CHAPTER LXVII.

[LETTER FROM CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH TO MAJOR CHARLES FROBISHER.]

Fisher’s Hill, September 21, 1864.

My dear Charley:

Many thanks to your dear wife for the frequent bulletins she has found time to send me in the intervals of nursing you, getting well herself, and worshipping King Charles II. Have you agreed upon a name yet? Or, rather, has Alice settled upon one? For I am told women claim the right of naming the first.

Old boy, when I heard that a bullet had gone clean through you I thought I had seen the last of you; and here you are on your pins again! A far slighter wound would have sufficed to make “darkness veil the eyes” of the stoutest of Homer’s heroes. What pin-scratches used to send them to Hades!

And now, Patroklus, I will tell you why I refused, at the opening of the war, to enter the same company of artillery with you. Your feelings were wounded at the time, and I wanted to tell you why I was so obstinate, but could not. To confess the honest truth, I had not the pluck to place myself where I might have to see you die before my eyes. It would have been different were we warring around Troy. There, I could have helped you, on a pinch, and you me. But these winged messengers of death, who can ward them off, even from the dearest friend!

I had a cruel trial in last week’s battle. When it became necessary to order Edmund’s company to advance, my heart sank within me. [Edmund was Mr. Poythress’s youngest child, a lad of barely sixteen summers, who had chafed and pined till he had wrung from his mother a tearful consent to his joining the army.] “If I do not come back,” he whispered in my ear, “tell mother that her ‘baby’ was man enough to do his duty,—for I am going to do it.” “Your company is moving,” I replied, in as stern a voice as I could muster; for I felt a rush of tears coming; and he bounded into his place. I have seen fair women in my day, and lovely landscapes, and noble chargers; but never have my eyes beheld anything so surpassingly beautiful as that ingenuous boy springing forward, under a rain of bullets, with a farewell to his mother on his lips, and the light of battle on his brow. I held my breath till he disappeared within the wood. Why is it that we all shudder at the dangers of those we love, and yet can be calm when our own lives hang by a thread? Is it not because, while we know that the loss of a true friend is one never to be repaired, and which casts a shadow upon our lives that can never be lifted [Charley keeps this letter, with another little note, which you will read later on, in a blue satin case, that Alice has embroidered with forget-me-nots. He showed it to me on the nineteenth of last October. The satin is all faded (and spotted, here and there) but time has not dulled the colors of the flowers], there is a profound, though veiled conviction, deep down in the heart of hearts of all of us, that, as for ourselves, it were better were we at rest? It seems to me that it is only the instinctive fear of death, which we share with the lower animals, and that conscience which makes brave men, not cowards of us all, that nerves such of us as have the cruel gift of thought to bear up to the end, against the slings and arrows of the most favored life, even. But it is a shame that I should write thus to a man with a brand-new baby!

I cannot picture to myself Alice as a mother; though, thanks to her graphic pen, I have a very clear conception of you as pater familias. I have laughed till I cried over her accounts of you sunning the youngster in the garden while the nurse was at her dinner, and the way you held him, and the extraordinary observations you see fit to make to him. I can’t blame him for smiling. The andante in Mozart’s D minor quartet is very beautiful; but never did I expect to hear of Charles Frobisher extemporizing words to it as a lullaby, while he rocked his infant to sleep!

But it is time I gave you some account of our late disastrous battle at Winchester. In order to understand it, you must have before your mind a picture of the region in which it was fought.

The valley of Virginia is a narrow ribbon of land, as it were, stretching diagonally across the State, between the Blue Ridge and Alleghany Mountains. As its fertility attracted settlers at an early date, its forests have mostly fallen years ago. This is especially true of the region around Winchester, which is situated in the midst of a broad, fertile plain, broken by rolling hills, crowned, here and there, by the fair remains of singularly noble forests. One would say, standing upon an eminence, and surveying the smiling landscape, that this lovely plain was fashioned by the hand of the Creator as the abode of plenty and eternal peace. Yet a poet, remembering that it is not peace, but war that man loves, could not, in his dreams, picture to himself a more beautiful battle-field. And if I have to fall, may it be on one of thy sunny slopes, valiant little Winchester; and may the last thing my eyes behold be the handkerchiefs waving from thy housetops. Such women are worth dying, yes, even worth living for.

Observe, therefore, that the plains of Winchester are admirably adapted for the rapid and intelligent manœuvring of large masses of troops. Artillery, infantry, cavalry,—every arm of the service may move in any direction with perfect facility. And I need not tell an old soldier that such a field gives overwhelming advantage to a greatly superior force. When a general, as his troops advance to the attack, can see just where the enemy are, and how far they extend,—can see their reserves hurrying forward, and knows that when they are all hotly engaged he can push heavy masses of fresh troops around both flanks, and attack in the rear men who are already outnumbered in front, what can save the weaker army from annihilation? And yet, on the nineteenth of this month, Early’s little army of ten thousand troops withstood, in front of Winchester, in the open field, without breastworks, from dawn till late in the afternoon, the assaults of forty thousand of the enemy. [Note.—This is an error on the part of the captain, but I retain his statement of the numbers engaged, just as he gives them, simply to show what was the universal belief of our soldiers at the time,—that they were outnumbered four to one. The true figures show that Early had fifteen thousand, Sheridan forty-five thousand men,—or only three to one. J. B. W.]^[1] How a solitary man of us escaped I shall never be able to understand.

Possibly you have not seen in the papers that on the seventeenth Early sent our division down the valley to Martinsburg (twenty-two miles) to make a reconnoissance. We did a little skirmishing there, and on the next day encamped, on our return, at a place called Bunker’s Hill,—named, I presume, in honor of the Bunker’s Hill on which Boston, with a magnanimity unparalleled in history, has erected an imposing monument to commemorate the gallant storming of Breed’s Hill by the British. Here we lay down to rest. I will not say to sleep; for never, since the beginning of the war, had I felt so profoundly anxious. Picture to yourself our situation.

There we were, twelve miles down the valley, twenty-five hundred men; while, near Berryville, over against our main body of about eight thousand men at Winchester, lay an army forty thousand strong. Suppose Sheridan should attack in our absence? True, Early had marched over to Berryville, a few days before, and offered him battle in vain. But suppose he did attack? Could he not in an hour’s time (for forty thousand against eight is rather too much) drive Early’s force pell-mell across the pike, and, with his immense force of cavalry, capture the last man he had? And then we would have nothing to do but march up the valley, like a covey of partridges, into a net.

Such were the thoughts which flashed across my mind, with painful intensity, at dawn next morning. Weary with anxious thinking, I had fallen to sleep at last. The boom of a cannon swept down from Winchester. We are lost, was my first thought. Our army will be annihilated. Sheridan will set out on his march to the rear of Richmond to-morrow morning.

I rose without a word, as did others around me, and completed my toilet by buckling on my sword and pistols. There, on my blanket, lay Edmund, sleeping the sweet, deep sleep of boyhood. I could hardly make up my mind to arouse him. “Get up,” said I, touching his shoulder; “they are fighting at Winchester.” “They are!” cried he, leaping to his feet. The gaudium certaminis was in his eyes. The boy is every inch a soldier.

We hurried up the turnpike without thinking of breakfast, the roar of the battle growing louder as we advanced. Edmund chattered the whole way, asking me, again and again, whether I thought it would be all over before we got there. He had not yet been in a battle, and was full of eager courage. I told him I thought he would have a chance at them, though I actually thought that all would be over before we reached the ground. And what do you suppose we learned as we neared the field? That Ramseur, with his twelve hundred men covering our front with hardly more than a skirmish line, had held in check the heavy masses of the enemy all this time! They had been attacked at dawn; we had marched twelve miles; and there they were still, Ramseur and his heroic little band of North Carolinians. And I single out the North Carolinians by name, not so much because of their courage, as of their modesty.

Well, we were beaten that day, and badly beaten. That we were not annihilated is what I cannot comprehend. And why we are allowed to rest here and recuperate, with a vastly superior army, flushed with victory, in our front, is equally difficult to understand. Why were we not attacked at dawn next day? Yet, that he has not done so does not surprise me, after what I saw of his generalship at the close of the late battle. Put yourself beside me, and see what I saw on the afternoon of September 19th.

We are standing on an open hill, just in rear of where our troops have fought so stubbornly the livelong day. Where is our army? It no longer exists. It has been hammered to pieces. Here and there you see a man slowly retiring, and loading his rifle as he falls back. Every now and then he turns and fires. One here, and one there,—this is all the army we have.

Now look over there, at that field, to the left of the position lately held by us. Those are the enemy’s skirmishers, advancing from a wood. Their long line stretches far away, and is lost to view behind that rise in the hill. At whom are they firing? Heaven knows, for there is no enemy in their front. And now the dense masses of their infantry appear, in rear of the skirmishers, and glide slowly across the hill, like the shadow of a black cloud. Come, Edmund, cheer up, and have a crack at them. (The boy is standing apart, his powder-begrimed face streaked with decorous tears.) Set your sight at six hundred yards. Come here, and let me give you a rest on my hip. Yes, the man with the flag. Ah, you have made a stir among them. The line moves on, but one man lies stretched upon the field, with two others kneeling beside him. There is the making of a sharpshooter in the boy!

And what ponderous form is this that comes towards us, limping and disconsolate? ’Tis our friend Jack. He, I need hardly tell you, ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ But he lost heart when his powerful charger fell beneath him, disembowelled by a cannon-ball. Poor Bucephalus! He had carried him through twenty battles as though he were a feather; and where was he to find another horse that could carry him at all! (Edmund tells a good story of Jack. He says that while he stood lamenting the death of his valiant steed, one of our advancing brigades, first staggering under the heavy fire, then halting, were beginning to give way. “Boys,” cried Jack (he will have his joke), “boys, follow me! If they can’t hit me, they can’t hit anybody!” Edmund says that some of the soldiers laughed; and that as they followed the burly captain he heard one of them say to his neighbor, “Mind now; if they do hit him, I claim his breeches as a winter-quarters tent.”)

Look, now, at those dark masses, halted in full view on that rising ground to our right. They are as near Winchester as we are. What are they doing there? Surely they can see that there are no troops between themselves and the town! Why do they not go and take it? Can it be their advance has been checked by the stray shots of a score of retreating sharpshooters?

Now turn and look a mile away, to our left. See that dense cloud of dust, lit up with the flashing of carbine-shots, the gleaming of sabres, and the glare of bursting shells! There, along the pike, our handful of cavalry, struggling bravely with overwhelming odds, is falling back upon the town. Come, Edmund, there is no use staying here any longer. Yes, I think they will get there before us. Pluck up your spirits, my boy; a true soldier shows best in adversity.

I have not tried, my dear Charley, to give you a military account of this battle. I have striven, instead, to lay before you a picture of the field as it appeared when Edmund, Jack, and I sadly turned towards Winchester. It was then the middle of the afternoon. Would you believe that we reached the town in safety,—entered a house, whose fair inmates gave us bread (it was all—almost more than all they had),—retired, afterwards, up the pike, along which our soldiers straggled in twos and threes,—went into camp,—arose next morning,—and made our way to Fisher’s Hill? And here we are still, resting as quietly as though no enemy were in our front!

I have known men to leave the gaming-table, after a big run of luck, so as to spend their winnings before the tide turned. Perhaps our friends the enemy wish to enjoy their glory awhile before risking the loss of it in another battle; but it isn’t war.

Yours, ever,

Dory.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

“Jack,” said Alice, “every time I read this letter of poor Dory’s, I find it harder to understand how General Sheridan has so high a reputation in the North as a soldier. Can you explain it?”

“I cannot,” I replied, thumping the table fiercely with my fist; for every Whacker molecule in me stood on end.

“I can,” put in Charley, in his dry way.

I turned and fixed my eyes on that philosopher. His were fixed upon the ceiling. His head rested upon the back of his chair, his legs (they are stoutish now) were stretched across another.

“The deuse you can!” for my sturdy Saxon atoms were in arms.

Charley removed his solid limbs from the chair in front of him, with the effort and grunt of incipient obesity [incipient obesity indeed! and from you! whe-e-ew! Alice], and, walking up to the mantel-piece, rested both arms upon it at full length; then, tilting his short pipe at an angle of forty-five degrees, he surveyed me with a smile of amiable derision. “Yes, I can,” said he, at last. And with each word the short pipe nodded conviction.

“Do it, then,” said I.

“I will,” said he. And diving down into his pocket, he drew forth a manuscript; and striking an attitude, and placing his glasses (eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni) upon his oratorical nose, he unfolded the paper. Clearing his throat:

“HANNIBAL!” began he, in thunder-tones; then, dropping suddenly into his usual soft voice, and letting fall his right hand containing the paper to the level of his knee,—“this,” he added, peering gravely at us over his spectacles, “is my Essay on Military Glory!”

Alice made herself comfortable, and spread out her fan; for laughing makes her warm nowadays.

Had she any right to look for humor in an essay by her husband? Look at her own chapter on the loves of Mary and the Don. A more sentimental performance I never read. Show me a trace therein, if you can, of witty, sparkling Alice of the merry-glancing hazel eyes! Look, for the matter of that, at this book of mine. Why, the other day, glancing over the proofs^[1] of a certain chapter, and forgetting for the moment, as I read the printed page, that I had written it, would you believe it, my eyes filled with tears? (And a big one rolled down so softly that I started when it struck the paper.) Is this, cried I, the jolly book that my friends expect of me? Alas, fair reader, fellow-pilgrim, through this valley of shadows, I trust full many a sun-streak may fall across your path. As for me,—I can only sing the song that is given me.

CHAPTER LXIX.

Charley shifted his manuscript to his left hand, and smoothing down the leaves with his right, and glancing at the paper, raised his eyes to mine. The tip of his forefinger, placed lightly against the tip of his nose, lent to that organ an air of rare subtlety.

“A julep,” he began, “differs from a thought in this: that while—”

“A julep!” cried Alice; “why, just now you began with Hannibal.”

Charley stood for a moment, smiling, as he toyed with the leaves of his essay with the forefinger of his right hand.

“True; I had turned the thing upside down, and was reading it backwards. A julep,” he began again, with an authoritative air—

“What connection,” interrupted Alice, “can there be between juleps and military men?”

“Innocence,” ejaculated Charley, raising his eyes to heaven, “thy name is Alice!”

“Go on; I shall not interrupt you again.”

“A julep differs from a thought in this: that while an average man goes to the bottom of the former, of the latter only philosophers can sound the depths.” With that he sat down.

“Is that the end of your Essay on Military Glory?” I asked.

“No. That is the first round. I call for time. I am exhausted by the vastness of the generalization.” And leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes with a sigh of profound lassitude. “My dear,” said he, presently, in a feeble whisper,—“my dear, don’t you think this lecture would go off better were it illustrated?”

Alice looked puzzled for a moment, then rose with a bright laugh, and, making a pass at Charley (who minds Jack?) which he dodged, tripped briskly out of the room.

“Charley,” said I, “you are a boundless idiot!”

“Too true; but there is method in my madness.” which I found to be so when Alice (who could have wished a more charming waitress?) returned with the illustrations.

Illustrations in the highest form of art; for they appealed to the ear with the soft music of their jingle, the nostrils by their fragrance, the touch by their coldness, to the eye by the fascinating contrast of cracked ice and vivid green; while the imagination, soaring above the regions of sense, beheld within those frosted goblets, jocund, blooming summer seated in the lap of rimy winter,—or the triumph of man over nature.

Ole Virginny nebber tire!

“What kind of an idiot did you say?” said Charley, as we chinked glasses.

“I couldn’t find any straws,” said Alice.

“I accept your apology,” said Charley. His voice sounded soft, mellow, and far away; for his nose was plunged beneath a mass of crushed ice. “Straws,” added he, growing magnanimous, “they are only fit to show which way the wind blows.” And with a magnificent sweep of his left hand he indicated his disdain for all possible atmospheric currents. “Ladies and gentlemen,” added he, as he rose from his seat; and this time there was an indescribable jumble in the voice of the orator—(not at all, Mr. Teetotaller! ’twas caused by the cracked ice),—for as Charley rose to continue the reading of his Essay on Military Glory, he had pointed the stem of his goblet at the ceiling; striving, at the same time, by a skilful adjustment of his features, to prevent its contents from falling on the floor,—such great store did Alice set by her new carpet. But, of course, when he opened his mouth to say ladies and gentlemen, a baby avalanche fell in upon his organs of speech; so that he didn’t manage to say anything of the kind. “That,” said he, placing the glass upon the table, “will do as a vignette; the illustrations we shall contrive to work in farther on.”

One julep gives Charley the swagger of a four-bottle man.

“Where was I?” asked he, drawing the manuscript from his pocket. “I’ll begin again. HANNIBAL! No, confound it! Ah, here we are: “An average man has strength to go to the bottom of a julep; only a philosopher can sound the depth of a thought.”

At these words Alice rose from her seat, and, leaning forward, first fixed a scrutinizing glance upon her husband, then advanced towards him with a twinkle in her merry-glancing hazel eye.

“If half the audience,” said Charley, with an imperious wave of the hand, “will persist in wandering over the floor, the reading is suspended.”

Alice took her seat, and did nothing but laugh till the end of the chapter. I laughed, too, but without exactly knowing why. But laughter (singularly enough,—for it is a blessing) is contagious. And then the julep had been stiff; so that the very tables and chairs about the room seemed to beam upon me with a certain twinkling, kindly Bushwhackerishness.^[1]

“Here’s a lot of stuff that I shall skip,” began Charley; and he turned over, with careless finger, leaf after leaf. As he did so Alice rose slightly from her seat with a peering look.

“Who is reading this Essay on Military Glory?” asked Charley, with a severe look at his wife over his glasses (alas, alas, nec pietas moram?).

“Very well; go on,” said Alice, dropping back into her chair with a fresh burst of laughter. She had had no julep. What was she laughing at?

“It consists (my opening) of a series of illustrations, showing how much nonsense comes to be believed through people’s not going to the bottom of things. We suppose ourselves to have an opinion (there is no commoner delusion), but we fail to subject that opinion to any crucial test; though nothing is easier. The crucial test, for example, of sulphuretted hydrogen, is a certain odor which we encounter, when, with incautious toe, we explode an egg in some outlying nest which no boy could find during the summer—”

“That will do,” said Alice; though why women should turn up their blessed little noses at such allusions is hard to understand, seeing what keen and triumphant pleasure they all derive from the detection of unparliamentary odors at unexpected times and places.

“I have here,” continued Charley, carelessly turning the leaves of his manuscript, “a nestful of such illustrations.”

“We will excuse you from hatching them in our presence,” said Alice; and with wrinkled nose she disdainfully sniffed a suppositious egg of abandoned character.

“I have already passed them over. After all, what is the use of them? You and Charley can understand what I mean without them; and if you can, why not the reader, too? Are readers idiots? I’ll plunge in medias res. Let us begin here:” (reading) “It is the same with military glory. How many battles have been fought since the world began? Arithmetic stands pale in the presence of such a question! In every one of these conflicts one or the other commander had the advantage. How many of them are famous? Count them. For every celebrated general that you show me, I will show you a finger—or a toe—”

“You are too anatomical by half,” protested Alice.

“Why is this? Think for a moment? Why is this victor famous, that victor not? It is the simplest thing in the world if you will but apply the crucial test.”

Charley paused in his reading and peered gravely over his glasses. “What is it, goose?” asked his admiring spouse.

“The crucial test is disparity of numbers. Formulæ: equality, victory, obscurity,—disparity, victory, glory. There you have it in a nutshell. Example (from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire): imperator of the West and imperator of the East, battling, with the world as a stake. Innumerable but equal hosts. Days of hacking and hewing. Victory to him of the East (or West). His name? Have forgotten it. Equality, victory, obscurity!

“See? By the way, Jack, does not the brevity of my military style rather smack of Cæsar’s Commentaries?

“Again—scene, Syria. Christians of the Byzantine empire, and Mahometans. Final struggle. Vast but equal armies. Three days of carnage. Remnant of Christians decline crown of glory. Name of victor? I pause?—and so on, and so on, and so on.

“But now, per contra, read, by the light of our hypothesis, the following:

PARADIGM OF GLORY.

“Ah, you have gotten to him at last,” said Alice.

“Yes, my dear,” said Charley, raising his eyes from the manuscript; “but the vignettes grow dim. Let’s have an illustration in honor of the victor of Cannæ. Let there be lots of ice as a memorial of the avalanches he defied, piled mountain-high because of the Alps he overcame. Typify with mint the glorious verdure of Italy as it first bursts upon his view.”

Alice typified—

“After all,” said Charley, “this is a pretty good old world to live in.” And he fillipped, gently, the rim of his goblet with his middle finger. (Ching! ching!) “It was B flat when it was full, and now (ching! ching!) it is a good C sharp. Listen!” And shutting one eye, he cocked the other meditatively towards the ceiling. (Ching! ching!) “Acoustics or something, I suppose. A pretty good old world, I tell you, boys. (Ching! ching!) H’m! h’m! h’m!” It was a low, contented chuckle. “Jack-Whack, you ought to have a sweet little darling of a wife, just like—”

“Mr. Frobisher, you are positively boozy!”

“Well, well, my precious little ducky dumpling, I don’t write Essays on Military Glory every day. H’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! I left out my very best illustration, simply because I couldn’t work it into my paradigm. It is a little poem I heard once,—h’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! (Ching! ching!)

“One would say, taking the four lines together, that Dad probably got the better of Jamie in the end. But who thinks of ranking him, for that reason, with the world’s famed conquerors? Preposterous! They were obviously too evenly matched. See? No one knows, even, who Dad was, or Jamie; or what Bowlin’ Green drank their gore. (Ching! ching!) D natural. Nor even the name of the poet. Some old, old Aryan myth, I suppose, symbolizing the struggle between Light and Darkness,—‘in the morning Dad’—the sun—‘was seen a-punchin’ Jamie’—moon, of course—‘on the Bowlin’ Green,’—that is, this beautiful world. (Ching! ching!) What are you up to?”

Alice had made a dive at Charley, who, mistaking her object, defended himself vigorously. Meantime, she had darted with her right hand down into his breast-pocket, drawing out the manuscript.

“If you supposed I wished to kiss your juleppy moustache, you are much mistaken. This is what I wanted.” And she brandished the Essay high in the air in triumph. “I knew it! I knew it!” cried she. “Listen, Jack!”

“‘Baltimore, August 14, 1885.

“‘Charles Frobisher, Esq.:

“‘Dear Sir,—‘The guano will be shipped by to-morrow’s boat, as per valued order.

“‘Very truly yours,

“‘Bumpkins & Windup.’

“And look here—and look here,—nothing but a lot of business letters. He has not written one line! His so-called Essay on Military Glory is a myth!”

“We got the juleps, at any rate. Jack-Whack, you write it up.”

“If Alice will agree to illustrate again.”

“Not I!”

“Q minor!” sighed Charley, thumping his empty goblet. “Jack-Whack, my poor boy, we dwell in a vale of tears!”

CHAPTER LXX.

It is eight o’clock in the morning, at Harrisonburg, in the leafy month of June. You board the train from Staunton. As it rushes down the Valley there lies spread out before you, on either side, a scene of rare loveliness. Fertile plains, waving with grain; rolling, grass-clad hills, laughing in the sunshine, dotted here and there with woods of singular beauty; limpid streams, brawling over glittering, many-hued pebbles; a pure air filling the lungs with a glad sense of health and well-being. There are few such lands.

But come, take this seat on the right-hand side of the car, and I will tell you of some things which happened twenty years ago.

Ah, there it is! Don’t you see that bluish thread, winding along over there, skirting that hill? That is the Valley Pike. There was no railroad there then. Take a good look at it. Take a good look, for heroes have trodden it.

Ah, the train has stopped. Do you see that grizzled farmer, who has ridden over to the station to get his mail? I know him, for I never forget a face. He was there at Manassas when Bee said, “Look at Jackson, standing like a stone wall!” Yes, many of the survivors of the Stonewall Brigade live along this road.

That is the Massanutten Mountain, a spur of the Blue Ridge. How beautiful it is! Straight and smooth and even, with a little notch every now and then; clothed from base to summit with primeval forests, it looks, crested as it is here and there with snowy clouds, like a gigantic green wave rolling across the plain.

A wall not unlike this once stood on either hand in the Red Sea; and Miriam smote her tambourine in triumph, praising the God of Israel.

As we rush along, the mountain bears us company, as though doing the honors of the Valley.

The train stops at Strasburg. There, too, Massanutten ends.

As though a Titan had cleft it with his sword, so abruptly does it sink into the plain.

You are on your way to Alexandria, and will have to wait here four hours; so let us look about us. Run your eye up that sharp acclivity lying over against the town.

Upon the brink of that steep, twenty years ago, stood Gordon. Accompanied by a few staff-officers, he had spent the greater part of the day in the toilsome ascent, tearing his way through dense, pathless jungles, struggling among untrodden rocks; and now, on the seventeenth of October, 1864, he stands there sweeping the plain with his field-glass. What does he see? Why does he forget, in an instant, his fatigue? What is it that fires with ardor his martial face?

But before I tell you that, a word with you.

In the South, at the breaking out of the war, there was not to be found one solitary statesman; nor one throughout the length and breadth of the North. Not that capacity was lacking to either side. Great capacity is not required. Chesterfield heard the rumble of the coming French revolution, to which the ears of Burke were deaf. After all, statecraft is but the application of temporary expedients to temporary emergencies; and you might carve a score of Gladstones and Disraelis out of the brain of Herbert Spencer without in the least impairing his cerebrum. Pericles shone in Athens for an hour; Aristotle dominated the world for twenty centuries. Such is the measure of a statesman; such that of a thinker.

Statesmen, therefore (or the making of such), we had, I must suppose, by the thousand. I have said they were not to be found.

For years before we came to blows the animosity between North and South had been deepening, reaching at last this point, that he who would catch the ear of either side could do so only by fierce denunciation of the other; he that would have it thought that he loved us had only to show that he hated you. Men of moderation found no hearers. The voices of the calm and clear-headed sank into silence; and Wigfall and Toombs, and Sumner and Phillips walked up and down in the land.

Yes, no doubt we had thousands of statesmen who knew better. But who knew them? And so Seward kept piping of peace in ninety days, and Yancey—Polyphemus of politicians—was willing to drink all the blood that would be shed. A Yankee wouldn’t fight, said the one. The slave-drivers, perhaps, would, said the other; but they were, after all, a mere handful; and the poor white trash would be as flocks of sheep.

A Yankee wouldn’t fight! And why not, pray? Two bulls will, meeting in a path; two dogs, over a bone. The fishes of the sea fight; the birds of the air; nay, do not even the little midgets, warmed by the slanting rays of the summer’s sun, rend one another with infinitesimal tooth and microscopic nail? All nature is but one vast battle-field; and if the nations of men seem at times to be at peace, what is that peace but taking breath for another grapple? And congresses and kings are but bottle-holders, and time will be called in due season. The Yankees wouldn’t fight! And suppose they wouldn’t, why should they, pray, being sensible men?

Where was the Almighty Dollar?

Had any one of the Southern leaders read one page of history, not to know that money means men? means cannon, rifles, sabres? means ships, and commissariat, and clothing? means rallying from reverses, and victory in the end? The Yankee would not fight, they told us. His omnipotent ally they forgot to mention or to meet. Had our Congress consisted of bankers, merchants, railway superintendents, they would have seen to the gathering of the sinews of war. We had only the statesmen of the period,—God save the mark!

It was in finance that we blundered fatally. ’Twas not the eagle of the orator that overcame us, but the effigy thereof, in silver and in gold.

When we fired on Fort Sumter there was a burst of patriotism throughout the North, and her young men flocked to her standards. They fought, and fought well. The difference between them and us was, that when they got tired of poor fare and hard knocks they could find others to take their places. Being sensible, practical men, they used their opportunities. When a man was drafted (as the war went on) he or his friends found the means of hiring a substitute (persons who have visited the North since the war tell me that you rarely find a man of means who served in the army); and at last cities and counties and States began to meet each successive call for fresh troops by votes of money; their magnificent bounty system grew up, and from that time the composition of the Northern armies rapidly changed. Trained soldiers from every part of the world flocked to the El Dorado of the West; and as the war went on each successive battle brought less and less grief to the hearts and homes of the North, while with us—with us!

From every corner of Europe they poured.

From Italy, from Sweden, from Russia, and from Spain.

From the Danube and the Loire; from the marshy borders of the Elbe and the sunny slopes of the Guadalquivir.

From the Alps and the Balkan. From the home of the reindeer and the land of the olive. From Majorca and Minorca, and from the Isles of Greece.

From Berlin and Vienna; from Dublin and from Paris; from the vine-clad hills of the Adriatic and the frozen shores of the Baltic Sea.

From Skager Rack and Skater Gat, and from Como and Killarney.

From sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, from the banks and braes o’ bonny Doon, and from Bingen-on-the-Rhine.

Catholic and Calvinist; Teuton, Slav, and Celt,—who was not there to swell that host, and the babel of tongues around their camp-fires? For to every hut in Europe, where the pinch of want was known, had gone the rumor of fabulous bounty and high pay now, generous pension hereafter.

At Bull Run the North met the South; at Appomattox Lee laid down his sword in the presence of the world in arms.

CHAPTER LXXI.

And Gordon? What did he see, standing on Massanutten’s crest?

They lay there, beyond Cedar Creek, the Eighth Corps, the Nineteenth Corps and the Sixth; and, further away, the heavy masses of their cavalry; spread out before him, forty or fifty thousand strong.

Like a map. “I can distinguish the very chevrons of that sergeant,” said he.

And now he bends his eyes on Fisher’s Hill.

Those men lying there were beaten at Winchester, one month ago. Against brigade Early can bring regiment, against division, brigade; can oppose division to corps. And yet he is going to hurl this little handful against that mighty host.

A mere handful; but hearts of English oak! The ancestors of these men fought and won at Crecy and Agincourt; and they are going to fight and lose at Cedar Creek. The result was different,—but the odds and the spirit were the same.

Have I forgotten the brigade of Louisiana creoles? No; but when I would speak of them, a certain indignant sorrow chokes my utterance. They came to us many and they went away few; and the Valley has been made historic by their blood, mingled with ours.

And now is heard the voice of one, speaking as with authority,—the voice of a Louisianian, proclaiming to the world that these Louisianians died in an unjust cause. Unjust! It is a word not to be used lightly. Your share of the obloquy, living comrades, you can bear; but theirs? For they are not here to speak for themselves.

And to say it to their widows and their orphans!

That word could not help the slave. He is free, thank heaven. Nor was the war in which these men died waged to free him. He was freed to wage the war, rather, as everybody knew when the proclamation of emancipation was promulgated. In point of fact, the struggle was between conflicting interpretations of the Constitution; and the Northern people, by a great and successful war, established their view of its obligations; the freedom of the slave being a corollary of victory.

Unjust! had it not been as well to leave that word to others? ’Tis an ill bird that fouls its own nest.

The war wrought wide ruin; but it has been a boon to the South in this, at least: that it has jostled our minds out of their accustomed grooves. Bold thinking has come to be the fashion. And so we should not find fault with the author of Doctor Sevier, if, dazzled by the voluptuous beauty of quadroon and octoroon, he should find a solution of our race troubles in intermarriage. Let him think his little thought. Let him say his little say. It will do no harm. On one question he will find, I think, a “solid” North and a “solid” South. Both are content to choose their wives from among the daughters of that great Aryan race which boasts so many illustrious women; and which boasts still more the millions of gentle mothers and brave wives, whose names the trump of fame has never sounded. And with such, I think, both the blue and the gray are likely to rest content. Content, too, that their children, like themselves, should be of that pure Indo-Germanic stock whence has sprung a Socrates and a Homer; a Cæsar and a Galileo; a Descartes and a Pascal; a Goethe and a Beethoven; a Newton and a Shakespeare. The countrymen of Cervantes and of Cortez, failing to keep their blood pure, have peopled a continent with Greasers and with Gauchos. And shall the children of Washington become a nation of Pullman car porters—and octoroon heroines—be their eyes never so lustrous?

But such matters are legitimate subjects of discussion. So let him have his say. But there are things which it is more seemly to leave unsaid.

When a step-mother is installed in the house, you may think her vastly superior, if you will, with her velvets and her laces and her diamonds, to her that bore you; and you may, perhaps, win fame as an original thinker by saying so to the world; but there is a certain instinct of manhood that would seal the lips of most men. And I, for my part, know many, very many Northern men; and not one of them seems to wish to have me grovel in the dust and cry peccavi. Would it not have been a disgrace to them to have spent, with all their resources and odds, four years in subduing a race of snivellers? No; let us say to the end: you were right in fighting for your country, we equally right in battling for ours. The North will, the North does respect us all the more for it.

As I read these words, Charley rose, and, opening a book-case, took out a volume. Finding, apparently, the passage he sought, he closed the book upon his forefinger.

“When a man takes upon himself,” he began, “to rise up before Israel to confess and make atonement for the sins of the people, be should be quite sure that he has the right to exercise the functions of high-priest.

“If either his father or his mother, for example, sprang from the region roundabout Tyre and Sidon, that should bid him pause. It is not enough that one wields the pen of a ready writer. One must be an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Else the confession goes for naught.

“What Jack has just read,” added he, “brought to my mind a passage which I have not thought of for ages. You must know, Alice, that after the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa, the Ten Thousand made a truce with Tissaphernes, lieutenant of Artaxerxes, who agreed to conduct them back to Greece. After journeying together for some time, he invited the Greek generals to a conference at his headquarters. Clearchus and almost all of the leading officers accepted the invitation, and at a given signal were seized and murdered.

“The Ten Thousand were in as bad plight as ever an army was. Without leaders, confronted by a countless host, they had either to surrender or cut their way through a thousand miles of hostile territory.

“Xenophon, though not an officer, called an assembly, and soon aroused a stern enthusiasm. Speech after speech was made, and no one uttered other than brave words, except a certain Apollonides; and he cried out that the others spoke nonsense,—that the safe and profitable thing to do was to grovel before the Great King. Xenophon replied in a sarcastic vein, ending as follows:

“‘It seems to me, oh men, that we should not admit this man into any fellowship with us, but that we should cashier him of his captaincy and put baggage upon his back, and use him as a beast of burden. For he is a disgrace to his native land and to all Greece, since, being a Greek, he is such as he is.’

“‘And thereupon, Agasias, the Stymphalian, taking up the discourse, said, ‘But this man is not a Greek; for I see that, like a Lydian, he has both his ears bored.’

“And such was the fact. Him, therefore, they cast out.”

CHAPTER LXXII.

It is not my purpose to describe the battle of Cedar Creek. Even of the rôle played by Gordon’s division, of which the present writer formed, according to Alice, a large part, I shall give no detailed account; for my object is not so much to instruct military men as to entertain my fair reader.

Three simultaneous attacks were to be made. Rosser, advancing along the “Back-road,” far away to our left, was to swoop down, with his cavalry, upon that of the enemy. Kershaw and Wharton were to attack his centre; Gordon, with Ramseur and Pegram, to turn and assault his left.

At eight o’clock, therefore, in the evening of October 18, 1864, our men, rising from around their camp-fires and buckling on their accoutrements, took up their line of march. The enemy was miles away, yet they spoke in undertones; for their instinct told them that they were to surprise him. Their very tread as they moved along was in a muffled rhythm, as it seemed to me, and their canteens gave forth a dim jingle, as of sheep-bells, by night, from a nodding flock on a distant hill.

Leaving the pike and turning to the right, we (Gordon’s command) at one time marched down a country road, at another straggled, single-file, along bridle-paths, at times fought our way through briers and amid jagged rocks as we toiled along under the shadow of Massanutten.

At last, when the night was wellnigh spent, we stacked arms in a field. The shining Shenandoah murmured just in front of us. We talked almost in whispers.

Suddenly the notes of a bugle, faint, far away, broke the stillness of the night. The enemy’s cavalry at Front Royal were sounding the reveille. We held our breath,—had they divined our intentions?

The bugle-call to our right had scarcely died away, when, from far away to our left, the rattle of carbines was heard, low and soft, as though one dreamt of battle! ’Twas Rosser. Unfortunately, he had found a portion of the enemy in the saddle and ready to march, though not expecting an attack.

Just then the clanking of sabres and the trampling of hoofs was heard close beside us; and turning, we saw a squadron of our cavalry moving upon the ford. A thick mist had begun to rise, and as they rode through it they seemed colossal phantoms rather than earthly horsemen. A few moments, and the crack of carbine-shots was heard. The enemy’s videttes retired, and our horsemen dashed across the stream. We followed, and formed in a field beyond the river.

The mist thickened with the approach of day. You could scarcely see a man thirty feet away. Captain Smith had deployed his skirmishers. As he stood near me, waiting for the word forward, a terrific rattle of musketry burst upon our ears, coming from our left. It was Kershaw, we knew. And then the cannon began to roar. Kershaw had left, his artillery behind him. Had they been ready to receive him, and were the cannon and rifles of an entire corps mowing down his gallant little division? It was an appalling moment!

The word was given, and Captain Smith and his skirmishers dashed into the wood at a double-quick. We followed, and soon the air was filled with the roar of wide-spread battle. The cannon that we had heard, as we soon learned, were captured guns that Kershaw had turned upon the enemy. His division had rushed up a steep hill and put a corps to flight. Between us, we had soon driven, in headlong rout from their camps, the Eighth and the Nineteenth Corps. The Sixth remained, but we could not see it, so dense was the mist. Our assault slackened, ceased.

What would have been the result had we pushed on it is needless, now, to inquire. Desultory firing continued till about four o’clock in the afternoon, when Sheridan, who was at Winchester when the battle began, having galloped up, rallied thousands of the fugitives, and adding them to the Sixth Corps and his heavy force of cavalry, attacked and routed us in turn.

There were those who said that Early, if he did not choose to continue the attack (the most brilliant movement of the war, I think), should have withdrawn his troops, and not held them there, in an open plain, with greatly superior forces in his immediate front. He himself, smarting under defeat, attributed the disaster to the fact that his men, scattering through the captured camps, were engaged in plundering instead of being at their posts; and his words have been quoted by our friends the enemy. But I think that a moment’s reflection will dispel this idea. Our hungry men, pursuing the enemy, and coming upon their sutlers’ wagons, did undoubtedly snatch up such edibles as came in their way; but this occurred at day-break, and we were not attacked till four o’clock in the afternoon. I remember that I myself, espying a fat leg of mutton (of which some farmer had been robbed), laid hands on it with a view to a royal supper when the battle should be over; and, by brandishing it over my head, like a battle-axe, caused much laughter in the ranks. What became of it I cannot recall. I know I did not eat it; but I know, too, that my seizing it had no influence on the fortunes of the day.

The truth is, our defeat requires no explanation or apology from our brave old general. When Sheridan attacked us, he brought against our thin, single line of jaded men, overwhelming masses of fresh troops, assaulting our front, and, at the same time, turning both our flanks. I remember that Gordon’s men, who held the left of our line, did not give way till bodies of the enemy had marched entirely around our flank, and began to pour deadly and unanswered volleys into our backs.

One more word and I am done with the battle as such.

Captain Smith, in his letter to Major Frobisher, found it impossible to understand why our army was not entirely destroyed at Winchester. I, on the contrary, can explain how it was that we were not annihilated at Cedar Creek.

When the enemy, in their pursuit, reached Strasburg, and saw, below them, slowly retreating along the road to Fisher’s Hill, a dark mass of troops, they called a halt. That halt saved our army. I can hardly repress a smile now, when I remember that that serried phalanx which looked so formidable, and gave the enemy pause, consisted of fifteen hundred Federal prisoners, guarded by a few hundred of our men. But the eccentric strategy of that halt, instead of being comic, was, in truth, fearfully tragic; for it protracted the defence of Richmond, and delayed the close of the war till the following spring, and cost the lives of thousands of brave men on both sides.

So much for the battle of Cedar Creek. Such slight sketch of it as I have given has cost me more pain than it can give the reader pleasure. Not willingly did I introduce it into my story.

That story grows sombre. It opened bright and joyous as the sunny nook of Earth in which my earlier scenes were laid. But between my hero and the land he helped to defend there is a parallelism of fortunes. The shadow of the same fate hangs over both.