The woods were full of Rebel graves, with here and there a heap of half-covered bones, where several of the dead had been hurriedly buried together.
I had seen enough. We returned to the cemetery. Elijah hitched up his horse, and we drove back along the plank-road, cheered by a rainbow which spanned the Wilderness and moved its bright arch onward over Chancellorsville towards Fredericksburg, brightening and fading, and brightening still again, like the hope which gladdened the nation’s eye after Grant’s victory.
CHAPTER XVI.
SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT-HOUSE.
Elijah wished to drive me the next day to Spottsylvania Court-House, and, as an inducement for me to employ him, promised to tackle up his mare. He also proposed various devices for softening the seats of his wagon. No ingenuity of plan, however, sufficed to cajole me. There was a livery-stable in Fredericksburg, and I had conceived a strong prejudice in its favor.
The next morning, accordingly, there might have been seen wheeling up to the tavern-door a shining vehicle,—a bran-new buggy with the virgin gloss upon it,—drawn by a prancing iron-gray in a splendid new harness. The sarcastic stable-man had witnessed my yesterday’s departure and return, and had evidently exhausted the resources of his establishment to furnish forth a dazzling contrast to Elijah’s sorry outfit. The driver was a youth who wore his cap rakishly over his left eyebrow. I took a seat by his side on a cushion of the softest, and presently might have been seen riding out of Fredericksburg in that brilliant style,—nay, was seen, by one certainly, who was cut to the heart. We drove by the “stonewall” road under the Heights, and passed a house by the corner of which a thin-visaged “old man” of fifty was watering a sad little beast at a well. The beast was “that mare”; and the old man was Elijah. I shall never forget the look he gave me. I bade him a cheerful good-morning; but his voice stuck in his throat; he could not say “good-morning.” Our twinkling wheels almost grazed the hubs of the old wagon standing in the road as we passed.
That I might have nothing to regret, the stable-keeper had given me a driver who was in the Spottsylvania battle.
“You cannot have seen much service, at your age,” I said, examining his boyish features.
“I was four year in de army, anyhow,” he replied, spitting tobacco-juice with an air of old experience. “I enlisted when I was thirteen. I was under de quartermaster at fust; but de last two year I was in de artillery.”
I observed that he used de for the almost invariably, with many other peculiarities of expression which betrayed early association with negroes.
“What is your name?”