The Battle Ground Part 56

"By Gos.h.!.+ that's a blamed good bishop," remarked an unkempt smoker one evening from the threshold, where his beef-hide shoes were covered with fine snow. "I don't reckon Ma.r.s.e Robert could ha' beat that."

"Ma.r.s.e Robert ain't never tried," put in a companion by the fire.

"Wall, I ain't sayin' he had," corrected the first speaker, through a cloud of smoke. "Lord, I hope when my time comes I kin slip into heaven on Ma.r.s.e Robert's coat-tails."

"If you don't, you won't never git thar!" jeered the second. Then they settled themselves again, and listened with sombre faces and twitching lips.

It was during this winter that Dan learned how one man's influence may fuse individual and opposing wills into a single supreme endeavour. The Army of Northern Virginia, as he saw it then, was moulded, sustained, and made effective less by the authority of the Commander than by the simple power of Lee over the hearts of the men who bore his muskets. For a time Dan had sought to trace the groundspring of this impa.s.sioned loyalty, seeking a reason that could not be found in generals less beloved. Surely it was not the illuminated figure of the conqueror, for when had the Commander held closer the affection of his troops than in that ill-starred campaign into Maryland, which left the moral victory of a superb fight in McClellan's hands? No, the charm lay deeper still, beyond all the fict.i.tious aids of fortune--somewhere in that serene and n.o.ble presence he had met one evening as the gray dusk closed, riding alone on an old road between level fields.

After this it was always as a high figure against a low horizon that he had seen the man who made his army.

As the long winter pa.s.sed away, he learned, not only much of the spirit of his own side, but something that became almost a sunny tolerance, of the great blue army across the Rappahannock. He had exchanged Virginian tobacco for Northern coffee at the outposts, and when on picket duty along the cold banks of the river he would sometimes shout questions and replies across the stream. In these meetings there was only a wide curiosity with little bitterness; and once a friendly New England picket had delivered a religious homily from the opposite sh.o.r.e, as he leaned upon his rifle.

"I didn't think much of you Rebs before I came down here," he had concluded in a precise and energetic shout, "but I guess, after all, you've got souls in your bodies like the rest of us."

"I reckon we have. Any coffee over your side?"

"Plenty. The war's interfered considerably with the tobacco crop, ain't it?"

"Well, rather; we've enough for ourselves, but none to offer our visitors."

"Look here, are all these things about you in the papers gospel truth?"

"Can't say. What things?"

"Do you always carry bowie knives into battle?"

"No, we use scissors--they're more convenient."

"When you catch a runaway n.i.g.g.e.r do you chop him up in little pieces and throw him to the hogs?"

"Not exactly. We boil him down and grease our cartridges."

"After Bull Run did you set up all the live Zouaves you got hold of as targets for rifle practice?"

"Can't remember about the Zouaves. Rather think we made them into flags."

"Well, you Rebels take the breath out of me," commented the picket across the river; and then, as the relief came, Dan hurried back to look for the mail bag and a letter from Betty. For Betty wrote often these days--letters sometimes practical, sometimes impa.s.sioned, always filled with cheer, and often with bright gossip. Of her own struggle at Uplands and the long days crowded with work, she wrote no word; all her sympathy, all her large pa.s.sion, and all her wise advice in little matters were for Dan from the beginning to the end. She made him promise to keep warm if it were possible, to read his Bible when he had the time, and to think of her at all hours in every season. In a neat little package there came one day a gray knitted waistcoat which he was to wear when on picket duty beside the river, "and be very sure to fasten it," she had written. "I have sewed the b.u.t.tons on so tight they can't come off. Oh, if I had only papa and Virginia and you back again I could be happy in a hovel. Dear mamma says so, too."

And after much calm advice there would come whole pages that warmed him from head to foot. "Your kisses are still on my lips," she wrote one day.

"The Major said to me, 'Your mouth is very warm, my dear,' and I almost answered, 'you feel Dan's kisses, sir.' What would he have said, do you think? As it was I only smiled and turned away, and longed to run straight to you to be caught up in your arms and held there forever. O my beloved, when you need me only stretch out your hands and I will come."

VII

THE SILENT BATTLE

Despite the cheerfulness of Betty's letters, there were times during the next dark years when it seemed to her that starvation must be the only end.

The negroes had been freed by the Governor's will, but the girl could not turn them from their homes, and, with the exception of the few field hands who had followed the Union army, they still lived in their little cabins and drew their daily rations from the storehouse. Betty herself shared their rations of cornmeal and bacon, jealously guarding her small supplies of milk and eggs for Mrs. Ambler and the two old ladies. "It makes no difference what I eat," she would a.s.sure protesting Mammy Riah. "I am so strong, you see, and besides I really like Aunt Floretta's ashcakes."

Spring and summer pa.s.sed, with the ripened vegetables which Hosea had planted in the garden, and the long winter brought with it the old daily struggle to make the slim barrels of meal last until the next harvesting.

It was in this year that the four women at Uplands followed the Major's lead and invested their united fortune in Confederate bonds. "We will rise or fall with the government," Mrs. Ambler had said with her gentle authority. "Since we have given it our best, let it take all freely."

"Surely money is of no matter," Betty had answered, lavishly disregardful of worldly goods. "Do you think we might give our jewels, too? I have grandma's pearls hidden beneath the floor, you know."

"If need be--let us wait, dear," replied her mother, who, grave and pallid as a ghost, would eat nothing that, by any chance, could be made to reach the army.

"I do not want it, my child, there are so many hungrier than I," she would say when Betty brought her dainty little trays from the pantry.

"But I am hungry for you, mamma--take it for my sake," the girl would beg, on the point of tears. "You are starving, that is it--and yet it does not feed the army."

In these days it seemed to her that all the anguish of her life had centred in the single fear of losing her mother. At times she almost reproached herself with loving Dan too much, and for months she would resolutely keep her thoughts from following him, while she laid her impa.s.sioned service at her mother's feet. Day or night there was hardly a moment when she was not beside her, trying, by very force of love, to hold her back from the death to which she went with her slow and stately tread.

For Mrs. Ambler, who had kept her strength for a year after the Governor's death, seemed at last to be gently withdrawing from a place in which she found herself a stranger. There was nothing to detain her now; she was too heartsick to adapt herself to many changes; loss and approaching poverty might be borne by one for whom the chief thing yet remained, but she had seen this go, and so she waited, with her pensive smile, for the moment when she too might follow. If Betty were not looking she would put her untasted food aside; but the girl soon found this out, and watched her every mouthful with imploring eyes.

"Oh, mamma, do it to please me," she entreated.

"Well, give it back, my dear," Mrs. Ambler answered, complaisant as always, and when Betty triumphantly declared, "You feel better now--you know you do, you dearest," she responded readily:--

"Much better, darling; give me some straw to plait--I have grown to like to have my hands busy. Your old bonnet is almost gone, so I shall plait you one of this and trim it with a piece of ribbon Aunt Lydia found yesterday in the attic."

"I don't mind going bareheaded, if you will only eat."

"I was never a hearty eater. Your father used to say that I ate less than a robin. It was the custom for ladies to have delicate appet.i.tes in my day, you see; and I remember your grandma's amazement when Miss Pokey Mickleborough was asked at our table what piece of chicken she preferred, and answered quite aloud, 'Leg, if you please.' She was considered very indelicate by your grandma, who had never so much as tasted any part except the wing."

She sat, gentle and upright, in her rosewood chair, her worn silk dress rustling as she crossed her feet, her beautiful hands moving rapidly with the straw plaiting. "I was brought up very carefully, my dear," she added, turning her head with its s.h.i.+ning bands of hair a little silvered since the beginning of the war. "'A girl is like a flower,' your grandpa always said.

'If a rough wind blows near her, her bloom is faded.' Things are different now--very different."

"But this is war," said Betty.

Mrs. Ambler nodded over the slender braid.

"Yes, this is war," she added with her wistful smile, and a moment afterward looked up again to ask in a dazed way:--

"What was the last battle, dear? I can't remember."

Betty's glance sought the lawn outside where the warm May suns.h.i.+ne fell in shafts of light upon the purple lilacs.

"They are fighting now in the Wilderness," she answered, her thoughts rus.h.i.+ng to the famished army closed in the death grapple with its enemy.

"Dan got a letter to me and he says it is like fighting in a jungle, the vines are so thick they can't see the other side. He has to aim by ear instead of sight."

Mrs. Ambler's fingers moved quickly.

"He has become a very fine man," she said. "Your father always liked him--and so did I--but at one time we were afraid that he was going to be too much his father's son--he looked so like him on his wild days, especially when he had taken wine and his colour went high."

"But he has the Lightfoot eyes. The Major, Champe, even their Great-aunt Emmeline have those same gray eyes that are always laughing."