My Lady of the North Part 46

"Captain Wayne," she said softly, her high color alone giving evidence of any memory of the past, "I scarcely thought that we should meet again, yet was not willing to part with you under any misunderstanding.

I have learned from Lieutenant Caton the full particulars of your action in connection with Major Brennan. I wish you to realize that I appreciate your efforts to escape a hostile meeting, and esteem you most highly for your forbearance on the field. It was indeed a n.o.ble proof of true courage. May I ask, why did you fire in the air?"

Had she not held me so away from her by her manner I should have then and there told her all the truth. As it was I durst not.

"I felt convinced that if my bullet reached Major Brennan it would injure you. I preferred not to do that."

She bowed gravely, while a kinder look, if I may use that expression, seemed to dominate her face.

"I believed it was for my sake you made the sacrifice." She paused; then asked in yet lower tones: "Was my name mentioned during your contention--I mean publicly?"

"It was not; Caton alone is aware I refrained because of the reason I have already given you."

"Your wound is not serious?"

"Too insignificant to be worthy of mention."

She was silent, her eyes upon the carpet, her bosom rising and falling with the emotion she sought in vain to suppress.

"I thank you for coming to me," she said finally. "I shall understand it all better, comprehend your motive better, for this brief talk.

Whatever you may think of me in the future," and she held out her hand with something of the old frankness in the gesture, "do not hold me as ungrateful for a single kindness you have shown me. I have not fully understood you, Captain Wayne; indeed, I doubt if I do even now, yet I am under great obligations which I hope some day to be able to requite, at least in part."

"A thousand times they are already paid," I exclaimed eagerly, forgetting for the moment the presence of her silent chaperon. "You have given me that which is more than life--"

"Do not, Captain Wayne," she interrupted, her cheeks aflame. "I would rather forget. Please do not; I did not send to you for that, only to tell you I knew and understood. We must part now. Will you say goodbye?"

"If you bid me, yes, I will say good-bye," I answered, my own self- control brought back instantly by her words and manner, "but I retain that which I do not mean to forget--your gracious words of invitation to the North."

She stood with parted lips, as though she struggled to force back that which should not be uttered. Then she whispered swiftly:

"It is not my wish that you should."

Was there ever such another paradox of a woman?

I knew not how to read her aright, for I scarce ever found her twice the same. Which represented the truth of her character--her cool dignity, her impetuous pride, or that gentle tenderness which befitted her so well? Which was the armor, which the heart of this fair lady of the North? As we rode down the path to the eastward, a snowy handkerchief fluttered for an instant at the library window. I raised my hat in silent greeting, and we were gone.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE FURLING OF THE FLAGS

The close of the long and bitter struggle had come; to those who had cast their fortunes with the South it seemed almost as the end of the world. I had thought to write of those last sad days, to picture them in all their contrasting light and shadow, but now I cannot. There are thoughts too deep for human utterance, memories too sacred for the pen.

I rejoice that I was a part of it; that to the lowering of the last tattered battle-flag I remained constant to the best traditions of my house. I cannot sit here now, beneath the protecting shadow of a flag for which my son fought and died, and write that I regret the ending, for years of peace have taught us of the South lessons no less valuable than did the war; yet do I rejoice to-day that, having once donned the gray, I wore it until the last shotted gun voiced its grim message to the North.

It is hardly more than a dream now, sometimes vague and shadowy, again distinct with living figures and historic scenes. I require but to close my eyes to behold once more those slender lines of ragged, weary, hungry men, to whom fighting had become synonymous with life. I pa.s.s again through the fiery rain of those last fierce battles, when in desperation we sought to check the unnumbered blue legions that fairly crushed us beneath their weight. The vividness of the memory burns my brain as by fire,--the ghastly faces of the dead, the unuttered agony of the wounded, the patient suffering of the living. Day by day, night by night, we grew less in numbers, and our thin lines contracted; divisions shrank into regiments, companies to platoons. Men knew that the inevitable was upon them, yet smiled into one another's face and went forth to die. It was pitiable; it was magnificent. Hungry we fought, unsheltered we slept; our dead were lying with the enemy, while we who yet lived for the duty of another day fronted the bayonets with hearts of courage and sadly prophetic souls. Everywhere to front and rear, to left and right, stretched that same blue wall tipped with cruel steel; in constant hail of iron the sh.e.l.ls fell upon us, darkening the day-sky, and turning night into a h.e.l.l of flame. There was no retreat, no loophole of escape; we could but stay, suffer, and perish. Like men afflicted with some incurable malady, we who were of that stricken remnant sternly, grimly looked into the eyes of death and waited for the end.

I saw it all; I held a part in it all. Upon that April day which witnessed the turning of the last sad page in this tragedy, I stood without the McLean house, ankle deep in the trampled mud of the yard, surrounded by a group of Federal officers. Within was my commander, the old gray hero of Virginia, together with the great silent soldier of the North.

Few about me spoke as we waited in restless agony. No one addressed me, and I think there must have been a look in my face which held them dumb. We knew well what hung upon the balance then; that within those humble walls was being consummated one of the great events of history.

To the men in blue it meant home, and victory, and peace; to those in gray, suffering, and struggle, and defeat.

I know not how long I waited, standing beside my horse, with head half bowed upon his neck, seeing the figures about me as in a dream. At last the door was flung open, and those within came forth. He was in advance of them all. In that pale, stern, kindly face, and within the depths of those sorrowful gray eyes, I read instantly the truth--_the Army of Northern Virginia was no more._ Yet with what calm dignity did this defeated chieftain pa.s.s down that blue lane, his head erect, his eyes undimmed--as dauntless in that awful hour of surrender as when he rode before his cheering legions of fighting men. Only as he came to where I stood, and caught the look of suffering upon my face, did he once falter, and then I noted no more than the slight twitching of his lips beneath the short gray beard.

"Captain Wayne," he said, with all his old-time courtesy, "I shall have to trouble you to ride to General Hills's division and request him to cease all firing at once."

I turned reluctantly away from him, knowing full well in my heart I was bearing my last order, and rode at a hard trot down the road between long lines of waiting Federal infantry. I scarcely so much as saw them, for my head was bent low over the saddle pommel, and my eyes were blurred with tears.

The sun lay hot and golden over the dusty roads and fenceless fields.

The air was vocal with blare of trumpets and roll of drums, while everywhere the eye rested upon blue lines and long columns of marching troops. I formed one of a little gray squad moving slowly southward--a mere fragment of the fighting men of the Confederacy, making their way homeward as best they might. As the roads forked I left them, for here our paths diverged, and it chanced I was the only one whose hope lay westward.

Silently, thoughtfully I trudged on for an hour through the thick red dust. My horse, sorely wounded in our last skirmish, limped painfully behind me, his bridle-rein flung carelessly over my arm. Out yonder, where the sun pointed the way with streams of fire, I was to take up life anew. Life! What was there left to me in that word? A deserted, despoiled farm alone awaited my coming; hardly a remembered face, scarcely a future hope. The glitter of a pa.s.sing troop of cavalry drew my mind for an instant to Edith Brennan, but I crushed the thought.

Even were she free, what had I now to place at her proud feet,--I, a penniless, defeated, homeless man? No, that was all over, even as the cause for which I had fought; love and ambition must lie buried in the same grave. The clothes I wore, that tattered suit of faded gray, soiled by months of hard service in the open, was all I possessed in the wide world, save the starved and wounded animal limping dejectedly at my heels. The mere conception of it, the picture of kneeling thus attired at her feet, brought with it a grim smile, which a deep heartache instantly chased away. Besides, she was not free, and no dream of love might inspire me to toil and hope. With clinched teeth I drove her memory from me, back into that dim past where lurked all that had been worthy in my life. Sternly I resolved that her face should henceforth abide with those others--the shadowy comrades of many a battlefield.

In this spirit I plodded on, my step heavy, my head bowed, wearied alike in heart and body. My temples throbbed with the heat of the sun, my eyes were dulled, my throat caked by the swirling dust. At a cross- roads a Federal picket halted me, and I aroused sufficiently to hand him the paper which ent.i.tled me to safe pa.s.sage through the lines. He was a man well along in years, with thoughtful eyes and kindly face, and I spoke to him out of my sheer loneliness.

"No doubt you are rejoicing that the long struggle is so nearly ended?"

I said as he handed me back the paper and motioned me to pa.s.s on. "Have you a family in the North?"

"A wife and five children up in Michigan, sir," he answered civilly. "I guess they are counting the days now. And you, sir?"

"Oh, I have some acres of worn-out land over yonder, and but little else."

"Well, you're a sight better off than some, I s'pect. It's been pretty tough on all of you, but if you fellows only work like you fought you'll have things a humming before long."

There was homely comfort in his philosophy which for the moment cheered me. Perhaps he was right; the energy and bravery of the South, crippled as it now was, might yet conquer our present misfortune, and prove it a blessing in disguise. I had gone a hundred yards or more, this thought still in my mind, when I became aware that he was calling after me.

"Hey, there, you gray-back!" he shouted, "hold on a bit!"

As I came to a pause and glanced back, wondering if there could be anything wrong with my parole, he swung his cap and pointed.

"That officer coming yonder wants to speak with you."

Across the open field at my right, hidden until then by a slight rise of ground, a mounted cavalryman was riding rapidly toward me, the wind blowing back his cape so as to make conspicuous its bright yellow lining. For the moment his lowered head prevented recognition, but as he cleared the ditch and came up smiling, I saw it was Caton.

"By Jove, Wayne, but this is lucky!" he exclaimed, springing to the ground beside me. "I've actually been praying for a week past that I might meet you. Holmes, of your service, told me you had pulled through, but everything is in such confusion that to hunt for you would have been the proverbial quest after a needle in a haystack. You have been paroled then?"

"Yes, I'm completely out of it at last," I answered, feeling to the full the deep sympathy expressed by his face. "It was a bitter pill, but one which had to be taken."

"I know it, old fellow," and his hand-grasp on mine tightened warmly.

"Of course I 'm glad, there's no use denying that, glad we won; glad the old Union has been preserved as our fathers gave it to us; glad slavery on this continent has pa.s.sed away for ever, and so will you be before you die. Yet I am sincerely sorry for those who have given their all and lost. G.o.d knows you fought a good fight, fought as Americans only can, even though it was in a bad cause. That is the pity of it; such heroism, such sacrifice, and all wasted. If you have been beaten there is no disgrace in it, for no other nation in this world could ever have accomplished it. But this was a case of Greek meeting Greek, and we had the money, the resources, and the men. But, Wayne, I tell you, I do not believe there is to-day a spark of bitterness in the heart of a fighting Federal soldier. We fought you to a finish because it's in our blood; we whipped you because we were compelled to in order to preserve the Union, but we'd share our last cent, or last crust, with any gray-back now. I know I feel as if every paroled Confederate were a brother in need."

"I know, Caton," I said,--and the words came hard,--"your fighting men respect us, even as we do them. It has been a sheer game of which could stand the most punishment, and the weaker had to go down. I know all that, but, nevertheless, it is a terrible ending to so much of hope, suffering, and sacrifice."

"Yes," he admitted soberly, "you have given your all. But those who survive have a wonderful work before them. They must lay anew the foundations; they are to be the rebuilders of States. You were going home?"