“And they’ve all kept on the main road?”
“Yaas, ma’am. All taken de main road.”
She looked down the road she had come—the main road. Here was another cloud of dust; she heard a faint shouting. She had with her some Confederate notes, and now she put one of a large denomination into the hand of the old driver, nodded good-bye, and turned into the narrow way, that seemed merely a track through the forest. Almost immediately, as she came beneath the arching trees, the cabin, the negro family, the gleaming, wider road sank away and were lost.
She walked lightly and swiftly. She might have been wearied. For a month now she had known that she carried life beneath her heart. But she did not feel wearied. She felt strong and well and deathless. The miles were not many now before her. With good luck she might even reach her goal to-night. If not to-night then she would sleep where she might and go forward at dawn. Before another sun was high it would be all right—all right. The clouds began to lift, and though it was cold it did not seem so cold to her as it had been. At long intervals she passed, set back from the road, small farmhouses or cabins in ragged gardens. Most of these houses looked quite deserted; others had every shutter closed, huddling among the trees with a frightened air. As the afternoon came on the houses grew further apart. The road was narrow, untravelled of late—it seemed a lonely country.... At last she came to the promised creek and the mill. The mill-wheel was not turning, no miller and his men stood about the door, no horses with sacks thrown across waited without. There was no sign of life. But the miller’s house was behind the mill, and here she saw a face at a window. She went and knocked at the door. An old woman opened to her. “Be the Yankees coming?” she said.
Désirée asked for a bit of bread, and to warm herself beside the fire. While she ate it, crouched in the warm corner of the kitchen hearth, the old woman took again her post at the window. “I keep a-watching and a-watching for them to come!” she said. “They’ve got a spite against mills. My father built this one, and when he died my husband took it, and when he died my boy John. The wheel turned when I was little, and when I was grown and had a lover, and when I was married and when there were children. It turned when there was laughing and when there was crying. The sound of the water over it and the flashing is the first thing I can remember. I used to think it would be the last thing I’d hear when I came to die, and I kind of hoped it would. I liked it. It was all mixed up with all kinds of things. But now I reckon before this time to-morrow it’ll be burned. They’ve got a spite against mills.—Won’t you stay the night?”
But there was an hour yet before sunset. The road to Winnsboro’? Yes, that was it, and it was only so many miles. The army? Yes, she thought the army was still there. Yesterday there had been what they called a reconoissance this way. A lot of grey soldiers had passed, going down to the Columbia road and back.
Désirée rose refreshed, gave her thanks and went her way. A wind bent the trees and tore and heaped the clouds. The low sun shone out and turned the clouds into purple towers, fretted and crowned with gold. The rays came to Désirée like birds and flowers of hope. For all the woe of the land her heart began to sing. She walked on and on, not conscious of weariness, moving as though she were on air, drawn by a great magnet. The clouds were enchanted towers, the sky between, a waveless sea; the wind at her back, driving her on, was welcome, the odour of woods and earth was welcome. On and on she went, steady and swift, an arrow meaning to pierce the gold.
Suddenly, with a shock, the enchantment went. The wind, blowing with her, brought a distant, confused sound. She turned. It was sunset, the earth was suddenly stern and dark. Above the woods, back the way she had come, rose thick smoke. She knew it for what it was, knew that some one of Sherman’s roving bands was there at the mill, burning it down. She stood with knit brows, for now she heard men upon the road. The ground here rose slightly, the road running across a desolate, open field, covered with sedge, from which rose at intervals tall, slender pines. Their trunks and bushy heads outlined against the sky, that was now all flushed with carmine, gave them a curious resemblance to palm trees. West of the road, half way across the sedgy stretch, ran a short and ruined wall of stones, part of some ancient enclosure. Behind it showed again the darker, thicker wood. Désirée, leaving the road, went toward this, but she had hardly stepped from the trodden way into the sedge when behind her at the turn of the road appeared a man in uniform. She was above him, clear against the great suffusion of the sunset sky. He stared a moment, then turned his head and whooped, whereupon there appeared half a dozen of his fellows.
They caught up with her just as she reached the broken wall. She saw that without exception they were drunk, and she set her back against the stones and prepared to fight.
Five thousand men could not meet in battle sixty thousand, but they could and did send out reconnoitring bodies that gathered news of Sherman, tarrying yet upon the Congaree, and gave some sense of protection to the country people and gave sharp lessons to the marauding parties that now and again they met with. By moving here and there they made a rumour, too, of gathering grey troops and larger numbers, of reinforcements perhaps from North Carolina, of at any rate grey forces and some one to play now protector, now avenger. So it was that on this winter afternoon the ——th Virginia, three or four hundred muskets, with a small detachment of cavalry going ahead, found itself marching down the main road, fifteen miles toward Columbia. It knew by now of the burning of Columbia. “Everything in ashes—houses and stores and churches and a convent. The people with neither food nor shelter—going where they can.” Grey cavalry and infantry asked nothing better than to meet its foes to-day. So great, around the blue army, was the fringe of foragers and pillagers and those engaged in “making the country untenable for the enemy,” that the grey did meet to-day various bands of plunderers. When they did they gave short shrift, but charged, firing, cut them down and rode them over and chased them back toward Columbia and their yet stationary great force. The grey’s humour to-day was a grim and furious humour.