Then, in joy which was almost insanity, he saw that gray line begin to waver and to break. Tauntingly he shouted, fiercely his men roared; than their mad yells no Confederate "Hi-yi" was ever more ferocious. This repelling host was a new army, sprung Phœnix-like from the body of the old; to him its eyes seemed to stream lightning, it seemed to shake its wings over the yet glowing ashes of its progenitor. He watched the jostling, swaying lines, he saw them boil and roar, saw them dash their flamy spray above the crest like two hostile billows of a fiery ocean.
Once more commands are few, men do not heed them. Clearly once more they see their duty, magnificently they obey. This is war at the height of its passion, war at the summit of its glory. A color-sergeant rushed to the stone wall, there he fell; eagerly at once his comrades plunged forward. There was an instant of fierce conflict, of maddening, indistinguishable confusion. Men wrestled with one another, opposed one another with muskets used as clubs, tore at each other like wolves, until spent, exhausted, among heaps of dead, the conquered began to give themselves up. Back and forth over twenty-five square miles they had fought, for three interminable days. Here on this little crest, by this little wall, the fight was ended. Here the high-water mark was reached, here the flood began its ebb. Laughing, shouting, "so that the deaf could have seen it in their faces, the blind have heard it in their voices," the conquerors proclaimed the victory. Thank God, the crest is safe!
Are men wounded and broken by the thousands, do they lie in burning thirst, pleading for water, pleading for the bandaging of bleeding arteries, pleading for merciful death? The conquerors think of none of these things. Is night coming, are long marches coming? Still the conquerors shout like mad. Is war ended by this mammoth victory? For months and months it will drag on. Is this conquered foe a stranger, will he now withdraw to a distant country? He is our brother, his ills are ours, these wounds which we have given, we shall feel ourselves for fifty years. Is this brave young officer to enjoy the reward of his great courage, to live in fame, to be honored by his countrymen? At Cold Harbor he is to perish with a bullet in his forehead. Is not all this business of war mad?
It is a feeble, peace-loving, fireside-living generation which asks such questions as these.
Now, thank God, the crest is safe!
IV
THE BATTLE-GROUND
Mercifully, Mary Bowman, a widow, whose husband had been missing since the battle of Gettysburg, had been warned, together with the other citizens of Gettysburg, that on Thursday the nineteenth of November, 1863, she would be awakened from sleep by a bugler's reveillé, and that during that great day she would hear again dread sound of cannon.
Nevertheless, hearing again the reveillé, she sat up in bed with a scream and put her hands over her ears. Then, gasping, groping about in her confusion and terror, she rose and began to dress. She put on a dress which had been once a bright plaid, but which now, having lost both its color and the stiff, out-standing quality of the skirts of '63, hung about her in straight and dingy folds. It was clean, but it had upon it certain ineradicable brown stains on which soap and water seemed to have had no effect. She was thin and pale, and her eyes had a set look, as though they saw other sights than those directly about her.
In the bed from which she had risen lay her little daughter; in a trundle-bed near by, her two sons, one about ten years old, the other about four. They slept heavily, lying deep in their beds, as though they would never move. Their mother looked at them with her strange, absent gaze; then she barred a little more closely the broken shutters, and went down the stairs. The shutters were broken in a curious fashion. Here and there they were pierced by round holes, and one hung from a single hinge. The window-frames were without glass, the floor was without carpet, the beds without pillows.
In her kitchen Mary Bowman looked about her as though still seeing other sights. Here, too, the floor was carpetless. Above the stove a patch of fresh plaster on the wall showed where a great rent had been filled in; in the doors were the same little round holes as in the shutters of the room above. But there was food and fuel, which was more than one might have expected from the aspect of the house and its mistress. She opened the shattered door of the cupboard, and, having made the fire, began to prepare breakfast.