"You will, indeed."
"It's an awful warning, boys," said a private. "Shouldn't wonder if Bob
Lee set it up to scare us."
"I'd like to take it home." They chaffed the passing infantry, and were answered in kind. Penhallow impatient saw that the road would soon be clear. As he issued quick orders and men mounted in haste, a young aide rode up, saluted, and said, "I have orders, Colonel, from General Hunt to guide you to where he desires your guns to be parked."
"One moment," said Penhallow; "the road is a tangle of wagons:" and to a captain, "Ride on and side-track those wagons; be quick too." Then he said to the aide, "We have a few minutes—how are things going? I heard of General Reynold's death, and little more."
"Yes, we were outnumbered yesterday and—well licked. Why they did not rush us, the Lord knows!"
"Give me some idea of our position."
"Well, sir, here to our right is Cemetery Hill, strongly held; to your left the line turns east and then south in a loop to wooded hills—one Culp's, they call it. That is our right. There is a row on there as you can hear. Before us as we stand our position runs south along a low ridge and ends on two pretty high-wooded hills they call Round Tops. That's our left. From our front the ground slopes down some forty feet or so, and about a mile away the Rebs hold the town seminary and a long low rise facing us."
"Thank you, that seems pretty clear. There is firing over beyond the cemetery?"
"Yes, the skirmishers get cross now and then. The road seems clear, sir."
Orders rang out and the guns rattled up the pike like some monstrous articulated insect, all encumbering wagons being swept aside to make way for the privileged guns.
"You are to park here, sir, on the open between this and the Taneytown road. There is a brook—a creek."
"Thanks, that is clear."
The ground thus chosen lay some hundred yards behind the low crest held midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove back stragglers, and left wide lanes for the artillery to move at need to the front.
The colonel spent some hours in getting his guns placed and in seeing that no least detail was lacking. With orders about instant readiness, with a word of praise here, of sharp criticism there, he turned away a well-contented man and walked up the slope in search of the headquarters. As he approached the front, he saw the bushy ridge in which, or back of which, the men lay at rest. Behind them were surgeons selecting partially protected places for immediate aid, stretcher-bearers, ambulances and all the mechanism of help for the wounded. Officers were making sure that men had at hand one hundred rounds of ammunition.
Some three hundred yards behind the mid-centre of the Second Corps, on the Taneytown road, Penhallow was directed to a small, rather shabby one-storey farm-house. "By George," he murmured, "here is one general who means to be near the front." He was met at the door by the tall handsome figure of General Hancock, a blue-eyed man with a slight moustache over a square expressively firm jaw.
"Glad to see you, Penhallow. Meade was anxious—I knew you would be on time. Come in."
Penhallow saw before him a mean little room, on one side a wide bed with a gaudy coverlet, on a pine table in the centre a bucket of water, a tin cup, and a candle-stick. Five rickety rush-covered chairs completed the furnishings.
Meade rose from study of the map an engineer officer was explaining. He was unknown to Penhallow, who observed him with interest—a tall spare man with grey-sprinkled dark hair a large Roman nose and spectacles over wide blue eyes; a gentleman of the best, modest, unassuming, and now carelessly clad.
"Colonel Penhallow," said Hancock.
"Glad to see you." He turned to receive with evident pleasure a report of the morning's fight on the right wing, glanced without obvious interest at the captured flag of the Stonewall Brigade, and greeted the colonel warmly. "I can only offer you water," he said. "Sit down. You may like to look over this map."
While the Commander wrote orders and despatched aide after aide, Penhallow bent over the map. "You see," said Hancock, "we have unusual luck for us in a short interior line. I judge from the moving guidons that Lee is extending his front—it may be six miles long."
"And ours?"
"Well, from wing to wing across the loop to right, not half of that."
"I see," said Penhallow, and accepting a drink of tepid water he went out to find and report to the chief of artillery, General Hunt.
He met him with General John Gibbon and two aides a few yards from the door, and making his brief report learned as he moved away that there was some trouble on the left wing. Meade coming out with Hancock, they mounted and rode away in haste, too late to correct General Sickles' unfortunate decision to improve General Meade's battle-line. It was not Penhallow's business, nor did he then fully understand that costly blunder. Returning to his guns, he sent, as Hunt had ordered, two of his reserve batteries up to the back of the line of the Second Corps, and finding General Gibbon temporarily in command walked with him to what is now called the "Crest" and stood among Cushing's guns. Alertly interested, Penhallow saw to the left, half hidden by bushes and a clump of trees, a long line of infantry lying at ease, their muskets in glittering stacks behind them. To the right the ground was more open. A broken stone fence lay in front of the Second Corps. It was patched with fence rails and added stone, and where the clump of trees projected in advance of the line made a right angle and extended thence in front of the batteries on the Crest about thirty yards. Then it met a like right angle of stone fencing and followed the line far to the right. Behind these rude walls lay the Pennsylvania and New York men, three small regiments. Further back on a little higher ground was the silent array of cannon, thus able at need to fire over the heads of the guarding infantry, now idly lying at rest in the baking heat of a July morning. The men about the cannon lounged at ease on the ground in the forty foot interspaces between the batteries, some eighteen pieces in all.
Suddenly an aide rode up, and saying, "See you again, Penhallow," Gibbon rode away in haste. Penhallow, who was carefully gathering in all that could then be seen from the locality, moved over to where a young battery captain was leaning against a cannon wheel wiping the sweat from his face or gazing over the vale below him, apparently lost in thought. "Captain Cushing, I believe," said the colonel. "I am Colonel Penhallow, in command of the reserve artillery."
"Indeed!" said the young officer. "These are some of your guns—"
"Not mine—I was out of it long ago. They still carry the brand of my old iron-mills."
"We shall see, sir, that they do honour to your name."
"I am sure of that," returned the colonel, looking at the face of the officer, who as he spoke patted the gun beside him in an affectionate way.
"It seems very peaceful," he said.
"Yes, yes," returned Penhallow, "very."
They looked for a moment of silence down the vale before them, where a mile away the ground rose to a low ridge, beyond which in woody shelters lay the hostile lines.
"What road is that?" asked Penhallow. "It leaves our right and crosses to enter Lee's right."
"The Emmitsburg Pike, sir."
The Colonel's glass searched the space before him. "I see some fine farm-houses—deserted, of course, and wheat fields no man will reap this year." He spoke thoughtfully, and as Woodruff of the nearer battery joined them, the roar of cannon broke the stillness.
"Far on our left," said Woodruff. At the sound, the men sprang to their feet and took their stations. Smoke rose and clouded their view of the distant field where on our left a fury of battle raged, while the rattle of infantry volleys became continuous. No more words were spoken. Through the long afternoon the unseen fight went on in front of the Round Tops. As it came nearer and the grey lines were visible, the guns on the Crest opened a lively fire and kept up their destructive business until the approach of the enemy ceased to extend towards our centre and fell away in death or disorderly flight. About sunset this varied noise subsided and the remote sound of cheering was heard.
"We must have won," said General Webb, the brigade commander. "It was a flanking movement. How little any one man knows of a battle!"
"By George! I am glad of a let up," said the young Captain. "I am vilely dirty." He wiped the grime and sweat from his face and threw himself on the ground as Generals Hunt and Gibbon rode up.
"No great damage here, I see, Webb. They got awfully licked, but it was near to something else."
Questioned by Penhallow, they heard the news of our needless loss and final triumphant repulse of the enemy. Hunt said emphatic things about political generals and their ways. "He lost a leg," said Gibbon, "and I think to have lost his life would have been, fortunate. They are at it still on the right, but the Twelfth Corps has gone back to Culp's Hill and Ewell will get his share of pounding—if it be his corps."
"Then we may get some sleep," said Penhallow, as he moved away. "I have had very little for two nights."
CHAPTER XXIV
It was near to seven when he went down to his parked guns, seeing as he went that the ways were kept clear, and finding ready hot coffee and broiled chicken.
"Where did you get this, Josiah?" he asked.
"Kind of came in, sir—know'd he was wanted—laid two eggs." The colonel laughed and asked no further questions.
"Pull off my boots. Horses all right?"
"Yes, sir."
Without-undressing he fell on his camp-bed and, towards dusk thinking with grim humour of his wife and the Penhallow guns, fell asleep. About four in the morning the mad clamour of battle awakened him. He got up and went out of the tent. The night air was hot and oppressive. Far to our right there was the rattle of musketry and the occasional upward flare of cannon flashes against low-lying clouds. From the farthest side of the Taneytown road at the rear he heard the rattle of ambulances arriving from the field of fight to leave the wounded in tent hospitals. They came slowly, marked by their flickering lanterns, and were away again more swiftly. He gave some vague thought to the wounded and to the surgeons, for whom the night was as the day. At sunrise he went up past the already busy headquarters and came to the bush-hidden lines, where six thousand men of the Second Corps along a half mile of the irregular far-stretched Crest were up and busy. Fires were lighted, coffee boiled and biscuits munched. An air of confidence and gaiety among the men pleased him as he paused to give a sergeant a pipe light and divided his tobacco among a thankful group of ragged soldiers. All was quiet. An outpost skirmish on the right, as a man said, "was petering out." He paused here and there to talk to the men, and was interested to hear them discussing with intelligence the advantage of our short line. Now and then the guns far to left or right quarrelled, but at eleven in the morning this third of July all was quiet except the murmurous noise of thousands of men who talked or lay at rest in the bushes or contrived a refuge from the sun under shelter of a canvas hung on ramrods.
Generals Gibbon and Webb, coming near, promised him a late breakfast, and he went with them to the little peach orchard near the headquarters on the Taneytown road. They sat down on mess-chests or cracker-boxes, and to Penhallow's amusement Josiah appeared with John, the servant of Gibbon, for Josiah was, as he said, on easy terms with every black servant in the line. Presently Hancock rode up with Meade. Generals Newton and Pleasanton also appeared, and with their aides joined them. These men were officially Penhallow's superiors, and although Hancock and Gibbon were his friends, he made no effort to take part in the discussion in regard to what the passing day would bring. He had his own opinion, but no one asked for it and he smoked in an undisturbed private council of war.
At last, as he rose, Newton said, "You knew John Reynolds well, Penhallow. A moment before he fell, his aide had begged him to fall back to a less dangerous position."
"He was my friend—a soldier of the best."
"The Pennsylvanians are in force to-day—you and I and—"
"Oh, colonels don't count," laughed Penhallow; "but there are Meade,
Hancock, Gregg, Humphreys, Hays, Gibbon, Geary, Crawford—"
Hancock said, "We Pennsylvanians hold the lowest and weakest point of our line—all Pennsylvanians on their own soil."
"Yes, but they will not attack here," said Newton.
"Oh, do you think so?" said Hancock. "Wait a little."
The headquarters' ambulance drove up with further supplies. The chickens were of mature age, but every one was hungry. Cigars and pipes were lighted, and Newton chaffed Gibbon as the arrogant young brigadier in command for the time of Hancock's Corps. The talk soon fell again upon the probabilities of the day. Penhallow listened. Meade grave and silent sat on a cracker-box and ate in an absent way, or scribbled orders, and at last directed that the picked body of men, the provost's guards, should join their regimental commands. About a quarter to noon the generals one by one rode away.
Having no especial duty, Penhallow walked to where on the Crest the eighteen guns were drawn up. The sky was clear as yet, a windless, hot day. Gibbon joined him.
"What next?" said Gibbon, as Penhallow clambered up and stood a tall figure on the limber of one of Cushing's guns, his field glass searching the valley and the enemy's position. "Isn't it like a big chess-board?"
"Yes—their skirmishers look like grey posts, and our own blue. They seem uneasy."
"Aren't they just like pawns in the game!" remarked Captain Haskell of the Staff.
Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There are guidons moving fast to their right."
"Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returned Gibbon. "Hancock thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attack our centre, and this is the lowest point."
"Well," said Haskell, "it would be madness—can Lee remember Malvern
Hill?"
"I wonder what Grant is doing?" remarked Gibbon. At that time, seated under an oak, watched at a distance by John Penhallow and a group of officers, he was dictating to unlucky Pemberton the terms of Vicksburg's surrender.
Penhallow got down from his perch and wandered among the other guns, talking to the men who were lying on the sod, or interested in the battery horses behind the shelter of trees quietly munching the thin grasses. He returned to Cushing's guns, and being in the mental attitude of intense attention to things he would not usually have noticed, he was struck with the young captain's manly build, and then with his delicacy of feature, something girl-like and gentle in his ways.
Penhallow remarked that the guns so hot already from the sun would be too easily overheated when they were put to use. "Ah," returned Cushing, "but will they be asked to talk today?" The innocent looking smile and the quick flash of wide-opened eyes told of his wish to send messages across the vale.
"Yes, I think so," said the colonel; "I think so,"—and again observant he saw the slight figure straighten and a quite other look of tender sadness come upon his face.
"How quiet they are—how very quiet!" Then he laughed merrily. "See that dog on the Emmitsburg road. He doesn't know which side he's on."
Penhallow looked at his watch. "It is one o'clock." Then his glass was up. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as he closed it, "now we shall catch it. I thought as much."
A mile away, far on Lee's right, on the low ridge in front of his position, a flash of light was seen. As the round ring of smoke shot out from the cannon, the colonel remembered the little Leila's delight when he blew smoke rings as they sat on the porch. Instantly a second gun spoke. The two shells flew over our line and lit far to the rear, while at once along Lee's position a hundred and fifty guns rang out and were instantly answered by our own artillery from Round Top to Cemetery Hill. General Hunt beside him replying to the quick questions he put, said, "We could not place over seventy-five guns—not room enough."
"Is that all? They are distributing their favours along our whole front."
At once a vast shroud of smoke rose and hid both lines, while out of it flew countless shell and roundshot. At first most of the Confederate missiles flew high and fell far behind our Crest. The two officers were coolly critical as they stood between the batteries.
"He must think our men are back of the guns like his own. The wall and bushes hide them."
"The fuses are too long," said Hunt quietly. "That's better and worse," he added, as a shell exploded near by and one of Woodruff's guns went out of action and the ground was strewn with the dead and wounded. "We shall want some of your guns."
Penhallow went in haste to the rear. What he saw was terrible. The iron hail of shells fell fast around him on the wide open space or even as far away as the hospital tents. On or near the Taneytown road terror-stricken wagon-drivers were flying, ammunition mules were torn to pieces or lying mangled; a shell exploded in a wagon,—driver, horses and a load of bread were gone. Horses lay about, dead or horribly torn; one horse hitched to a tree went on cropping grass. Penhallow missed nothing. He was in the mood peril always brought. Men said he was a slow, sure thinker, and missed seeing things which did not interest him. Now he was gay, tuned to the highest pitch of automatic watchfulness, as this far-sent storm of bursting shells went over and past the troops it was meant to destroy. Hurrying through it he saw the wide slope clear rapidly of what was left of active life. He laughed as a round shot knocked a knapsack off a man's back. The man unhurt did not stay to look for it. Once the colonel dropped as a shell lit near him. It did not explode. He ejaculated, "Pshaw," and went on. He came near the Taneytown road to find that his artillery had suffered. A score of harnessed horses lay dead or horribly mangled. His quick orders sent up to the front a dozen guns. Some were horsed, some were pulled with ropes by the cheering, eager cannoneers. Their way was up the deserted slope, "well cleared by the enemy," thought Penhallow with a smile. Once he looked back and saw the far flight of a shell end in or near an ambulance of the wounded beyond the Taneytown road.
During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caisson exploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded. What more horribly disturbed Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity of it. They had no cause to die for—no duty—no choice." As he assisted in replacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of the animals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheard before—unnatural, strange. The appalling tempest of shells screamed on and on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest. Penhallow looked up to note their flight. They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing. There was a white puff of smoke, a red flash, and an explosion.
General Gibbon, coming back from the long line of his corps, said, "My men have suffered very little, but the headquarters behind them are in ruin. Meade has moved back." As he spoke the shells began to fall on the Crest.
"They seem to be more attentive to us," said the battery Captain
Woodruff. "Thought we'd catch it!"
"Horrible!—Those horses, Gibbon," said Penhallow.
At last there seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or right in the bushes.
"They are doing better now, confound them!" said the young general coolly. "Our men at the wall seem disturbed.
"Come with me," he said to Penhallow and Haskell of the Staff, who had just joined them.
They went down in front of the guns to where behind the low wall lay the two thin lines of the Pennsylvania regiments. He spoke to the Colonel of the 71st, who with other officers was afoot encouraging the men.
"Keep cool, boys," said Gibbon.
The men laughed. "Oh, we're all right, General, but we ain't cool."
Gibbon laughed. "Let us go over the wall and try to see a little better," said Penhallow.
A hundred yards beyond the lines they sat down. The ceaseless rain of shot and shell from both sides went over them, the canopy of smoke being so high above that the interspace between the lines was now more or less visible. Far beyond them our skirmish outposts were still motionless on guard; and yet further farms and houses, some smoking in ruin, lay among the green fields along the Emmitsburg Pike.
"It is pretty safe here," said the Corps Commander, while far above them the shells sang their war notes.
Penhallow looked back. "They've got the range—there goes one of the guns—oh! and another."
"Let's go back," said Gibbon, rising, "we are too safe here."
They laughed at his reason and followed him, Haskell remarking on the lessening of the fire. As they moved about the forty-foot spaces between the disabled batteries, the last cannon-ball rolled by them and bounded down the slope harmless. At once there was movement,—quick orders, officers busy, as fresh cannon replaced the wrecked pieces. Many of the unhurt cannoneers lay down utterly exhausted. The dead were drawn aside, while the wounded crawled away or were cared for by the stretcher-bearers and surgeons. Meanwhile the dense, hot, smoke-pall rose slowly and drifted away. The field-glasses were at once in use.
"It is half-past two," said General Hunt; "what next? Oh! our skirmishers are falling back."
"They are going to attack," said Haskell, "and can they mean our whole line—or where?"
The cannoneers were called to their pieces, and silently expectant the little group waited on the fateful hour, while the orderly quiet of discipline was to be seen on the Crest. The field-glasses of the officers were searching with intense interest the more and more visible vale.
"Pretty plain now, Gibbon," said Hunt.
"Yes, we are in for it."
"They are forming," said Penhallow. A line appeared from the low swell of ground in front of Lee's position—then a second and a third. Muskets and bayonets flashed in the sun.
"Can you make out their flags?" asked Gibbon, "or their numbers?"
"Not the flags." He waited intent, watchful. No one spoke—minute after minute went by. At last Penhallow answered. "A long line—a good half mile—quite twelve thousand—oh, more—more. Now they are advancing en échelon."
To left, to right, along our lines was heard the thud, thud, of the ramrods, and percussion-cap boxes were slid around the waist to be handy. Penhallow and others drew their pistols. The cannon were now fully replaced, the regimental flags unrolled, and on the front line, long motionless, the trefoil guidons of the two divisions of the Second Corps fluttered feebly. The long row of skirmishers firing fell back more and more rapidly, and came at last into our lines.
Penhallow said, turning to Gibbon, "They have—I think—they have no supporting batteries—that is strange." Haskell and Gibbon had gone as he spoke and the low crest was free at this point of all but the artillery force. To left, the projecting clump of trees and the lines of the Second Corps—all he could see—were ominously quiet.
Gibbon came back to the crest. He said, "We may need backing if they concentrate on us; here our line is too thin." And still the orderly grey columns came on silently, without their usual charging-yell.
"Ah!" exclaimed Penhallow without lowering his glass, as he gazed to our left. The clamour of cannon broke out from little Round Top.
"Rifles!" exclaimed Gibbon. "Good!" Their left made no reply, but seemed to draw away from the fire.
"I can see no more," said the Colonel, "but they stopped at the
Emmitsburg road."
The acrid odour of musketry drifted across the field as he turned to gaze at the left wing of the fast coming onset. Far to our right they came under the fire of Cemetery Hill and of an advanced Massachusetts regiment. He saw the blue flags of Virginia sway, fall, and rise no more, while scattered and broken the Confederates fled or fell under the fury of the death messages from above the long-buried dead of the village graves. "Now then, Cushing!" cried Hunt, and the guns on the Crest opened fire.
It was plain that the long Confederate lines, frayed on each flank, had crowded together making a vast wedge of attack. Then all along our miles of troops a crackle of musketry broke out, the big guns bellowing. The field was mostly lost to view in the dense smoke, under which the charging-force halted and steadily returned the fire.
"I can't see," cried Cushing near by.
"Quite three hundred yards or more," said the colonel, "and you are hurt,
Cushing. Go to the rear." The blood was streaming down his leg.
"Not I—it is nothing. Hang those fellows!" A New York battery gallantly run in between disabled guns crowded Cushing's cannon. He cried, "Section one to the front, by hand!"
He was instantly obeyed. As he went with it to the front near to the wall, followed by Penhallow, he said, "It is my last canister, colonel. I can't see well."
Dimly seen figures in the dense smoke were visible here and there some two hundred yards away, with flutter of reeling battle-flags in the smoke, while more and more swiftly the wedge of men came on, losing terribly by the fire of the men at the wall along the lines.
Cushing stood with the lanyard of the percussion trigger in his hand. It seems inconceivable, but the two men smiled. Then he cried, "My God!"—his figure swayed, he held his left hand over a ghastly wound in his side, and as he reeled pulled the lanyard. He may have seen the red flash, and then with a bullet through the open mouth fell dead across the trail of his gun.
For a moment Penhallow was the only officer of rank near the silent battery. Where Cushing's two guns came too near the wall, the men moved away to the sides leaving an unguarded space. Checked everywhere to right and left, the assailants crowded on to the clump of trees and to where the Pennsylvania line held the stone wall. Ignorant of the ruin behind them, the grey mass came on with a rush through the smoke. The men in blue, losing terribly, fell back from a part of the wall in confusion—a mere mob—sweeping Webb, Penhallow and others with them, swearing and furious. Two or three hundred feet back they stopped, a confused mass. General Webb, Haskell and other officers rallied them. The red flags gathered thicker, where the small units of many commands stood fast under the shelter of a portion of the lost wall. Penhallow looked back and saw the Massachusetts flags—our centre alone had given way. The flanks of the broken regiments still held the wall and poured in a murderous fire where the splendid courage of the onset halted, unwilling to fly, unable to go on.
Webb, furious, rallied his men, while Penhallow, Haskell and Gibbon vainly urged an advance. A colour-sergeant ran forward and fell dead. A corporal caught up the flag and dropped. A Confederate general leaped over the deserted wall and laid a hand on Cushing's gun. He fell instantly at the side of the dead captain, as with a sudden roar of fury the broken Pennsylvanians rolled in a disordered mass of men and officers against the disorganized valour which held the wall.
The smoke held—still holds, the secret of how many met the Northern men at the wall; how long they fought among Cushing's guns, on and over the wall, no man who came out of it could tell. Penhallow emptied his revolver and seizing a musket fought the brute battle with the men who used fists, stones, gun-rammers—a howling mob of blue and grey. And so the swaying flags fell down under trampling men and the lost wall was won. The fight was over. Men fell in scores, asking quarter. The flanking fires had been merciless, and the slope was populous with dead and wounded men, while far away the smoke half hid the sullen retreat of the survivors. The prearranged mechanism of war became active. Thousands of prisoners were being ordered to the rear. Men stood still, gasping, breathless or dazed. As Penhallow stood breathing hard, from the right wing, among the long silent dead of Cemetery Hill, arose a wild hurrah. It gathered volume, rolled down the long line of corps after corps, and died away among the echoes of the Pennsylvania hills. He looked about him trying to recover interest. Some one said that Hancock and Gibbon were wounded. The rush of the mêlée had carried him far down the track of the charge, and having no instant duty he sat down, his clothes in tatters. As he recovered strength, he was aware of General Meade on horseback with an aide. The general, white and grave, said to Haskell, "How has it gone here?"
An officer cried, "They are beaten," showing two flags he held.
Meade said sharply: "Damn the flags! Are the men gone?"
"Yes, sir, the attack is over."
He uncovered, said only, "Thank God!" gave some rapid orders and rode away beside the death-swath, careful, as Penhallow saw, to keep his horse off of the thirty scattered flags, many lying under or over the brave who had fought and lost in this memorable charge.
Penhallow could have known of the battle only what he had seen, but a few words from an officer told him that nowhere except at this part of the line of the Second Corps had the attack been at all fortunate.
On the wide field of attack our ambulance corps was rescuing the hundreds of wounded Confederates, many of them buried, helpless, beneath the bodies of the motionless dead. Two soldiers stood near him derisively flaunting flags.
"Quit that," cried the Colonel, "drop them!" The men obeyed.
"Death captured them—not we," said Penhallow, and saw that he was speaking to a boyish Confederate lieutenant, who had just dragged himself limping out of the ghastly heap of dead.
Touching his forehead in salute, he said, "Thank you, sir. Where shall I go?"
"Up there," replied the colonel. "You will be cared for."
The man limped away followed by Penhallow, who glanced at the torn Confederate banners lying blood-stained about the wall and beyond it. He read their labels—Manassas, Chancellorsville, Sharpsburg. One marked Fredericksburg lay gripped in the hand of a dead sergeant. He crossed the wall to look for the body of the captain of the battery; men were lifting it. "My God!—Poor boy!" murmured the colonel, as he looked on the white face of death. He asked who was the Rebel general who had fallen beside Cushing.
"General Armistead," said an officer—"mortally wounded, they say."
Penhallow turned and went down the slope again. Far away, widely scattered, he caught glimpses of this rash and gallant attack. He was aware of that strange complex odour which rises from a battlefield. It affected him as horrible and as unlike any other unpleasant smell. Feeling better, he busied himself directing those who were aiding the wounded. A general officer he did not know said to him, "Stop the firing from that regiment."
A number of still excited men of one of the flanking brigades on our right were firing uselessly at the dimly seen and remote mass of the enemy. Penhallow went quickly to the right, and as he drew near shouted, "Stop those men—quit firing!" He raised his hand to call attention to his order. The firing lessened, and seeing that he was understood he turned away. At the moment he was not fifty feet from the flanking line, and had moved far down the slope as one of the final shots rang out. He felt something like a blow on his right temple, and as he staggered was aware of the gush of blood down his face. "What fool did that?" he exclaimed as he reeled and fell. He rose, fell, rose again, and managed to tie a handkerchief around his head. He stumbled to the wall and lay down, his head aching. He could go no further. "Queer, that," he murmured; "they might have seen." He sat up; things around him were doubled to his view.
"Are you hit?" said Haskell, who was directing stretcher-bearers and sending prisoners to the rear.
"Not badly." He was giddy and in great pain. Then he was aware of the anxious face of Josiah.
"My God! you hurt, sir? Come to look for you—can you ride? I fetched
Dixy—mare's killed."
"I am not badly hurt. Tighten this handkerchief and give me your arm—I can't ride,"
He arose, and amazed at his weakness, dragged himself down the slope, through the reforming lines, the thousands of prisoners, the reinforcing cannon and the wreckage of the hillside. He fell on his couch, and more at ease began to think, with some difficulty in controlling his thoughts. At last he said, "I shall be up to-morrow," and lay still, seeing, as the late afternoon went by, Grey Pine and Ann Penhallow. Then he was aware of Captain Haskell and a surgeon, who dressed his wound and said, "It was mere shock—there is no fracture. The ball cut the artery and tore the scalp. You'll be all right in a day or two."
Penhallow said, "Please to direct my servant to the Sanitary Commission.
I think my friend, the Rev. Mark Rivers, is with them."
He slept none. It was early dawn when Rivers came in anxious and troubled. For the first time in years of acquaintance he found Penhallow depressed, and amazed because so small a wound made him weak and unable to think clearly or to give orders. "And it was some stupid boy from our line," he said.
His incapacity made Rivers uneasy, and although Penhallow broke out to his surprise in angry remonstrance, he convinced him at last that he must return to Grey Pine on sick leave. He asked no question about the army. Insisting that he was too well to give up his command, nevertheless he talked much of headache and lack of bodily power. He was, as Rivers saw, no longer the good-humoured, quiet gentleman, with no thought of self. In a week he was stronger, but as his watchful friend realized, there was something mysteriously wrong with his mental and moral mechanism.
On the day after the battle Penhallow asked to have his wife telegraphed that he was slightly wounded, and that she must not come to him. Rivers wrote also a brief and guarded letter to Leila of their early return to Grey Pine.
In a vain effort to interest the colonel, he told him of the surrender of Vicksburg.—He asked where it was and wasn't John there, but somewhat later became more clear-minded and eager to go home.
CHAPTER XXV
Rivers gathered no comfort from a consultation of surgeons, who talked of the long-lasting effects of concussion of the brain. Made careful by the sad change he had observed in Ann Penhallow when last seen, he sent his telegram for Leila to the care of the post-mistress, and a day later a brief letter.
Understanding the mode of address, Mrs. Crocker walked at once to Grey
Pine, and found Leila in the garden. "Where is your aunt?" she asked.
"Lying down in her room. I got your kind note about the fight last evening. Is it true? Is the news confirmed?"
"Yes. There was a terrible battle at Gettysburg. The Rebels were defeated by General Meade and are retreating."
"I did not tell Aunt Ann anything. I waited to hear, as I was sure I would from Uncle James. Is there evil news?"
"I don't know. Here is a telegram to my care for you from Mr. Rivers. It must have been delayed—and then came this letter to Mrs. Penhallow from him."
"Then—then—there is bad news," she cried as she tore open the telegram and stood still.
"What is it?—you know how we all love him."
"Uncle Jim is wounded—not seriously—and will be here shortly."
"Oh, but I am sorry—and glad."
"Yes—yes—I must tell aunt at once. She has not left her room for two days, and I forbade the maids to talk of the victory until it was sure—now she must know all. I must tell her at once."
"Why not get Dr. McGregor?"
"No—no," she returned with decision. "I shall know best how to tell—it wants a woman."
The ruddy, stout post-mistress looked at the tall young woman with sudden appreciation of her self-command and mental growth. "Maybe you're about right, but I thought—well, fact is, I've seen of late so many people just tear open a letter—and go all to pieces."
Leila smiled. "You don't know my aunt. Now I must go. Oh, this war—this war! To-morrow will scatter joy and grief over all the land."
"Yes, I've been near about mobbed to-day. Good-bye."
The messenger of evil news went straight from the garden path, where the roses were in unusual abundance. To her surprise she saw her aunt on the back porch. As Leila hesitated, she said, "I saw Mrs. Crocker from my window, Leila. She gave you something—a letter—or a telegram. What is it? I suppose after what I have heard of the Confederates at York and Carlisle, they may be in Harrisburg by this time and the railroad to the west cut off. It may be well to know." She spoke rapidly as she came down the steps to meet her niece. "It is as well James Penhallow is not in it."
The two women stood facing one another in one of those immeasurably brief silences which are to timeless thought as are ages. Her husband safe, General Lee victorious—some slight look of satisfaction could be seen in her face—a faint smile, too easily read—and then—
"Well, dear, your news?"
Anger, tenderness, love, pity—all dictated answers. "Aunt Ann, I have bad news."
"Of course, dear. It was to be expected. You won't believe me, but I am sorry for you and for James."
The face of the tall young woman flushed hot. She had meant to spare her—to be tender. She said, "General Lee is retreating after losing a great battle at Gettysburg."
Her aunt said quickly, "But James Penhallow—he is in Washington?"
"No, he was in the army—he is wounded—not seriously—and he is coming home."
"I might have known it." A great illumination came over her face not understood by Leila. She was strangely glad for him that he had been in the field and not in peaceful safety at Washington. With abrupt change of expression, she added, "Wounded? Not seriously. That isn't like him to come home for a slight wound. You or Mark Rivers are hiding something."
"Not I, aunt; but any wound that kept him off duty would be better cared for here. Lee's defeat leaves him free for a time—I mean at ease—"
"Don't talk nonsense!" she cried. "What do I care for Lee—or Meade—or battles! James Penhallow is all the world to me. Victory!"—she flamed with mounting colour—"it is I am the victor! He comes back with honour—I have no duties—no country—I have only my love. Oh, my God! if he had died—if—if—I should have hated!—" She spoke with harsh vehemence, and of a sudden stopped, and breathing fast gasped in low-voiced broken tones, "Don't stare at me—I am not a fool—I am—I am—only the fool of a great love. You don't know what it means. My God! I have no child—James Penhallow is to me children, husband—all—everything." She stood still, wide-eyed, staring down the garden paths, a wonder of yearning tenderness in her face, with Rivers's letter in her hand.
"Read your letter, Aunt."
"Yes—yes—I forgot it." She read it, and said, "It only confirms the telegram."
The storm of passionate emotion was over. Leila amazed and fearful of results—twice seen before—watched her. "You have seen," she said in a low voice, "the soul of a great love laid bare. May you too some day, my child, love as I do! Have no fear for me—I see it in your looks. Come in—I have to see to things—I have to give some orders—there will be much to do." She was at once quiet, and composedly led the way into the house, the astonished girl following her.
In the hall Mrs. Penhallow said, "I fear, dear, I have left too much of the management of the house to you—of late, I mean. What with the farms and stables, I am not surprised that things have not been quite as James would desire. I am going to relieve you a little. I suppose the stables are all right."
"They are," returned Leila, feeling hurt. Her aunt had not been in the kitchen or given an order for nearly a month, and house, farm and stables, had been by degrees allowed to slip into Leila's well-trained and competent hands. Meanwhile Ann Penhallow had gradually failed in health and lost interest in duties which had been to her, as Rivers said, what social pleasures were to some women. She yielded by degrees and not without resistance to mere physical weakness, and under the emotional stress of war, and above all the absence of the man on whom she depended, had lapsed to McGregor's dismay into a state of mind and body for which he had no remedy.
Every physician of large experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. The return of a wounded man and the need to care for him acted thus upon Ann Penhallow.
Leila looked on in surprise. Her aunt's astounding indifference to the results of defeat for her beloved South when she learned of her husband's injury left the younger woman utterly bewildered. Nothing in her own nature, as she thought it all over, enabled her to understand it, nor was her aunt's rapid gain in health and cheerfulness during the next few days more easy to explain. At first with effort, but very soon with increase of ability, she gradually became more and more her old self.
Ann Penhallow spent the remainder of the next day in one of those household inspections which let no failure in neatness or order escape attention. James Penhallow's library was to be cleaned and cared for in a way to distress any man-minded man, while Leila looked on. Had her aunt's recent look of ill-health represented nothing but the depressing influence of a year of anxiety? And, if so, why under the distress of a nearer and more material disaster should she grow so quickly active, and apparently strong in place of becoming more feeble. She followed her aunt about the house trying to be helpful, and a little amused at her return to some of the ways which at times annoyed Penhallow into positive revolt. As she thought of it, Ann was standing over a battered army-chest, open and half full of well-worn cavalry uniforms.
"Really, Leila," she said, "these old army clothes had better be disposed of—and that shabby smoking-jacket—I have not seen it for years. Why do men keep their useless, shabby clothes?"
"I think Uncle Jim wouldn't like those old army uniforms given away, aunt; and don't you remember how he looked like an old Van Dyke portrait in that lovely brown velvet jacket?"
Ann, standing with the much used garment in her hand, let it drop into the chest, saying, "I really cannot see the use of keeping things as men love to do—"
"And women never!" cried Leila, closing the lid of the box, and remarking that he would like to find things as he left them; and had Aunt Ann noticed that there were moths about the bear skins. Now a moth has the power of singularly exciting some women—the diversion proved effectual.
And still as the week went by Ann seemed to be gaining in strength.
At lunch, a telegram from Charles Grey, Baltimore, said, "Penhallow here, doing well. Will return on the 14th, by afternoon train, with Rivers and servant."
"Read that, dear—I want you, Leila, to ride to the mills and tell Dr.
McGregor that I will send the carriage for him in time for him to meet
your uncle at the station. I had better not meet him—and there will be
Mark Rivers and Josiah and—but you will see to all that."
"Certainly, aunt."
"It will be the day after to-morrow. Be sure that the doctor makes no mistake. There are two trains—he will be on the four o'clock express." This was in the manner of her Aunt Ann of former days. "Shall I write it down?"
Leila cried, "No," and fled, laughing.
The next day to Leila's surprise and pleasure her aunt came down to breakfast and quietly took her place as mistress of the tea-urn. The talent of common sense as applicable to the lesser social commerce of life was one of Leila's gifts, and she made no comment on her aunt's amazing resumption of her old habits. Ann herself felt some inclination to explain her rapid recovery of health, and said as she took the long-vacant seat at the breakfast table, "I think, Leila, the doctor's last tonic has been of use to me—I feel quite like myself." Having thus anticipated her too sharp-eyed niece's congratulations, Leila's expression of pleasure came in accordant place. Whereupon they both smiled across the table, having that delicate appreciation of the needs of the situation which is rarely at the service of the blundering mind of man.
The moment of gentle hypocrisy passed, the mistress of Grey Pine took up her memoranda for the day, and said with some attempt at being just her usual self, "I shall walk to Westways after breakfast—Pole needs to be talked to. The meats have been of his worst lately." Then with a glance at the paper, "Your uncle's books must be dusted; I quite forgot it; I will set Susan to work this morning."
"But," said Leila, "he does hate that, Aunt Ann. The last time she succeeded in setting together 'Don Juan' and 'St. Thomas à Kempis.'"
Ann laughed, and said with some of her old sense of humour, "It might do them both good—dust them yourself."
"I will," said Leila, liking the task.
"And when you ride this afternoon, see Mrs. Lamb. The cook tells me that she hears of that scamp, her son, as in the army—a nice kind of soldier." A half-dozen other errands were mentioned, and they parted, Ann adding, "There is no mail to-day."
They met again at lunch. "It is too bad, Leila, Billy was given the letters and forgot them and went a-fishing. There was a letter for you from Mark Rivers about your uncle. Does he think me a child? I read it."
"You read it, Aunt!" exclaimed Leila astonished at this infraction of their household law.
"Of course I read it. I knew it must be about James." Leila made no reply, but did not like it.
"Here it is, my dear. I fear James is in a more serious state than I was led to believe by their first letters. There is also a letter from John to you." She did not ask to see it, and Leila took both missives and presently went away to the stables. Even John, as was plain, was forgotten in her aunt's anxiety in regard to her husband.
Her many errands over, Leila riding slowly through the lonely wood-roads read the letters:
"My Dear Leila," wrote Rivers, "you had better let your aunt know that the Colonel's wound must have so shocked the brain, though there is no fracture, as to have left him in a mental state which gives me the utmost anxiety. You will sadly realize my meaning when you see him. Be careful how you tell your aunt.
"Yours truly,
"MARK RIVERS."
Here indeed was trouble. Leila's eyes filled and tears fell on the paper. She rode on deep in thought, and at last securing the message of calamity in her belt opened John's letter.
"I write you, dear Leila, from my tent near Vicksburg, this 5th of July. The prisoners from Pemberton's army are passing as I write. Our men are giving them bread and tobacco, and there is no least sign of enmity or triumph. I am pretty well worn out, as the few engineers have been worked hard and the constant nearness of death in the trenches within five to one hundred feet of the Rebel lines was a situation to make a man think—not of course while in immediate danger, but afterwards. I had some narrow escapes—we all had. But, dear Leila, it has been a splendid thing to see how this man Grant, with the expressionless face, struck swiftly one army after another and returned to secure his prey.
"I cannot even now get a leave of absence, and I am beyond words anxious to hear about dear Uncle Jim. Just a line from him makes me think he was to be with General Meade and in that great battle we won. A telegram to the Engineers' Camp, Vicksburg, will relieve me.
"It is unlikely, if we go South, that I shall see you for many a day. All leaves are, I find, denied. War—intense war like this—seems to me to change men in wonderful ways. It makes some men bad or reckless or drunkards or hard and cruel; it makes others thoughtful, dutiful and religious. This is more often the case among the men than you may think it would be. Certainly it does age a fellow fast. I seem to have passed many years since I sat with you at West Point and you made me feel how young I was and how little I had seen of life. It was true, but now I have seen life at its worst and its best. I have had too the education of battle, the lessons read by thousands of deaths and all the many temptations of camp life. I believe, and I can say it to you, I am the better for it all, and think less and less of the man who was fool enough to do what with more humility he will surely do once more, if it please God that he come out of this terrible war alive.
"When you see me again, you will at least respect my years, for one lives fast here, and the months seem years and the family Bible a vain record, as I remember that the statement of births comes after the Apocrypha which leaves room for doubt."—
Leila smiled. "How like him," she murmured.
"I said months. There are (there were once last week) minutes when one felt an insolent contempt of death, although the bullets were singing by like our brave hornets. Is that courage? I used as a boy to wonder how I would feel in danger. Don't tell, but on going under fire I shiver, and then am at once in quiet possession of all my capacities, whatever they be worth. A man drops by my side—and I am surprised; then another—and I am sure I won't be hit. But I was three weeks ago in my leg! It made me furious, and I still limp a bit. It was only a nip—a spent bullet. I wanted to get at that anonymous rascal who did it.
"Do wire me, and write fully.
"Yours,
JOHN.
"P.S. I wonder where Tom McGregor is, and Pole's boy and Joe Grace, and those Greys who went diverse ways. As you never talk of yourself when you write those brief letters on notepaper the size of a postage stamp, you might at least tell me all about these good people in Westways."
She telegraphed him, "Uncle Jim slightly wounded, is coming home. Will write. Leila Grey."
About four in the afternoon of this July 14th Ann Penhallow kissed her husband as he came up the porch steps. He was leaning heavily on Mark Rivers's arm. He said, "It is quite a long time, Ann. How long is it?" Then he shook off Rivers, saying, "I am quite well," and going by his wife went through the open door, moving like one dazed. He stood still a moment looking about him, turned back and speaking to his wife said, "I understand now. At first it seemed strange to me and as if I had never been here before. Ever feel that way, Ann?"
"Oh, often, James." No signal of her anguish showed on the gallantly carried face of the little woman.
"Quiet, isn't it? When was it I was hit? It was—wasn't it in May? Rivers says it was July—I do not like contradiction." His appreciation of time and recognition of locality were alike disordered, as Rivers had observed with distress and a too constant desire to set him right. With better appreciation of his condition, Ann accepted his statement.
"Yes—yes, of course, dear—it is just so."
"I knew you would understand me. I should like to go to bed—I want
Josiah—no one else."
"Yes, dear," and this above all else made clear to the unhappy little lady how far was the sturdy soldier who had left her from the broken man in undress uniform who clung to the rail, as he went slowly up the stairway with his servant. In the hall he had seen Leila, but gave her no word, not even his habitual smile of recognition.
Ann stared after them a moment, motioned Rivers away with uplifted hand, and hastening into the library sat down and wept like a child. She had been unprepared for the change in his appearance and ways. More closely observant, Leila saw that the lines of decisiveness were gone, the humorous circles about the mouth and eyes, as it were, flattened out, and that the whole face, with the lips a little languidly parted, had become expressionless. It was many days before she could see the altered visage without emotion, or talk of him to her aunt with any of the amazing hopefulness with which the older woman dwelt on her husband's intervals of resemblance to his former self.
He would not ride or enter the stables, but his life was otherwise a childlike resumption of his ordinary habits, except that when annoyed by Ann's too obvious anxiety or excess of carefulness, he became irritable at times and even violent in language. He so plainly preferred Leila's company in his short walks as to make the wife jealous and vexed that she was not wanted during every minute of his altered life. He read no books as of old, but would have Leila read to him the war news until he fell asleep, when she quietly slipped away.
Mark Rivers resumed his duties for a time, unwilling to abandon these dear friends for whom McGregor, puzzled and perplexed, had no word of consolation, except the assurance that his condition did not grow worse.
At times Penhallow was dimly aware of his state; at others he resented any effort to control him and was so angry when the doctor proposed a consultation that the idea was too easily given up, for always in this as in everything his wife agreed with him and indulged him as women indulge a sick child. The village grieved for the Colonel who rode no more through Westways with a gay word of greeting for all he met. The iron-mills were busy. The great guns tested on the meadows now and then shook the panes in the western windows of Grey Pine. They no longer disturbed Ann Penhallow. The war went its thunderous way unheeded by her. Unendingly hopeful, the oppression of disaster seemed only to confirm and strengthen her finest qualities. Like the pine-tree winning vigour from its rock-clasped roots, she gathered such hardening strength of soul and body from his condition as the more happy years had never put at her command.
"No letters to-day, Miss Leila," said the post-mistress standing beside the younger woman's horse. "Just only them papers with their lists of killed and wounded."
"I must always be Leila, not Miss Leila," said the horsewoman.
"Well—well—I like that better. How's the Colonel?"
"Much the same—certainly no worse. It is wonderful how my aunt stands it."
"Don't you notice, Leila, how she has kind of softened? Me and Joe was talking of it yesterday. She always was good, but folks did use to say she was sort of hard and—positive. Now, she's kind of gentled—noticed that?"
"Yes, I have noticed it; but I must go. Give me the papers. You love a talk."
"There's no news of John?"
"None of late. He is with General Grant—but where we do not know."
"It's right pleasant to have Josiah back. Lord! but he's strong on war stories—ought to hear him. He was always good at stories."
"Yes, I suppose so. Good-bye."
James Penhallow sat on the back porch in the after luncheon hour to get with the freshness of October what sunshine the westerning sun was sifting through the red and gold of the maples beyond the garden walls. He was in the undress uniform of the artillery, and still wore the trefoil of the Second Corps. An effort by Ann to remove his soiled army garb and substitute his lay dress caused an outbreak of anger which left him speechless and feeble, and her in an agony of regretful penitence. Josiah, wiser than she, ventured to tell her what had happened once before when his badge of the glorious Second Corps had been missing. "After all, what does it matter?" she said to herself, and made no effort to repair the ragged bullet tear South Mountain left in his jacket, and in which he had at his worst times such childlike pride as in another and well-known general had once amused him.
He was just now in one of his best conditions and was clearly enjoying the pipe he used but rarely. Ann at his feet on the porch-step read aloud to him with indifference to all but the man she now and then looked up to with the loving tenderness his brief betterment fed with illusory hope.
"What's that, Ann?" he exclaimed; "Grant at Chattanooga! That's John's ideal General. Didn't he write about him at—where was it? Oh! Belmont."
"Yes, after Belmont, James."
"When does Mark Rivers go back?"
"To-morrow. He is always so out of spirits here that I am really relieved when he returns to the Sanitary Commission." He made no reply, and she continued her reading.
"Isn't that Leila with Rivers, Ann?"
"Yes. He likes to walk with her."
"So would any man." A faint smile—very rare of late—showed in her pleased upward look at the face—the changed face—she loved.
The pair of whom they spoke were lost to view in the forest.
"And you are glad to go?" said Leila to Rivers.
"Yes, I am. I can hardly say glad, but now that your uncle is, so to speak, lost to me and your aunt absorbed in her one task and the duties she has taken up again, our pleasant Dante lessons are set aside, and what is there left of the old intellectual life which is gone—gone?"
"But," said Leila gaily, "you have the church and my humble society. Why, you are really learning to walk, as you did not until of late."
Making no reply to her personal remark, he was silent for a moment, and then said with slow articulation and to her surprise, for he rarely spoke of himself, "Nine years ago I came here, a man broken in mind and body. This life and these dear friends have made me as strong as I can ever hope to be. But the rest—the rest. I know what power God has given me to bring souls to him. I can influence men—the lowly and—well, others, as few can. I cannot live in cities—I dare not risk the failure in health; and yet, I want—I want a larger field. I found it when your aunt's liberality sent me to the army. There in my poor way I can serve my country—and that is much to me." He was silent.
"But," she said, "is there not work enough here? and the war cannot last much longer. Don't think you must ever leave us."
"I shall—I must. There are limitations I cannot talk of even—above all to you. Your aunt knows this—and your uncle did—long ago."
"What limitations?" she asked rashly.
"You are the last person, Leila Grey, to whom I could speak of them. I have said too much, but"—and he paused—"I am tired—I will leave you to finish your walk." The great beautiful eyes turned on him for a moment. "Oh, my God!" he exclaimed, and reproaching his brief human weakness left her abruptly, walking slowly away through the drifting red and gold of leaves rocking in air as they sauntered to earth, and was at last lost to view in the woodland.
Leila stood still, puzzled and sorrowful, as she watched the tall stooping form. "How old he looks," she murmured. "What did he mean? I must ask Aunt Ann." But she never did, feeling that what he had said was something like a cautiously hinted confession. In the early morning he was gone again to the field of war.