CHAPTER XL
A GUNNER OF PELHAM'S
Major John Pelham looked at the clouds boiling up above Bull RunMountains.
"Rain, rain go away, Come again another day!--"
he said. "What's the house they've burned over there?"
"Chantilly, sir."
Ruined wall and chimney, fallen roof-tree, gaping holes where windowshad been, the old mansion stood against the turmoil of the sky. Itlooked a desolation, a poignant gloom, an unrelieved sorrow. A courierappeared. "The enemy's rearguard is near Ox Hill, sir. They've driven insome of our patrols. The main body is moving steady toward Fairfax CourtHouse. General Jackson has sent the Light Division forward. GeneralStuart's going, too. He says, 'Come on.'"
The clouds mounted high and dark, thunder began to mutter; by the time apart of the Light Division and a brigade of Ewell's came into touch withReno and Kearney, the afternoon, already advanced, was of the hue oftwilight. Presently there set in a violent storm of thunder andlightning, wind and rain. The trees writhed like wounded soldiers, therain came level against the face, stinging and blinding, the artilleryof the skies out-thundered man's inventions. It grew darker and darker,save for the superb, far-showing lightning flashes. Beneath these theblue and the grey plunged into an engagement at short range.
What with the howling of the storm, the wind that took voices andwhirled them high and away, the thunder above and the volleying musketrybelow, to hear an order was about the most difficult feat imaginable.Stafford gathered, however, that Lawton, commanding since Ewell's wound,was sending him to Jackson with a statement as to affairs on this wing.He went, riding hard against the slanting rain, and found Jacksonstanding in the middle of the road, a piece of bronze played round bylightning. One of the brigadiers was speaking to him. "The cartridgesare soaking wet, sir. I do not know that I can hold my position."Jackson's voice came deep and curt. "Yes, sir, you can. If your musketswon't go off, neither will the enemy's. You are to hold it, whether youcan or not. Go and do it."
The brigadier went. Stafford gave his information, and received anorder. "Go back along the road until you find the horse artillery. TellMajor Pelham to bring his guns to the knoll yonder with the blastedtree."
Stafford turned his horse and started. The rain and wind were now at hisback--a hundred paces, and the road, lonely save for stragglers, thegrey troops, the battle in front, was all sheeted and shrouded in thedarkly drifting storm. The fitful bursts of musketry were lost beneaththe artillery of the clouds. He travelled a mile, found Pelham and gavehis order, then stood aside under the tossing pines while the horseartillery went by. It went by in the dusk of the storm, in the long howlof the wind and the dash of the rain, like the iron chariots of Pluto,the horses galloping, the gunners clinging wherever they might placehand or foot, the officers and mounted men spurring alongside. Staffordlet them all turn a bend in the road, then followed.
All this stretch of road and field and wood had been skirmished over,Stuart and the blue cavalry having been in touch through the earlierpart of the day. The road was level, with the mournful boggy fields,with the wild bending woods. In the fields and in the woods there weredark objects, which might be mounds of turf or huge twisted roots, orwhich might be dead men and horses. Stafford, riding through wind andrain, had no sooner thought this than he saw, indeed, what seemed a merehummock beneath a clump of cedars undoubtedly move. He looked as closelyas he might for the war of water, air, and fire, and made out a horseoutstretched and stark, and a man pinned beneath. The man spoke. "Hello,upon the road there! Come and do a Christian turn!"
Stafford left his horse and, stepping through a quagmire of watery turf,came into the ring of cedars. The man who had called upon him, a tall,long-moustached person in blue, one arm and booted leg painfully caughtbeneath the dead steed, spoke in a voice curt with suffering. "Grey,aren't you? Don't care. Can't help it. Get this infernal weight off me,won't you?"
The other bent to the task, and at last managed to free the bluesoldier. "There! That position must have been no joke! How long--"
The blue cavalryman proceeded to feel bone and flesh, slowly andcautiously to move the imprisoned limbs. He drew a breath of relief."Nothing broken!--How long? Well, to reckon by one's feeling I shouldsay about a week. Say, however, since about noon. We drove against aparty under Stuart. He got the best of us, and poor Caliph got a bullet.I could see the road. Everything grey--grey as the sea."
"Why didn't you call before? Any one would have helped you."
The other continued to rub his arm and leg. "You haven't got a drop ofbrandy--eh?"
"Yes, I have. I should have thought of that before." He gave the other asmall flask. The cavalryman drank. "Ah! in '55, when I was with Walkerin Nicaragua, I got pinned like that beneath a falling cottonwood." Hegave the flask back. "You are the kind of Samaritan I like to meet. Ifeel a new man. Thanks awfully."
"It was foolish of you to lie there for hours--"
The other leaned his back against a cedar. "Well, I thought I might holdout, perhaps, until we beat you and I was again in the house of myfriends. I don't, however, object to acknowledging that you're hard tobeat. Couldn't manage it. Growing cold and faint--head ringing. Waitedas long as I could, then called. They say your prisons are very bad."
"They are no worse than yours."
"That may be. Any of them are bad."
"We are a ravaged and blockaded country. It is with some difficulty thatwe feed and clothe our armies in the field. As for medicines with whichto fight disease, you will not let them pass, not for our women andchildren and sick at home, and not for your own men in prison. And, forall our representations, you will not exchange prisoners. If there isundue suffering, I think you must share the blame."
"Yes, yes, it is all hellish enough!--Well, on one side of the dice,prisoner of war; on the other, death here under poor Caliph. Mightescape from prison, no escape from death. By Jove, what a thunderclap!It's Stonewall Jackson pursuing us, eh?"
"Yes. I hear Pelham's guns--You are an Englishman?"
"Yes. Francis Marchmont, at your service; colonel of the Marchmont"--helaughed--"Invincibles."
"I am Maury Stafford, serving on General Ewell's staff.--Yes, that'sPelham."
He straightened himself. "I must be getting back to the front. It ishard to hear for the wind and rain and thunder, but I think the musketryis recommencing." He looked about him. "We came through these woodsthis morning. Stuart has patrols everywhere, but I think that dipbetween the hills may be clear. You are pretty pale yet. You had betterkeep the brandy flask. Are you sure that you can walk?"
"Walk beside you into your lines, you mean?"
"No. I mean try a way out between the hills."
"I am not your prisoner?"
"No."
Marchmont pulled at his moustaches. "Yes. I think I can walk. I won'tdeprive you of your flask--but if I might have another mouthful--Thankyou." He rose stiffly. "If at any time I can serve you, I trust that youwill remember my name--Francis Marchmont, colonel Marchmont Invincibles.Send me a slip of paper, a word, anything. _Ox Hill_ will do--and youwill find me at your service. Yes, the firing is beginning again--"
Stafford, once more upon the road, travelled northward in an unabatedstorm. Tree and bush, weed, flower and grass, writhed and shrank beneaththe anger of the air; the rain hissed and beat, the lightning glared,the thunder crashed. Between the flashes all was dusk. Before him therattle of musketry, the booming of the guns grew louder. He saw to theright, on a bare rise of ground, Pelham's guns.
There came an attempted flanking movement of the blue--a dash of cavalrymet by Stuart and followed by a movement of two of Hill's brigades. Theaction barred the road and fields before Stafford. He watched it amoment, then turned aside and mounted the rise of ground to Pelham'sguns. A great lightning-flash lit them, ranged above him. All their wetmetal gleamed; about them moved the gunners; a man with a lifted spongestaff looked an unearthly figure against the fanta
stic castles andbattlements, the peaks and abysses of the boiling clouds. The lightvanished; Stafford came level with the guns in the dusk.
Pelham welcomed him. "'Trust in God and keep your powder dry,' eh,major? It's the kind of storm you read about--Hello! they've brought upanother battery--"
Stafford dismounted. One of the guns had the vent so burned and enlargedthat it was useless. It rested cold and silent beside its bellowingfellows. Stafford seated himself on the limber, and watched the doublestorm. It raged above the little hill, with its chain lightnings, withwind, with reverberations of thunder; and it raged below, between somethousands of grey and blue figures, small, small, in the dusk, shadowymanikins sending from metal tubes glow-worm flashes! He sat, with hischin in his hand, pondering the scene.
Pelham came heavily into action. There was a blue battery on theopposite hill. The two spoke in whispers beneath the storm. The gunners,now in darkness, now in the vivid lightning, moved about the guns. Nowthey bent low, now they stood upright. The officer gestured to them andthey to each other. Several were killed or wounded; and as now thissection, now that, was more deeply engaged, there was some shiftingamong the men, occasional changes of place. The dusk increased; it wasevident that soon night and the storm would put an end to the battle.Stafford, watching, made out that even now the blue and grey forms inthe tossing woods and boggy meadows were showing less and less theirglow-worm fires, were beginning to move apart. The guns above themboomed more slowly, with intervals between their speech. The thundercame now, not in ear-splitting cracks but with long rolling peals, withspaces between filled only by the wind and the rain. The human voicemight be heard, and the officers shouted, not gestured their orders. Thetwilight deepened. The men about the gun nearest Stafford looked butshadows, bending, leaning across, rising upright. They talked, however,and the words were now audible. "Yes, if you could handlelightning--take one of them zigzags and turn it loose on bluepeople!"--"That battery is tired; it's going home! Right tired myself.Reckon we're all tired but Old Jack. He don't never get tired. This is apretty behaving gun--" "That's so! and she's got good men. They dofirst-rate."--"That's so! Even the new one's good"--"Good! He learnedthat gun same as though they _grew_ artillery wherever he came from.Briery Creek--No, Briony Creek--hey, Deaderick?"
"Briony Creek."
Stafford dropped his hand. "Who spoke?"
The question had been breathed, not loudly uttered. No one answered. Thegunners continued their movements about the guns, stooping, handling,lifting themselves upright. It was all but night, the lightning less andless violent, revealing little beyond mere shape and action. Staffordsank back. "Storm within and storm without. They breed delusions!"
The blue battery opposite limbered up and went away. The musketry firein the hollows between the hills grew desultory. A slow crackle of shotswould be followed by silence; then might come with fierce energy asudden volley; silence followed it, too,--or what, by comparison, seemedsilence. The thunder rolled more and more distantly, the wind lashed thetrees, the rain beat upon the guns. Officers and men of the horseartillery were too tired, too wet, and too busy for much conversation,but still human voices came and went in the lessening blast, in thesemi-darkness and the streaming rain.
There was a gunner near Stafford who worked in silence and rested fromhis work in silence. Stafford became conscious of him during one of thelatter periods--a silent man, leaning against his gun. He was not tenfeet away, but the twilight was now deep, and he rested indistinct, ashadow against a shadow. Once there came a pale lightning flash, but hisarm was raised as if to shield his eyes, and there was seen but astrongly made gunner with a sponge staff. Darkness came again at once.The impression that remained with Stafford was that the gunner's facewas turned toward him, that he had, indeed, when the flash came, beenregarding him somewhat closely. That was nothing--a man not of thebattery, a staff officer sitting on a disabled gun, waiting till hecould make his way back to his chief--a moment's curiosity on anartilleryman's part, exhibited in a lull between fighting. Stafford hada certain psychic development. A thinker, he was adventurous in thatworld; to him, the true world of action. The passion that had seized andbound him had come with the force of an invader, of a barbaric horde,from a world that he ordinarily ignored. It held him helpless, anenslaved spirit, but around it vaguely worked the old habits of mind.Now it interested him--though only to a certain degree--that, in somesubtle fashion and for some reason which he could not explain, thegunner with the sponge staff could so make himself felt across space. Hewondered a little about this man; and then, insensibly, he began toreview the past. He had resolution enough, and he did not always chooseto review the past. To-night it was perhaps the atmosphere, thecommotion of the elements, the harp of the wind, the scourging rain--atany rate, he reviewed it and fully. When the circle was completed andhis attention touched again the storm and the twilight hill nearChantilly, and he lifted his eyes from the soaked and trodden ground, itwas to find the double shadow still before him. He felt that the eyesof the gunner with the sponge staff were on him, had been on him forsome time. Quite involuntarily he moved, with a sudden gesture, asthough he evaded a blow. A sergeant's voice came through the twilight,the wind and the rain. "Deaderick!"
The man by the gun moved, took up the sponge staff that had restedbeside him, turned in the darkness and went away.
A little later Stafford left the hilltop. The cannon had ceased theirbooming, except for here and there a fitful burst; the musketry fire hadceased. Pope's rearguard, Lee's advance, the two drew off and theengagement rested indecisive. Blue and grey, a thousand or two mensuffered death or wounding. They lay upon the miry earth, beneath thepelting storm. Among the blue, Kearney and Stevens were killed. Throughthe darkness that wrapped the scene, Stafford found at last his way tohis general. He found him with Stuart, who was reporting to StonewallJackson. "They're retreating pretty rapidly, sir. They'll reach FairfaxCourt House presently."
"Yes. They won't stop there. We'll bivouac on the field, general."
"And to-morrow, sir?"
"To-morrow, sir, we will follow them out of Virginia."
September the second dawned bright and clear. From Fairfax Court HousePope telegraphed to Halleck. "There is undoubted purpose on the part ofthe enemy to keep on slowly turning my position so as to come in on theright. The forces under my command are unable to prevent his doing so.Telegraph what to do."
Halleck telegraphed to fall back to the fortifications of Alexandria andWashington.