they can see that there are no troops between themselves and the town! Why do they not go and take it? Can it be their advance has been checked by the stray shots of a score of retreating sharpshooters?

Now turn and look a mile away, to our left. See that dense cloud of dust, lit up with the flashing of carbine-shots, the gleaming of sabres, and the glare of bursting shells! There, along the pike, our handful of cavalry, struggling bravely with overwhelming odds, is falling back upon the town. Come, Edmund, there is no use staying here any longer. Yes, I think they will get there before us. Pluck up your spirits, my boy; a true soldier shows best in adversity.

I have not tried, my dear Charley, to give you a military account of this battle. I have striven, instead, to lay before you a picture of the field as it appeared when Edmund, Jack, and I sadly turned towards Winchester. It was then the middle of the afternoon. Would you believe that we reached the town in safety,—entered a house, whose fair inmates gave us bread (it was all—almost more than all they had),—retired, afterwards, up the pike, along which our soldiers straggled in twos and threes,—went into camp,—arose next morning,—and made our way to Fisher’s Hill? And here we are still, resting as quietly as though no enemy were in our front!

I have known men to leave the gaming-table, after a big run of luck, so as to spend their winnings before the tide turned. Perhaps our friends the enemy wish to enjoy their glory awhile before risking the loss of it in another battle; but it isn’t war.

✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻

✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻

Yours, ever,

Dory.

[1] See Geo. A. Pond’s “Shenandoah Valley Campaigns,” if more minute accuracy is desired.—Ed.