“Yes, when he was distraught!”
“That’s what I say. You can nearly go mad at night, thinking how mad we all are!”
“Don’t think. At least not now. You can’t afford it.”
“I agree with Cary. There’s a time to think and a time not to think. The less the soldier thinks the better.”
“Think!” said Fauquier Cary. “No one ever thinks in war. The soldier looks at his enemy, and then he looks at his murdering piece, and then instinctively he discovers the best position—or what seems to him the best position—from which to fire it. And then he reloads, and he looks again at the enemy, and instinct does the job for him once more—and so on, ad infinitum. But he never thinks.” He rose and stood, warming his one hand. “If he did that, you know, there’d be no war!”
“And would that be a good thing?”
“It depends,” said Cary, “on what you call a good thing.—Listen! Jeb Stuart and his cavalry, moving on the old Turnpike—”
The grey soldiers, too, had their camp-fires. The light of these flared, to the eyes of the blue, on the southern horizon. Here likewise was the effect of the lights of a city—a smaller city, a city of sixty thousand. But when you were actually back of the pickets, in the camps, it was not like a city. It was only dusky lights here and there in the midst of shadows, only camp-fires in the Wilderness. The grey men scattered around them, resting after rapid marching, were in an eve-of-battle mood. Eve-of-battle mood meant tenseness, sudden jocularity, sudden silences, a kind of added affectionateness between brothers and intimates, often masked by brusqueness, a surreptitious consideration, a curious, involuntary “in honour preferring one another.” Even among the still at this hour very busy people, the generals cogitating orders, the aides and couriers standing waiting or setting out with their messages, the ordnance train people, the movers of guns from one point to another, the ambulance folk, the drivers of belated wagons, the cavalry patrols, eve-of-battle feeling was apparent. But it was most in force in the resting army. Eve-of-battle mood had many ingredients. Among them was to be found in the cup of many the ingredient of fear. Men hid it, but it was there. It fell on the heart at intervals, fell like a cold finger tap, like the icy drop of water falling at intervals, hour after hour, on the brow of the tortured in an old dungeon. When the battle was here it would disappear; always the amount of it lessened in constant ratio to the approach of the firing. The first volley—except in the case of the coward—dissipated it quite. With some the drop was heavier and more insistent than with others, but there were few, indeed, who had not at some time felt that cold and penetrating touch. It was only a thing of intervals; it came and went, and between its comings one was gay enough. There had long ago ceased the fear of what it could do to one. It was not pleasant—neither was sea-sickness—but the voyage would be made. The Army of Northern Virginia knew that it was going to fight. The world knows that it fought as have fought few armies.
A company lying upon the earth in a field of cedars began to sing.
“We’re tenting to-night on the old camp-ground!