CHAPTER XLI
THE TOLLGATE
On Thunder Run Mountain faint reds and yellows were beginning to show inthe maple leaves, while the gum trees dwelling in the hollows had adeeper tinge of crimson. But the mass of the forest was yet green. TheSeptember sun was like balm, amber days, at once alert and dream-like.The September nights were chilly. But the war, that pinched and starvedand took away on all hands, left the forest and the wood for fires. OnThunder Run the women cut the wood, and the children gathered deadboughs and pine cones.
The road over the mountain was in a bad condition. It had not beenworked for a year. That mattered the less perhaps, that it was now solittle travelled. All day and every day Tom Cole sat in the sunshine onthe toll gate porch, the box for the toll beside him, and listened forwheels or horses' hoofs. It was an event now when he could hobble out tothe gate, take the toll and pass the time of day. He grew querulous overthe state of the road. "There'd surely be more travel if 't warn't sobad! Oh, yes, I know there aren't many left hereabouts to travel, andwhat there are, haven't got the means. But there surely would be moregoing over the mountain if the road wan't so bad!" He had a touch offever, and he babbled about the road all night, and how hard it was notto see or talk to anybody! He said that he wished that he had died whenhe fell out of Nofsinger's hayloft. The first day that he was wellenough to be left, Sairy went round to the Thunder Run women, beginningwith Christianna Maydew's mother. Several days afterward, Tom hobblingout on the porch was most happily welcomed by the noise of wheels. "Tharnow!" said Sairy, "ain't it a real picnic feeling to get back tobusiness?" Tom went out to the gate with the tobacco box. A road wagon,and a sulky and a man on horseback! The old man's eyes glistened."Mornin', gentlemen!" "Mornin', Mr. Cole! County's mended your roadfine! Big hole down there filled up and the bridge that was just amantrap new floored! The news? Well, Stonewall Jackson's after them!"
But despite the filled-up holes travel was slight, slight! To-day fromdawn until eleven, no one had passed. Tom sat in the sun on the porch,and the big yellow cat slept beside him, and the china asters bloomed inthe tiny yard. Sairy was drying apples. She had them spread on boards inthe sun. Now and then she came from the kitchen to look at them, andwith a peach bough to drive the bees away. The close of summer found, asever, Thunder Run shrunken to something like old age; but even so hismurmur was always there like a wind in the trees. This morning there wasa fleet of clouds in the September sky. Their shadows drove across thegreat landscape, the ridges and levels of the earth, out upon whichThunder Run Mountain looked so steadily.
A woman, a neighbour living a mile beyond the schoolhouse, came by.Sairy went over to the little picket fence and the two talked. "How isshe?"--"She's dead."--"Sho! You don't say so! Poor thing, poor thing! Ireckon I thought of her mor'n I slept last night.--'N the child?"
"Born dead."
Sairy struck her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Sho! War killin''em even thar!"
The mountain woman spoke on in the slow mountain voice. "She had awfuldreams. Somebody was fool enough to tell her 'bout how dreadful thirstywounded folk get, lyin' thar all round the clock an' no one comin'! An'some other fool read her out of an old newspaper 'bout Malvern Hill downthar at Richmond. Mrs. Cole, she thought she was a soldier. An' when shebegun to suffer she thought she was wounded. She thought she was allmangled and torn by a cannon ball. Yes'm, it was pitiful. An' she saidthar was a high hill. It was five miles high, she said. An' she saidthar was water at the top, which was foolish, but she couldn't helpthat, an' God knows women go through enough to make them foolish! An'she said thar was jest one path, an' thar was two children playing onit, an' she couldn't make them understand. She begged us all night totell the children thar was a wounded soldier wantin' to get by. An' atdawn she said the water was cold an' died."
The woman went on up Thunder Run Mountain. Sairy turned again the dryingapples, then brought her patching out upon the porch and sat down in alow split-bottomed chair opposite Tom. The yellow cat at her feetyawned, stretched, and went back to sleep. The china asters bloomed; thesun drew out the odours of thyme and rue and tansy. Tom read a lastweek's newspaper. _General Lee crosses the Potomac._
Christianna came down the road and unlatched the gate. "Come in, comein, Christianna!" said Tom. "Come in and take a cheer! Letter cameyesterday--"
Christianna sat down on the edge of the porch, her back against thepillar. She took off her sunbonnet. "Violetta learned to do a heap ofthings while I was down t' Richmond. I took a heap of them back, too,but somehow I've got more time than I used to have. Somehow I jestwander round--"
Tom took a tin box from beside the tobacco box. "'T would be awful ifthe letter didn't come once't every ten days or two weeks! Reckon I'd goplumb crazy, an' so would Sairy--"
Sairy turned the garment she was patching. "Sho! I wouldn't go crazy.What's the use when it's happening all the time? I ain't denying thatmost of the light would go out of things. Stop imaginin' an' readChristianna what he says about furin' parts."
"After Gaines's Mill it was twelve days," said Tom, "an' the twelfth daywe didn't say a word, only Sairy read the Bible. An' now he's well andrejoined at Leesburg."
He cleared his throat. "DEAR AUNT SAIRY AND TOM:--It's fine to get backto the Army! It's an Army that you can love. I do love it. But I loveThunder Run and the School House and Tom and Sairy Cole, too, andsometimes I miss them dreadfully! I rejoined at Leesburg. The 65th--Ican't speak of the 65th--you know why. It breaks my heart. But it'sreorganized. The boys were glad to see me, and I was glad to see them.Tell Christianna that Billy's all right. He's sergeant now, and he doesfine. And Dave's all right, too, and the rest of the Thunder Run men.The War's done a heap for Mathew Coffin. It's made a real man of him.Tom, I wish you could have seen us fording the Potomac. It was like apicture book. All a pretty silver morning, with grey plovers wheelingoverhead, and the Maryland shore green and sweet, and the water cool toyour waist, and the men laughing and calling and singing 'Maryland, myMaryland!' Fitzhugh Lee was ahead with the cavalry. It was pretty to seethe horses go over, and the blessed guns that we know and love, everyiron man of them, and all the white covered wagons. Our division crossedlast, Old Jack at the head. When we came up from the river into Marylandwe turned toward Frederick. The country's much like our own and thepeople pleasant enough. You know we've got the Maryland Line, and anumber besides. They're fine men, a little dashing, but mighty steady,too. They've expressed themselves straight along as positively certainthat all Maryland would rise and join us. There's a line of the song,you know:--
"Huzzah! huzzah! She breathes, she burns, she'll come, she'll come, Maryland! my Maryland!"
"She hasn't come yet. The people evidently don't dislike us, and as amatter of course we aren't giving them any reason to. But their farmsare all nice and green and well tilled, and we haven't seen a burnedhouse or mill, and the children are going to school, and the stock isall sleek and well fed--and if they haven't seen they've heard of thedesolation on our side of the river. They've got a pretty good idea ofwhat War is and they're where more people would be if they had that ideabeforehand. They are willing to keep out of it.--So they're respectful,and friendly, and they crowd around to try to get a glimpse of GeneralLee and General Jackson, but they don't volunteer--not in shoals as theMarylanders said they would! The Maryland Line looks disdain at them.Mathew Coffin is dreadfully fretted about the way we're dressed. He saysthat's the reason Maryland won't come. But the mess laughs at him. Itsays that if Virginia doesn't mind, Maryland needn't. I wish you couldsee us, Aunt Sairy. When I think of how I went away from you and Tomwith that trunk full of lovely clean things!--Now we are gaunt andragged and shoeless and dirty--" Tom stopped to wipe his spectacles.
Sairy threaded a needle. "All that's less lasting than some otherthings, they air. I reckon they'll leave a brighter streak than a dealof folk who aren't gaunt an' ragged an' shoeless an' dirty."
"I don't ever see them so," said C
hristianna, in her soft drawlingvoice. "I see them just like a piece we had in a book of reading piecesat school. It was a hard piece but, I learned it.
"All furnished, all in arms, All plumed like estridges that with the wind Bated--like eagles having lightly bathed, Glittering in golden coats like images."
"No. I reckon if Virginia don't mind, Maryland needn't."
Tom began again. "We've got a lovely camp here, and it's good to lie andrest on the green grass. The Army has had hard fighting and hardmarching. Second Manassas was a big battle. It's in the air that we'llhave another soon. Don't you worry about me. I'll come out all right.And if I don't, never forget that you did everything in the world forme and that I loved you and thought of you at the very last. Is livinggetting hard on Thunder Run? I fear so sometimes, for it's getting hardeverywhere, and you can't see the end--I wish I had some pay to sendyou, but we aren't getting any now. This war's going to be foughtwithout food or pay. Tell me, Aunt Sairy, just right honestly how youare getting on. It's getting toward winter. When I say my prayers I praynow that it won't be a hard winter. A lot of us are praying that. It'sright pitiful, the men with wives and children at home, and the countrygrowing to look like a desert.--But that's gloomy talk, and if there'sone thing more than another we've got to avoid it's being gloomy!--Tellme everything when you write. Write to Winchester--that's our base ofsupplies and rendezvous now. Tell me about everybody on Thunder Run, butmost of all tell me about yourselves. Give my very best regards toChristianna. She surely was good to me in Richmond. I don't know what Iwould have done without her. At first, before I--"
Sairy put out her hand. "Give it to me, Tom. I'll read the rest. You'retired."
"No, I'm not," said Tom.--"At first, before I came up with the Army, Imissed her dreadfully."
Sairy rose, stepped from the porch, and turned the drying apples. Comingback, she touched the girl on the shoulder--very gently. "They're allfools, Christianna. Once I met a woman who did not know her thimblefinger. I thought that beat all! But it's hard to match the men."
"You've put me out!" said Tom. "Where was I? Oh--At first, before I cameup with the Army, I missed her dreadfully. Billy reminds me of her attimes.--It's near roll call, and I must stop. God bless you both.Allan."
Tom folded the letter with trembling hands, laid it carefully atop ofthe others in the tin box, and took off and wiped his glasses. "Yes, ifa letter didn't come every two weeks I'd go plumb crazy! I've got tohear him say 'dear Tom' that often, anyhow--"
Christianna rose, pulling her sunbonnet over her eyes. "Thank you, Mrs.Cole an' Mr. Cole. I thought I'd like to hear. Now I'll be going back upthe mountain. Violetta an' Rosalinda are pulling fodder and mother isploughing for wheat. I do the spinning mostly. You've got lovely chinaasters, Mrs. Cole. They have a flower they called magnolia down 'tRichmond--like a great sweet white cup, an' they had pink crapemyrtles. I liked it in Richmond, for all the death an' mourning. ThunderRun's so far away. Good mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good mahnin', Mr. Cole."
The slight homespun figure disappeared around the bend of the road.Sairy sewed in silence. Tom went back to the newspaper. The yellow catslept on, the bees buzzed and droned, the sweet mountain air brushedthrough the trees, a robin sang. Half an hour passed. Tom raised hishead. "I hear some one coming!" He reached for the tobacco box.
It proved to be an old well-loved country doctor, on a white horse, withhis saddle bags before him. Sairy hurried out, too, to the gate."Doctor, I want to ask you something about Tom--" "Psha, I'm all right,"said Tom. "Won't you get down and set a little, doctor?"
The doctor would and did, and after he had prescribed for the tollgatekeeper a two hours' nap every day and not to get too excited over warnews, Tom read him Allan's letter, and they got into a hot discussion ofthe next battle. Sairy turned the drying apples, brushed away the bees,and brought fresh water from the well, then sat down again with hermending. "Doctor, how's the girl at Three Oaks?"
The doctor came back from Maryland to his own county and to the foldwhich he tended without sleep, without rest, and with little pay save inloving hearts. "Miriam Cleave? She's better, Mrs. Cole, she's better!"
"I'm mighty glad to hear it," said Sairy. "'T ain't a decline, then?"
"No, no! Just shock on shock coming to a delicate child. Her mother willbring her through. And there's a great woman."
"That's so, that's so!" assented Tom cordially. "A great woman."
Sairy nodded, drawing her thread across a bit of beeswax. "For once youare both right. He isn't there now, doctor?"
"No. He wasn't there but a week or two."
"You don't--"
"No, Tom. I don't know where he has gone. They have some land in the farsouth, down somewhere on the Gulf. He may have gone there."
"I reckon," said Tom, "he couldn't stand it in Virginia. All the earthbeginnin' to tremble under marchin' feet and everybody askin', 'Where'sthe army to-day?' I reckon he couldn't stand it. I couldn't. Allan don'tbelieve he did it, an' I don't believe it either."
"Nor I," said Sairy.
"He came up here," said Tom, "just as quiet an' grave an' simple as youor me. An' he sat there in his lawyer's clothes, with his back to thatthar pillar, an' he told Sairy an' me all about Allan. He told us howgood he was an' how all the men loved him an' how valuable he was to theservice. An' he said that the wound he got at Gaines's Mill wasn't sobad after all as it might have been, and that Allan would soon berejoining. An' he said that being a scout wasn't as glorious, maybe, butit was just as necessary as being a general. An' that he had alwaysloved Allan an' always would. An' he told us about something Allan didat McDowell and then again at Kernstown--an' Sairy cried an' so did I--"
Sairy folded her work. "I wasn't crying so much for Allan--"
"An' then he asked for a drink of water 'n we talked a little about thecrops, 'n he went down the mountain. An' Sairy an' I don't believe hedid it."
The doctor drew his hand downward over mouth and white beard. "Well,Mrs. Cole, I don't either. The decisions of courts and judges don'talways decide. There's always a chance of an important witness calledTruth having been absent. I didn't see Richard Cleave but once while hewas at Three Oaks. He looked and acted then just like RichardCleave,--only older and graver. It was beautiful to see him and hismother together." The doctor rose. "But I reckon it's as Tom says and hecouldn't stand it, and has gone where he doesn't hear 'the army--thearmy--the army'--all day long. Mrs. Cleave hasn't said anything, and Iwouldn't ask. The last time I saw her--and I think he had just gone--shelooked like a woman a great artist might have met in a dream."
The doctor gazed out over the autumn sea of mountains and up at the pureserene of the heavens, and then at his old, patient white horse with thesaddle bags across the saddle. "Mrs. Cole, all you've got to do is tokeep Tom from getting excited. I'll be back this way the first of theweek and I'll stop again--"
Tom cleared his throat. "I don't know when Sairy an' me can pay you,doctor. I never realized till it came how war stops business. I'd aboutas well be keeping toll gate in the desert of Sahary."
"I'm not doing it for pay," said the doctor. "It's just the place tostop and rest and talk, and as for giving you a bit of opinion andadvice, Lord! I'm not so poor that I can't do that. If you want to giveme something in return I certainly could use three pounds of driedapples."
The doctor rode on down the mountain. Tom and Sairy had a frugal dinner.Then the former lay down to take the prescribed nap, and the latter sether washtub on a box in the yard beneath the peach trees. Tom didn'tsleep long; he said every time he was about to drop off he thought heheard wheels. He came back to his split-bottomed chair on the porch, thetobacco box for the toll, the tin box with Allan's letters, and the viewacross the china asters of the road. The afternoon was past its height,but bright yet, with the undersong of the wind and of Thunder Run. Theyellow cat had had his dinner, too, and after sauntering around theyard, and observing the robin on the locust tree
again curled himself onthe porch and slept.
Sairy straightened herself from the washtub. "Somebody's comin' up theroad. It's a man!" She came toward the porch, wiping her hands, whiteand crinkled, upon her apron. "He's a soldier, Tom! Maybe one of theboys air come back--"
Tom rose too, quickly. He staggered and had to catch at the sapling thatmade the pillar. "Maybe it's--"
"No, no! no, no! Don't you think that, an' have a set-back when you findit ain't! It ain't tall enough for Allan, an' it ain't him anyhow. It_couldn't_ be."
"No, I reckon it couldn't," said Tom. "But anyhow it's one of the boys."He was half way to the gate, Sairy after him, and they were the first towelcome Steve Dagg back to Thunder Run.
Tom Cole forgot that he had no opinion of Steve anyway. Sairy pursed herlips, but a soldier was a soldier. Steve came and sat down on the edgeof the porch, beside the china asters, "Gawd! don't Thunder Run soundnatural! Yass'm, I walked from Buford's, an' 't was awful hard to do,cause my foot is all sore an' gangrened. I've got a furlough till itgets well. It's awful sore. Gawd! ef Thunder Run had seen what I'veseen, an' heard what I've heard, an' done what I've done, an' beenthrough what I've been through--"