By most the words were sobbed out. May the eighth, and the Wilderness vast in the minds of all, and fresh battle impending, now at Spottsylvania! It was a congregation of men and women, dusky in raiment, bereaved, torn by anxieties, sick with alternating hope and fear. Only on one’s bed at night, or here in church, could the overladen heart speak without shame or acknowledgment of weakness. Outside, one must be brave again. The overladen heart expressed itself not loudly but very truly. The kneeling women looked crushed and immobile in that position. Over them was flung a veil of black, and a hand, potent from the beginning of ages, seemed yet more heavily to press downward their bowed heads. The men knelt more stiffly, but they, too, rested their foreheads on their clasped hands, and the tears came from between their closed lids.
On rolled the service, through to the benediction. Richmond in Saint Paul’s came out of church into the flower-perfumed sunlight. Here, men and women, they took up life again, and took it up with courage. And as the proper face of courage is a smiling one, so with these. Laughter, even, was heard in Richmond—Richmond scarred and battle-worn; Richmond, where was disease and crowding and wounds and starvation; Richmond ringed with earthworks; Richmond the city contended for; Richmond between her foes, Army of the Potomac threatening from the Wilderness, Army of the James, lesser but formidable, threatening from the river gate; Richmond, where the alarm bell was always ringing, ringing! Two days ago it had pealed the news that Butler, bringing up a fleet from Fortress Monroe, had made a landing at Bermuda Hundred. Thirty-nine ships there were in all—thirty-eight, when a gunboat, running upon a torpedo, was blown into fragments. They landed thirty-six thousand troops and overran the narrow ground between the Appomattox and the James. Petersburg was threatened, and from that side Richmond. The bell told it all with an iron tongue. Pickett was at Petersburg, reinforced by Hagood’s brigade, and troops were coming from the Carolinas—some troops, how many no one knew save that they could not be many. Yesterday again the thrilling, rapid, iron tongue had spoken. The enemy had seized and was wrecking the Petersburg railroad.... So many words had come forward in this war, had their day, or short or long, and gone out of men’s mouths! Now the word “Petersburg” came forward, it being its turn. The alarm bell called out the militia and the City Battalion and the clerks from the various departments. They were all ready if the blue cannon came nearer.
Storm and oppression were in the air—and yet the town on its seven hills was fair, with May flowers and the fresh green of many trees in which sang the mating birds. The past winter and early spring there had existed, leaping like a sudden flame, dying to a greying ember, and then leaping again, a strange gaiety. It had seized but a certain number in the heavy-hearted city, but these it had seized. Youth was youth, and must sing some manner of song and play a little no matter what the storm. There were bizarre “starvation parties,” charades, concerts, dances, amateur theatricals, an historic presentation of “The Rivals.” It was all natural enough; it had its place in the symphony of 1864. But now it was over. The soldiers had gone back to the front, the campaign had begun, and no one could really sing, watching the wounded come in.
Judith and Unity Cary walked up Grace Street together. They were not wearing black; Warwick Cary had never liked it. Moreover, in this year of the war a black gown and bonnet and veil would cost a fearful amount, and there were known to be women and children starving. The day was bright and warm, with drifts of perfume. An officer of the President’s staff lifted his cap, then walked beside them.
“Isn’t it a lovely day?—If I were a king with a hundred palaces, I should have around each one a brick wall with wistaria over it!”
“No, dark red roses—”
“I shouldn’t have a wall at all—unless it were one with a number of gates—and only one palace! A reasonable palace, with an unreasonable number of white roses—”
A lieutenant-colonel, aged twenty-six, with an arm in a sling, and a patch over one eye, here joined them. “Good morning! Isn’t it a lovely day! I was just thinking it wasn’t half so lovely a day as the days are at Greenwood, and lo and behold! just then it became just as lovely!—What do you think! It’s confirmed that Beauregard is on his way from North Carolina—”
“Good!”
“‘Beau canon, Beauregard! Beau soldat, Beauregard!