Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond

by Joseph A. Altsheler

  CHAPTER XIX

  NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS

  The two women clasped hands again and looked at each other as Harleydisappeared amid the smoke.

  "He has left us," said Mrs. Markham.

  "Yes, but he has gone to his country's need," said his sister proudly.

  Then they were silent again. Night, smoky, cloudy and dark, thick withvapours and mists, and ashes and odours that repelled, was coming downupon the Wilderness. Afar in the east the fire in the forest stillburned, sending up tongues of scarlet and crimson over which sparks flewin myriads. Nearer by, the combat went on, its fury undimmed by thedarkness, its thunder as steady, as persistent and terrible as before.

  Helen was struck with horror. The battle, weird enough in the day, wasyet more so in the darkness, and she could not understand why it did notclose with the light. It partook of an inhuman quality, and that sceneout there was more than ever to her an inferno because the flaming pitwas now enclosed by outer blackness, completely cut off from all else--aworld to itself in which all the passions strove, and none could tell towhich would fall the mastery.

  She felt for the moment horror of both sides, North and South alike, andshe wished only that the unnatural combat would cease; she did not carethen--a brief emotion, though--which should prove the victor.

  It was a dark and solemn night that came down over the Wilderness andthe two hundred thousand who had fought all day and still fought amidits thickets. Never before had that thin, red soil--redder now--bornesuch a crop, and many were glad that the darkness hid the sight fromtheir enemies. The two Generals, the master minds who had propelledtheir mighty human machines against each other, were trying to reckontheir losses--with the battle still in progress--and say to themselveswhether they had won or lost. But this battlefield was no smooth andeasy chessboard where the pawns might be moved as one wills and becounted as they fell, but a wilderness of thickets and forests and hillsand swamps and valleys where the vast lines bent or twisted orinterlaced and were lost in the shades and the darkness. Count andreckon as they would, the two Generals, equal in battle, face to facefor the first time--could not give the total of the day. It was still anunadded sum, and the guns, despite the night, were steadily contributingnew figures. This was the flaw in their arithmetic; nothing wascomplete, and they saw that they would have to begin again to-morrow.So, with this day's work yet unfinished, they began to prepare, sendingfor new regiments and brigades, massing more cannon, and planningafresh.

  But all these things were unknown to Helen as she sat there at thewindow with Mrs. Markham. Her thoughts wandered again to Wood, thatsplendid figure on horseback, and she sought to identify him there amongthe black marionettes that gyrated against the red background. But withthe advance of night the stage was becoming more indistinct, the lightshed over it more pallid and shifting, and nothing certain could betraced there. All the black figures were mixed in a confused whirl, andwhere stood the South and where the North neither Helen nor Mrs. Markhamcould tell.

  The night was thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours thatoppressed throat and nostrils. The wind seemed to have died, but thefine dust of ashes still fell and the banks of nauseous smoke floatedabout aimlessly.

  New fear assailed the two women for the first time--not so much fear ofthe shells and the bullets, but of the night and its mysteries and theweird combat that was still going on there where the light was so pallidand uncertain. Once again those who fought had become for themunreal--not human beings, but imps in an inferno of their own creation.They wished now that Harley was still with them. Whatever else he mightbe, he was brave and he would defend them. They looked around fearfullyat the shadows that were encroaching upon the house. The rain of ashesand dust began to annoy them, and they moved a little closer to eachother.

  Helen glanced back once. The inside of the house was now in totaldarkness, and out of it came the monotonous wailing of the black woman.It occurred suddenly to Helen that the servant had crouched there cryingthe whole day long. But she said nothing to her and turned her back tothe window.

  "It is dying now," said Mrs. Markham.

  The dull red light suddenly contracted and then broke into intermittentflashes. The sound of the cannon and the rifles sank into the lowmuttering of distant thunder. The two women felt the house under themcease to tremble. Then the intermittent flashes, too, disappeared, thelow rumbling died away like the echo of a distant wind, and a sudden andcomplete silence, mystic and oppressive in its solemnity, fell over theWilderness. Only afar the burning forest glowed like a torch.

  The silence was for awhile more terrifying than the battle to which theyhad grown used. It hung over the forest and them like something visiblethat enfolded them. They breathed a hot, damp air heavy with ashes andsmoke and dust, and their pulses throbbed painfully in their temples.Around them all the time was that horrible deathlike pall of silence.

  They spoke, and their voices, attuned before to the roar of the battle,sounded loud, shrill and threatening. Both started, then laughed weakly.

  "Is it really over?" exclaimed Mrs. Markham, hysterically.

  "Until to-morrow," replied Helen, with solemn prevision.

  She turned to the inner blackness of the house and lighted a candle,which she placed on the table, where it burned with an unsteady yellowlight, illuminating the centre of the room with a fitful glow, butleaving the corners still in darkness. Everything lay under its veil ofashes--the table, the floor, and the bed on which Harley had slept.

  Helen felt a strange sort of strength, the strength of excitement andresolve. She shook the black woman by the arm and bade her bring food.

  "We must eat, for we shall have work to do," she said to Mrs. Markham,and nodded her head toward the outside.

  It was the task of but a few minutes, and then the two women prepared togo forth. They knew they would be needed on this night, and theylistened to hear the ominous sounds that would be a call to them. Butthey heard nothing. There was the same dead, oppressive stillness. Not aleaf, not a blade of grass seemed to stir. Helen looked once more fromthe window. Afar in the east the forest still burned, but the lightthere was pallid, grayish, more of the quality of moonlight than offire, and looked dim. Directly before her in the forest where the battlehad been all was black, silent and impenetrable. It was true there werefaint lights here and there as of torches that had burned badly, butthey were pin-points, serving only to deepen the surrounding blackness.Once or twice she thought she saw figures moving slowly, but she was notsure. She heard nothing.

  Helen was in an unreal world. An atmosphere new, fiery and surchargedsurrounded her, and in its heat little things melted away. Only thegreater remained. That life in Richmond, bright and gay in many of itsaspects, lived but a few days since, was ages and ages ago; it belongedto another world. Now she was in the forest with the battle and thedead, and other things did not count.

  The door stood wide open, and as Helen prepared to go another womanentered there, a woman young like herself, tall, wrapped in a long browncloak, but bareheaded. Two or three stray locks, dark but edged with redgold, strayed down. Her face, clear and feminine though it was, seemedto Helen stronger than any other woman's face that she had ever seen.

  Helen knew instinctively that this was a woman of the North, or atleast one with the North, and her first feeling was of hostility. So, asthe two stood looking at each other, her gaze at first was marked byaversion and defiance. Who was she who had come with the other army, andwhy should she be there?

  But Lucia Catherwood knew both the women in the old house. Sheremembered a day in Richmond when this girl, in lilac and rose, so faira representative of her South, welcomed a gallant general; and sheremembered another, a girl of the same years, lonely, an outcast in thefarthest fringe of the crowd--herself. Her first emotion, too, washostility, mingled with another feeling closely akin to it. She had seenher with Prescott, and unwillingly had confessed them well matched. She,too, asked what this woman was doing here in the
forest beside thebattle; but these feelings had only a short life with her. There werecertain masculine qualities in Lucia Catherwood that tended to opennessand frankness. She advanced and offered her hand like a man to Helen.

  "We come under different flags," she said, "but we cannot be enemieshere; we must be friends at least to-night, and I could wish that itshould always be so."

  Her smile was so frank, so open, so engaging that Helen, whose naturewas the same, could resist her no longer. Despite herself she liked thisgirl, so tall, so strong, with that clear, pure face showing aself-reliance such as she had never before seen on the face of a woman.Mrs. Markham yet hung back a little, cool, critical and suspicious, butpresently she cast this manner from her and spoke as if Lucia Catherwoodwas her friend, one of long and approved standing.

  "I think that our work is to be the same," said Helen simply, and theother bowed in silent assent. Then the three went forth.

  The field of battle, or rather the portion of it which came nearest tothem--it wound for miles through the thickets--lay a half-mile from thehouse under the solid black veil of a cloudy night, the forest, and thesmoke that yet drifted about aimlessly. Outside the house the strange,repellent odours grew stronger, as if it were the reek of some infernalpit.

  They advanced over open ground, and the field of conflict was stillblack and soundless, though there was a little increase in the lightsthat moved dimly there. The smoke assailed them again, and fine ashesfrom the distant fire in the east now and then fell upon them. But theynoticed none of these things, still advancing with steady step andunshrinking faces toward the forest.

  The twinkling lights increased and sounds came at last. Helen would notsay to herself what they were. She hoped that her fancy deceived her;but the three women did not stop. Helen looked at the tall, straightyoung figure beside her, so strong, so self-reliant, and she drewstrength from her companion--now she was such. They walked side by side,and Mrs. Markham came behind. Helen began to feel the influence of apersonality, a will stronger than her own, and she yielded to it withoutfurther question and without reluctance, having the feeling that she hadknown this girl a long time.

  The trembling lights of the forest increased, moving about like so manyfireflies in the night; the nauseous odours grew heavier, morepersistent, and for a moment Helen felt ill; her head began to spinaround at the thought of what she was going to see, but quickly sherecovered herself and went on by the side of the girl who neverfaltered. Helen wondered at such courage, and wondering, she admired.

  The ground grew rougher, set with tiny hillocks and stones and patchafter patch of scrub bushes. Once Helen stumbled against something thatfelt cold even through the leather of her shoe, and she shuddered. Butit was only a spent cannon ball lying peacefully among the bushes, itsmission ended.

  They reached burnt ground--spots where the scanty grass or the busheshad been set on fire by the cannon or the rifles. Many places stillburned slowly and sent up languid sparks and dull smoke. In other placesthe ground was torn as if many ploughs had been run roughly over it,and Helen knew that the shells and the cannon balls had passed inshowers. There were other objects, too, lying very quiet, but she wouldnot look at them, though they increased fast as they went on, lying likeseed sown above ground.

  They were at the edge of the forest now, and here the air was thickerand darker. The mists and vapours floated among the trees and lay likewarm, wet blankets upon their faces. They saw now many moving figures,some bending down as if they would lift something from the earth, andothers who held lights. Occasionally they passed women like themselves,but not often. Some of the men were in gray uniform and some in blue,but they passed and repassed each other without question, doing the workthey had come there to do.

  Here in the forest the area of burnt ground was larger, and many coilsof smoke rose languidly to join the banks of it that towered overhead.The still objects, too, were lying as far as one could see, in groupshere, somewhat scattered there, but the continuity never broken, manywith their faces upturned to the sky as if they awaited placidly thelast call. Helen was struck by this peace, this seeming confidence inwhat was to come. The passage, then, had not been so hard! Here, whenshe stood in the centre of it all, the old feelings of awe returned, andthe real world, the world that she had known before this day, swungfarther and farther away.

  There was still but little noise, for those who yet lived were silent,waiting patiently, and the vast peace was more powerful in itsimpression upon the mind than any tumult could have been. Helen lookedup once at the skies. They were black and overcast. But few starstwinkled there. It was a fit canopy for the Wilderness, the gloomyforest that bore such a burden. From a far point in the southwest camethe low rumble of thunder, and lightning, like the heat-lightning of asummer night, glimmered fitfully. Then there was a faint, sullen sound,the report of a distant cannon shot. Helen started, more in anger thanterror. Would they fight again at such a time? She felt blame for both,but the shot was not repeated then. A signal gun, she thought, and wenton, unconsciously going where the strong young figure of LuciaCatherwood led the way. She heard presently another distant cannon shot,its solemn echoes rolling all around the horizon, but she paid no heedto it. Her mind was now for other things.

  An inky sky overhung the battlefield and all it held. Those nights inthe Wilderness were among the blackest in both ways this country hasever known. Brigades and batteries moving in the dense scrub, seekingbetter places for the fresh battle on the morrow, wandered sometimesthrough each other's lines. Soldiers, not knowing whether they wereamong friends or enemies, and not caring, drank in the darkness from thesame streams, and, overpowered by fatigue, North and South alike oftenslept a soundless sleep under trees not fifty yards from one another;but the two Generals, who were the supreme expression of the genius ofeither side, never slept. They had met for the first time; each nearlyalways a victor before, neither had now won. The result yet to come layhidden in the black Wilderness, and by smoking camp-fires they plannedfor the next day, knowing well that they would meet again in a combatfiercer, longer and deadlier than ever, the one always seeking to driveon, the other always seeking to hold him back.

  The Wilderness enclosed many secrets that night, hiding dead and livingalike. Many of the fallen lay unseen amid the ravines and hollows, andthe burning forest was their funeral pyre. Never did the Wilderness moredeserve its name; gloomy at any time, it had new attributes of solemnmajesty. Everything seemed to be in unison with those who lay there--thepitchy blackness, the low muttering of distant thunder, the fitfulglimmer of the lightning, the stems of trees twisted and contorted bythe gleam of the uncertain flashes, the white faces of the slainupturned to the sky seen dimly by the same light, the banks of smoke andvapour yet floating through the forest, the strange, repellent odours,and the heavy, melancholy silence.

  Those who had come upon the field after the night began worked withouttalk, the men from either side passing and repassing each other, butshowing no hostility. The three women, too, began to help them, doingthe errand upon which they had come, and their service was receivedwithout question and without comment. No one asked another why he wasthere; his duty lay plain before him.

  It was Lucia Catherwood who took the lead, neither Helen nor Mrs.Markham disputing her fitness for the place, too apparent to all to bedenied; it was she who never flinched, who, if she spoke at all, spokewords of cheer, whose strength and courage seemed never to fail.

  Thus the hours passed, and the character of the night in the Wildernessdid not change. There was yet compared with the tumult of the day aheavy, oppressive silence; the smoke and the vapours did not go away,the heavy atmosphere did not thin, and at intervals the distant thunderrumbled and the fitful lightning glared over a distorted forest.

  The three worked in silence, like those around them, faithful,undaunted. Mrs. Markham, the cynical and worldly, was strangely changed,perhaps the most changed of the three; all her affectations were gone,and she was now only an earnest woman.
And while the three worked theyalways watched for one man. And this man was not the same with any oneof the three.

  It was past midnight and Helen did not know how long she had been uponthe battlefield, working as she did in a kind of a dream, or rathermist, in which everything was fanciful and unreal, with her head full ofstrange sights and unheard sounds, when she saw two men ride side byside and silently out of the black forest--two figures, one upright,powerful, the other drooping, with head that swayed slightly from sideto side.

  She knew them at once despite the shadows of the trees and the faintmoonlight--and it was what her thoughts had told her would come true.It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erectand so powerful could fall; nor had he.

  She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them. Harley's head swayedslightly from side to side, and his clothing showed red in the dimmoonlight. Wood held him in the saddle with one hand and guided the twohorses with the other. Both women were white to the lips, but it wasHelen who spoke first.

  "I expected you," she said to Wood.

  Wood replied that Harley was not hurt save by exhaustion from hisprevious wounds. He had come, too, at a critical moment, and his cominghad been worth much to the South. But now he was half unconscious; hemust rest or die. The General spoke in simple words, language that onewould have called dialect, but Helen did not think of those things; hisfigure was grander than ever before to her, because, despite the battle,he had remembered to bring back her brother.

  Mrs. Markham was quiet, saying no word, but she went with them to thehouse, where Harley was placed on the very bed on which he had slept thenight before. Lucia Catherwood did not turn back, and was left alone onthe field, but she was neither afraid nor lonely. She, too, was lookingfor some one--one whom she was in dread lest she find and whom shewished to find nevertheless. But she had a feeling--how or whence itcame she did not know--that she would find him there. Always while shehelped the others, hour after hour, she looked for him, glancing intoevery ravine and hollow, and neglecting no thicket or clump of bushesthat she passed. She believed that she would know him if she saw but theedge of his coat or his hand.

  At last she reached the fringe of the battlefield. The fallen forms werefewer and the ground less torn by the tramplings of men and horses andthe wheels of guns, though the storm had passed, leaving its track ofruin. Here, too, were burned spots, the grass still smouldering andsending up tiny sparks, a tree or two twisted out of shape andhalf-consumed by flames; a broken cannon, emblem of destruction, lyingwheelless on the ground. Lucia looked back toward the more populousfield of the fallen and saw there the dim lights still moving, butdecreasing now as the night waned. Low, blurred sounds came to her ears.As for herself, she stood in the darkness, silvered dimly by a faintmoonlight, a tall, lithe young figure, self-reliant, unafraid.

  She began now to search every hollow, to look among the bushes and theravines. She had heard from men of his own company that he was missing,and she would not turn back while he was unfound. It was for this thatshe had come, and he would need her.

  She was on the farthest rim of the battlefield, where the lights whenshe looked back were almost lost, and it seemed to be enclosed wholly bythe darkness and the vapours. No voice came from it, but in the forestbefore her were new sounds--a curious tread as of many men togetherstepping lightly, the clanging of metal, and now and then a neigh comingfaintly. This, she knew, were the brigades and the batteries seekingposition in the darkness for a new battle; but she was not afraid.

  Lucia Catherwood was not thinking then of the Wilderness nor of the vasttragedy that it held, but of a flight one snowy night from a hostilecapital, a flight that was not unhappy because of true companionship.Formed amid hard circumstances, hers was not a character that yieldedquickly to sentiment, but when the barriers were broken down she gavemuch.

  She heard a tread in the brushwood. Some horses, saddles on and bridleshanging--their riders lost, she well knew how--galloped near her, lookedat her a moment or two with wide eyes, and then passed on. Far to theright she heard a faint cannon shot. If they were going to fight again,why not wait until the next day? It could not be done in all thisdarkness. A blacker night she had never seen.

  She came to a tiny valley, a mere cup in the bleak, red ridges, well setwith rich green grass as if more fertile soil had gathered there, butall torn and trampled, showing that one of the fiercest eddies of thebattle had centred in this spot. At the very edge lay two horses withtheir outstretched necks crossed united in death. In the trampled grasslay other dark figures which she could not pass without a shudder.

  She paused here a moment because it seemed to be growing darker. The lowrumble of thunder from the far western horizon came again, all the morethreatening because of its faintness and distance. The lightning gleameda moment and by its quick flash she saw the one she was seeking.

  He lay at the far edge of the little valley where the grass had grownrichest and tallest, and he was almost hidden by the long stems. It washis face that she saw first, white and still in the lightning's glare,but she did not believe that he was dead. Ah! that could not happen.

  Raising his head in her arms, she rested it upon her knee, moisteninghis lips with water that she carried in a flask. She was a strong woman,both physically and mentally, far beyond the average of her sex, and nowshe would not yield to any emotion. No; she would do what it wasnecessary to do, and not until then would she even put her finger uponhis wrist to find if the pulse were still beating.

  The wound was on the side of the head, under the hair, and sheremembered afterward how glad she was that the scar would always behidden by the hair. Strong enough to examine the nature of the injury,she judged that it had been done by a fragment of shell, and shebelieved that the concussion and loss of blood, rather than any fatalwound, had caused Prescott's fall.

  As she drew away the hair, washed the wound and bound it up with a stripfrom her own dress, she was filled with a divine gladness. Not only wasshe doing that which she wished most to do, but she was makingrepayment. He would have died there had she not found him, and no oneelse would have found him in that lone spot.

  Not yet did she seek to move him or to bring help. She would have him toherself for awhile--would watch over him like a mother, and she could doas much as any surgeon. She was glad Helen and the other woman hadturned aside, for she alone had found him. No one else could claim ashare in saving him. He was for the time hers and hers alone, and inthis she rejoiced.

  As his pulse was growing stronger she knew that he would live. No doubtof it now occurred to her mind, and she was still happy. The battle ofthe day that was gone and of the day that was to come, and all thethousands, the living and the fallen, were alike forgotten. Sheremembered only him.

  Again came the tramp of riderless horses, and for a moment she was indread--not for herself, but for him--but again they turned and passedher by. When the low, threatening note of the cannon shot came once moreshe trembled lest the battle be renewed in the darkness and surge overthis spot; but silence only followed the report. Misty forms filed pastin the thicket. They were in blue, a regiment of her own people passingin the darkness. She crouched low in the grass, holding his head uponher knees, hiding again, not for herself, but for him. She would nothave him a prisoner, but preferred to become one herself, and carednothing for it. This was repayment. His pulse was growing stronger andstronger and he uttered half-spoken words while his head moved slightlyupon her knees.

  She did not know how long she had been there, and she looked back againtoward the field. It was now wholly in darkness, then lighted dimly by afitful flash of lightning. She must carry him to shelter, and withouttaking thought, she tried to lift him in her arms. He was heavy, lyinglike lead, and she put him down again, but very softly. She must go forhelp. Then she heard once more the tread of those riderless horses andfeared for him. She could not leave him there alone. She made a mightyeffort, lifted him in her arms, and staggered toward the battlefield.
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