Mohun; Or, the Last Days of Lee and His Paladins Part 80

Soon they came, a hot fight followed, and during this fight a young woman watched it, holding her little brother by the hand near the burning mill. I had afterward the honor of making her acquaintance, and she told me that throughout the firing she found herself repeating over and over, unconsciously, the lines of the song,--

"Charge! Stuart! pay off Ashby's score, In Stonewall Jackson's way."[1]

[Footnote 1: Fact.]

The enemy had thus effected their object, and retreated hotly pursued.

I followed toward the lower Rowanty, and had the pleasure of seeing them hurried over. So ended this immense military movement.

IX.

MOHUN,--HIS THIRD PHASE.

I was about to turn my horse and ride back from the stream, across which the enemy had disappeared, when all at once Mohun, who had led the pursuit, rode up to me, and we exchanged a cordial greeting.

"Well, this little affair is over, my dear Surry," he said; "have you any thing to occupy you for two or three hours?"

"Nothing; entirely at your service, Mohun."

"Well, I wish you to accompany me on a private expedition. Will you follow me blindfold?"

"Confidingly."

And I rode on beside Mohun, who had struck into a path along the banks of the Rowanty, leading back in the direction of Halifax bridge.

As we rode on, I looked attentively at him. I scarcely recognized, in the personage beside me, the Mohun of the past. His gloom so profound on that night when I parted with him, after the expedition to the lonely house beyond Monk's Neck, had entirely disappeared; and I saw in him as few traces of the days on the Rappahannock, in Pennsylvania, and the Wilderness. These progressive steps in the development of Mohun's character may be indicated by styling them the first, second, and third phases of the individual. He had entered now upon the third phase, and I compared him, curiously with his former self.

On the Rappahannock, when I saw him first, Mohun had been cynical, bitter, full of gloomy misanthropy. Something seemed to have hardened him, and made him hate his species. In the bloom of early manhood, when his life was yet in the flower, and should have prompted him to all kind and sweet emotions, he was a stranger to all--to charity, good-will, friends.h.i.+p, all that makes life endurable. The tree was young and l.u.s.ty; the spring was not over; freshness and verdure should have clothed it; and yet it appeared to have been blasted. What had dried up its sap, I asked myself--withering and destroying it? What thunder-bolt had struck this st.u.r.dy young oak? I could not answer--but from the first moment of our acquaintance, Mohun became for me a problem.

Then the second phase presented itself. When I met him in the Wilderness, in May, 1864, a great change had come over him. He was no longer bitter and cynical. The cloud had plainly swept away, leaving the skies of his life brighter. Gayety had succeeded gloom. The rollicking enjoyment of the true cavalryman had replaced the recklessness of the man-hater. Again I looked at him with attention--for his courage had made me admire him, and his hidden grief had aroused my sympathy. A great weight had plainly been lifted from his shoulders; he breathed freer; the sap long dried up had begun to flow again; and the buds told that the leaves of youth and hope were about to reappear. What was the meaning of that?

Now the third phase of the man had come to excite in me more surprise and interest than the former ones. This time the change was complete.

Mohun seemed no longer himself. Was the man riding beside me the old Mohun of 1863? Where was the gloomy misanthropy--where the rollicking humor? They had quite disappeared. Mohun's glance was gentle and his countenance filled with a charming modesty and sweetness. His voice, once so cold, and then so hilarious, had grown calm, low, measured, almost soft. His smile was exquisitely cordial; his glance full of earnestness and sweetness. The heaven-born spirit of kindness--that balm for all the wounds of human existence--shone in his eyes, on his lips, in every accent of his voice.

Colonel Mohun had been reckless, defiant, unhappy, or wildly gay.

General Mohun was calm, quietly happy it seemed. You would have said of him, formerly, "This is a man who fights from hatred of his enemies, or the exuberant life in him." Now you would have said, "This is a patriot who fights from principle, and is worthy to die in a great cause."

What had worked this change? I asked myself once more. Was it love? Or was it the conviction which the Almighty sends to the most hardened, that life is not made to indulge hatred, but to love and perform our duty in?

I knew not; but there was the phenomenon before me. Mohun was certainly a new man, and looked on life and the world around him with a gentleness and kindness of which I had believed him incapable.

"I am going to take you to see a somewhat singular character," he said.

"Who is he?"

"It is a woman."

"Ah!"

"And a very strange one, I promise you, my dear Surry."

"Lead on, I'll follow thee!"

"Good! and I declare to you, I think Shakespeare would have examined this human being with attention."

"She is a phenomenon, then?"

"Yes."

"A witch?"

"No, an epileptic; at least I think so."

"Indeed! And where does she live?"

"On the Halifax road, some miles from the Rowanty."

"In the lines of the enemy, then?"

"Something like it."

"Humph!"

"Don't disturb yourself about that, Surry. I have sent out a scouting party who are clearing the country. Their pickets are back to Reams's by this time, and there is little danger."

"At all events, we'll share any, Mohun. Forward!"

And we pushed on to the Halifax bridge, where, as Mohun expected, there was no Federal picket.

The bridge--a long rough affair--had been half destroyed by General Hampton; but we forded near it, pushed our horses through the swamp, amid the heavy tree trunks, felled to form an abatis, and gaining the opposite bank of the Rowanty, rode on rapidly in the direction of Petersburg, that is to say, toward the rear of the Federal army.

X.

AMANDA.

Half an hour's ride through the swampy low grounds rising to gentle uplands, and beneath the festoons of the great vines trailing from tree to tree, brought us in front of a small house, half buried in a clump of bushes, like a hare's nest amid brambles.

"We have arrived!" said Mohun, leading the way to the cabin, which we soon reached.