CHAPTER XXVII
JUDITH AND STAFFORD
The cortege bearing Ashby to his grave wound up and up to the pass inthe Blue Ridge. At the top it halted. The ambulance rested beside a greyboulder, while the cavalry escort dismounted and let the horses crop thesweet mountain grass. Below them, to the east, rolled Piedmont Virginia;below them to the west lay the great Valley whence they had come. Asthey rested they heard the cannon of Cross Keys, and with a glass madeout the battle smoke.
For an hour they gazed and listened, anxious and eager; then thehorsemen remounted, the ambulance moved from the boulder, and all wentslowly down the long loops of road. Down and down they wound, from thecool, blowing air of the heights into the warm June region of red roads,shady trees and clear streams, tall wheat and ripening cherries, oldhouses and gardens. They were moving toward the Virginia Central, towardMeechum's Station.
A courier had ridden far in advance. At Meechum's was a little crowd ofcountry people. "They're coming! That's an ambulance!--Is he in theambulance? Everybody take off their hats. Is that his horse behind? Yes,it is a horse that he sometimes rode, but the three stallions werekilled. How mournful they come! Albert Sidney Johnston is dead, and OldJoe may die, he is so badly hurt--and Bee is dead, and Ashby is dead."Three women got out of an old carryall. "One of you men come help uslift the flowers! We were up at dawn and gathered all there were--"
The train from Staunton came in--box cars and a passenger coach. Thecoffin, made at Port Republic, was lifted from the ambulance, out of abed of fading flowers. It was wrapped in the battle-flag. The crowdbowed its head. An old minister lifted trembling hand. "God--this Thyservant! God--this Thy servant!" The three women brought their lilies,their great sprays of citron aloes. The coffin was placed in the aisleof the passenger coach, and four officers followed as its guard. Theescort was slight. Never were there many men spared for these duties.The dead would have been the first to speak against it. Every man inlife was needed at the front. The dozen troopers stalled their horses intwo of the box cars and themselves took possession of a third. The bellrang, slowly and tollingly. The train moved toward Charlottesville, andthe little crowd of country folk was left in the June sunshine with theempty ambulance. In the gold afternoon, the bell slowly ringing, thetrain crept into Charlottesville.
In this town, convenient for hospitals and stores, midway betweenRichmond and the Valley, a halting place for troops moving east andwest, there were soldiers enough for a soldier's escort to his restingplace. The concourse at the station was large, and a long train followedthe bier of the dead general out through the town to the University ofVirginia, and the graveyard beyond.
There were no students now at the University. In the white-pillaredrotunda surgeons held council and divided supplies. In the ranges, wherewere the cell-like students' rooms, and in the white-pillaredprofessors' houses, lay the sick and wounded. From room to room, betweenthe pillars, moved the nursing women. To-day the rotunda was cleared.Surgeons and nurses snatched one half-hour, and, with the families fromthe professors' houses, and the men about the place and the servants,gathered upon the rotunda steps, or upon the surrounding grassy slopes,to watch the return of an old student. It was not long before they heardthe Dead March.
For an hour the body lay between the white columns before the rotundathat Jefferson had built. Soldiers and civilians, women and children,passing before the bier, looked upon the marble face and the hand thatclasped the sword. Then, toward sunset, the coffin lid was closed, thebearers took the coffin up, the Dead March began again, and all movedtoward the graveyard.
Dusk gathered, soft and warm, and filled with fireflies. The Greenwoodcarriage, with the three sisters and Miss Lucy, drew slowly through thescented air up to the dim old house. Julius opened the door. The ladiesstepped out, and in silence went up the steps. Molly had been crying.The little handkerchief which she dropped, and which was restored to herby Julius, was quite wet.
Julius, closing the carriage door, looked after the climbing figures:"Fo' de Lawd, you useter could hear dem laughin' befo' dey got to de bigoaks, and when dey outer de kerriage an' went up de steps dey waschatterin' lak de birds at daybreak! An' now I heah dem sighin' an' MissMolly's handkerchief ez wet ez ef 't was in de washtub! De ol' times isevaporated."
"Dat sholy so," agreed Isham, from the box. "Des look at me er-drivin'horses dat once I'd er scorned to tech!--An' all de worl' er-mournin'.Graveyards gitting full an' ginerals lyin' daid. What de use of dis heahwar, anyhow? W'ite folk ought ter hab more sence."
In the Greenwood dining-room they sat at table in silence, scarcelytouching Car'line's supper, but in the parlour afterward Judith turnedat bay. "Even Aunt Lucy--of all people in the world! Aunt Lucy, if youdo not smile this instant, I hope all the Greenwood shepherdesses willstep from out the roses and disown you! And Unity, if you don't play,sing, look cheerful, my heart will break! Who calls it loss thisafternoon? He left a thought of him that will guide men on! Who doubtsthat to-morrow morning we shall hear that Cross Keys was won? Oh, I knowthat you are thinking most of General Ashby!--but I am thinking most ofCross Keys!"
"Judith, Judith, you are the strongest of us all--"
"Judith, darling; nothing's going to hurt Richard! I just feel it--"
"Hush, Molly! Judith's not afraid."
"No. I am not afraid. I think the cannon have stopped at Cross Keys, andthat they are resting on the field.--Now, for us women. I do not thinkthat we do badly now. We serve all day and half the night, and we keepup the general heart. I think that if in any old romance we read ofwomen like the women of the South in this war we would say, 'Those womenwere heroic.' We have been at war for a year and two months. I see noend of it. It is a desert, and no one knows how wide it is. We maytravel for years. Beside every marching soldier, there marches invisiblea woman soldier too. We are in the field as they are in the field, anddoing our part. No--we have not done at all badly, but now let us giveit all! There is a plane where every fibre is heroic. Let us draw tofull height, lift eyes, and travel boldly! We have to cross the desert,but from the desert one sees all the stars! Let us be too wise for suchanother drooping hour!" She came and kissed her aunt, and clung to her."I wasn't scolding, Aunt Lucy! How could I? But to-night I simply haveto be strong. I have to look at the stars, for the desert is full ofterrible shapes. Some one said that the battle with Shields may befought to-morrow. I have to look at the stars." She lifted herself. "Wefinished 'Villette,' didn't we?--Oh, yes! I didn't like the ending.Well, let us begin 'Mansfield Park'--Molly, have you seen my knitting?"
Having with his fellows of the escort from Port Republic seen the earthheaped over the dead cavalry leader, Maury Stafford lay that night inCharlottesville at an old friend's house. He slept little; the friendheard him walking up and down in the night. By nine in the morning hewas at the University. "Miss Cary? She'll be here in about half an hour.If you'll wait--"
"I'll wait," said Stafford. He sat down beneath an elm and, with hiseyes upon the road by which must approach the Greenwood carriage, waitedthe half-hour. It passed; the carriage drew up and Judith stepped fromit. Her eyes rested upon him with a quiet friendliness. He had been hersuitor; but he was so no longer. Months ago he had his answer. All theagitation, the strong, controlling interest of his world must, perforce,have made him forget. She touched his hand. "I saw you yesterdayafternoon. I did not know if you had ridden back--"
"No. I shall be kept here until to-morrow. Will you be Sister of Mercyall day?"
"I go home to-day about four o'clock."
"If I ride over at five may I see you?"
"Yes, if you wish. I must go now--I am late. Is it true that we won thebattle yesterday? Tell me--"
"We do not know the details yet. It seems that only Ewell's division wasengaged. Trimble's brigade suffered heavily, but it was largely anartillery battle. I saw a copy of General Jackson's characteristictelegram to Richmond. 'God gave us the victory to-day at CrossKeys.'--Fremont has drawn off to Harrisonburg. There is a r
umour of abattle to-day with Shields."
He thought that afternoon, as he passed through the road gates and intothe drive between the oaks, that he had never seen the Greenwood placelook so fair. The sun was low and there were shadows, but where thelight rays touched, all lay mellow and warm, golden and gay and sweet.On the porch he found Unity, sitting with her guitar, singing to aragged grey youth, thin and pale, with big hollow eyes. She smiled andput out her hand. "Judith said you were coming. She will be down in amoment. Major Stafford--Captain Howard--Go on singing? Very well,--
"Soft o'er the fountain, lingering falls the southern moon--"
"Why is it that convalescent soldiers want the very most sentimentalditties that can be sung?
"Far o'er the mountain, breaks the day too soon!"
"I know that string is going to snap presently! Then where would I buyguitar strings in a land without a port?
"Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part-- Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart!"
Judith came down in a soft old muslin, pale violet, open at the throat.It went well with that warm column, with the clear beauty of her faceand her dark liquid eyes. She had a scarf in her hand; it chanced to bethe long piece of black lace that Stafford remembered her wearing thatApril night.--"It is a lovely evening. Suppose we walk."
There was a path through the flower garden, down a slope of grass,across a streamlet in a meadow, then gently up through an ancient wood,and more steeply to the top of a green hill--a hill of hills from whichto watch the sunset. Stafford unlatched the flower-garden gate. "Theroses are blooming as though there were no war!" said Judith. "Look atGeorge the Fourth and the Seven Sisters and my old Giant of Battle!"
"Sometimes you are like one flower," answered Stafford, "and sometimeslike another. To-day, in that dress, you are like heliotrope."
Judith wondered. "Is it wise to go on--if he has forgotten so little asthat?" She spoke aloud. "I have hardly been in the garden for days.Suppose we rest on the arbour steps and talk? There is so much I want toknow about the Valley--"
Stafford looked pleadingly. "No, no! let us go the old path and see thesunset over Greenwood. Always when I ride from here I say to myself, 'Imay never see this place again!'"
They walked on between the box. "The box has not been clipped this year.I do not know why, except that all things go unpruned. The garden itselfmay go back to wilderness."
"You have noticed that? It is always so in times like these. We leavethe artificial. Things have a hardier growth--feeling breaks itsbanks--custom is not listened to--"
"It is not so bad as that!" said Judith, smiling. "And we will notreally let the box grow out of all proportion!--Now tell me of theValley."
They left the garden and dipped into the green meadow. Stafford talkedof battles and marches, but he spoke in a monotone, distrait andcareless, as of a day-dreaming scholar reciting his lesson. Such as itwas, the recital lasted across the meadow, into the wood, yet lit byyellow light, a place itself for day dreams. "No. I did not see himfall. He was leading an infantry regiment. He was happy in his death, Ithink. One whom the gods loved.--Wait! your scarf has caught."
He loosed it from the branch. She lifted the lace, put it over her head,and held it with her slender hand beneath her chin. He looked at her,and his breath came sharply. A shaft of light, deeply gold, struckacross the woodland path. He stood within it, on slightly rising groundthat lifted him above her. The quality of the light gave him a singularaspect. He looked a visitant from another world, a worn spirit, of finetemper, but somewhat haggard, somewhat stained. Lines came into Judith'sbrow. She stepped more quickly, and they passed from out the wood to abare hillside, grass and field flowers to the summit. The little paththat zigzagged upward was not wide enough for two. He moved through thegrass and flowers beside her, a little higher still, and between her andthe sun. His figure was dark; no longer lighted as it was in the wood.Judith sighed inwardly. "I am so tired that I am fanciful. I should nothave come." She talked on. "When we were children and read 'Pilgrim'sProgress' Unity and I named this the Hill Difficulty. And we named theBlue Ridge the Delectable Mountains--War puts a stop to reading."
"Yes. The Hill Difficulty! On the other side was the Valley ofHumiliation, was it not?"
"Yes: where Christian met Apollyon. We are nearly up, and the sunsetwill be beautiful."
At the top, around a solitary tree, had been built a bench. The two satdown. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge. Above the mountainssailed a fleet of little clouds, in a sea of pale gold shut in by purpleheadlands. Here and there on the earth the yellow light lingered. Judithsat with her head thrown back against the bark of the tree, her eyesupon the long purple coast and the golden sea. Stafford, his sword drawnforward, rested his clasped hands upon the hilt and his cheek on hishands. "Are they not like the Delectable Mountains?" she said. "Almostyou can see the shepherds and the flocks--hear the pilgrims singing.Look where that shaft of light is striking!"
"There is heliotrope all around me," he answered. "I see nothing, knownothing but that!"
"You do very wrongly," she said. "You pain me and you anger me!"
"Judith! Judith! I cannot help it. If the wildest tempest were blowingabout this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and strive tocling to the bough, to remain with its larger self--yet would it betwisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My passion is thattempest and my soul is that leaf."
"It is more than a year since first I told you that I could not returnyour feeling. Last October--that day we rode to the old mill--I told youso again, and told you that if we were to remain friends it could onlybe on condition that you accepted the truth as truth and let the stormyou speak of die! You promised--"
"Even pale friendship, Judith--I wanted that!"
"If you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October Ithought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, wonderfulletters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood--"
"I could hear from you only on those terms. I kept them until they, too,were of no use--"
"When I wrote to you last month--"
"I knew of your happiness--before you wrote. I learned it from onenearly concerned. I--I--" He put his hand to his throat as if he werechoking, arose, and walked a few paces and came back. "It was over therenear Gordonsville--under a sunset sky much like this. What did I do thatnight? I have a memory of all the hours of blackness that men have everpassed, lying under forest trees with their faces against the earth. Yousee me standing here, but I tell you my face is against the earth, atyour feet--"
"It is madness!" said Judith. "You see not me, but a goddess of your ownmaking. It is a chain of the imagination. Break it! True goddesses donot wish such love--at least, true women do not!"
"I cannot break it. It is too strong. Sometimes I wish to break it,sometimes not."
Judith rose. "Let us go. The sun is down."
She took the narrow path and he walked beside and above her as before.Darker crimson had come into the west, but the earth beneath had yet aglow and warmth. They took a path which led, not by way of the wood, butby the old Greenwood graveyard, the burying-place of the Carys. At thefoot of the lone tree hill they came again side by side, and so mountedthe next low rise of ground. "Forgive me," said Stafford. "I haveangered you. I am very wretched. Forgive me."
They were beside the low graveyard wall. She turned, leaning against it.There were tears in her eyes. "You all come, and you go away, and thenext day brings news that such and such an one is dead! With the soundof Death's wings always in the air, how can any one--I do not wish to beangry. If you choose we will talk like friends--like a man and a womanof the South. If you do not, I can but shut my ears and hasten home andhenceforth be too wise to give you opportunity--"
"I go back to the front to-morrow. Be patient with me these few minutes.And I, Judith--I will cling with all my might to the tree--"
A touch like sunlight came upon him of his old fine
grace, charming,light, and strong. "I won't let go! How lovely it is, and still--the elmtops dreaming! And beyond that gold sky and the mountains all thefighting! Let us go through the graveyard. It is so still--and all theirtroubles are over."
Within the graveyard, too, was an old bench around an elm. "A fewminutes only!" pleaded Stafford. "Presently I must ride back totown--and in the morning I return to the Valley." They sat down. Beforethem was a flat tombstone sunk in ivy, a white rose at the head.Stafford, leaning forward, drew aside with the point of his scabbard thedark sprays that mantled the graved coat of arms.
LUDWELL CARY
_In part I sleep. I wake within the whole._
He let the ivy swing back. "I have seen many die this year who wishedto live. If death were forgetfulness! I do not believe it. I shallpersist, and still feel the blowing wind--"
"Listen to the cow-bells!" said Judith. "There shows the evening star."
"Can a woman know what love is? This envelope of the soul--If I couldbut tear it! Judith, Judith! Power and longing grow in the very air Ibreathe!--will to move the universe if thereby I might gain you!--yourpresence always with me in waves of light and sound! and you cannottruly see nor hear me! Could you do so, deep would surely answer deep!"
"Do you not know," she said clearly, "that I love Richard Cleave? You donot attract me. You repel me. There are many souls and many deeps, andthe ocean to which I answer knows not your quarter of the universe!"
"Do you love him so? I will work him harm if I can!"
She rose. "I have been patient long enough.--No! not with me, if youplease! I will go alone. Let me pass, Major Stafford!--"
She was gone, over the dark trailing periwinkle, through the little gatecanopied with honeysuckle. For a minute he stayed beneath the elms,calling himself fool and treble fool; then he followed, though at alittle distance. She went before him, in her pale violet, through thegathering dusk, unlatched for herself the garden gate and passed intothe shadow of the box. A few moments later he, too, entered the scentedalley and saw her waiting for him at the gate that gave upon the lawn.He joined her, and they moved without speaking to the house.
They found the family gathered on the porch, an old horse waiting on thegravel below, and an elderly, plain man, a neighbouring farmer, standinghalfway up the steps. He was speaking excitedly. Molly beckoned fromabove. "Oh, Judith, it's news of the battle--"
"Yes'm," said the farmer. "Straight from Staunton--telegram to thecolonel in Charlottesville. '_Big fighting at Port Republic. Jacksonwhipped Shields. Stonewall Brigade suffered heavily._'--No'm--That wasall. We won't hear details till to-morrow.--My boy John's in theStonewall, you know--but Lord! John always was a keerful fellow! Ireckon he's safe enough--but I ain't going to tell his mother about thebattle till to-morrow; she might as well have her sleep.--War'spernicious hard on mothers. I reckon we'll see the bulletin to-morrow."
He was gone, riding in a sturdy, elderly fashion toward his home in acleft of the hills. "Major Stafford cannot stay to supper, Aunt Lucy,"said Judith clearly. "Is that Julius in the hall? Tell one of the boysto bring Major Stafford's horse around."
As she spoke she turned and went into the house. The group upon theporch heard her step upon the polished stair. Unity proceeded to makeconversation. A negro brought the horse around. Judith did not return.Stafford, still and handsome, courteous and self-possessed, leftfarewell for her, said good-bye to the other Greenwood ladies, mountedand rode away. Unity, sitting watching him unlatch the lower gate andpass out upon the road, hummed a line--
"Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part!"
"I have a curious feeling about that man," said Miss Lucy, "and yet itis the rarest thing that I distrust anybody!--What is it, Molly?"
"It's no use saying that I romance," said Molly, "for I don't. And whenMr. Hodge said 'the Stonewall Brigade suffered heavily' he looked_glad_--"
"Who looked glad?"
"Major Stafford. It's no use looking incredulous, for he did! There wasthe most curious light came into his face. And Judith saw it--"
"Molly--Molly--"
"She did! You know how Edward looks when he's white-hot angry--still andGreek looking? Well, Judith looked like that. And she and Major Staffordcrossed looks, and it was like crossed swords. And then she sent for hishorse and went away, upstairs to her room. She's up there now prayingfor the Stonewall Brigade and for Richard."
"Molly, you're uncanny!" said Unity. "Oh me! Love and Hate--North andSouth--and we'll not have the bulletin until to-morrow--"
Miss Lucy rose. "I am going upstairs to Judith and tell her that Isimply know Richard is safe. There are too many broken love stories inthe world, and the Carys have had more than their share."