Battle Ground

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

  VI

  THE PEACEFUL SIDE OF WAR

  On a sparkling January morning, when Lee's army had gone into winterquarters beside the Rappahannock, Dan stood in the doorway of his log hutsmoking the pipe of peace, while he watched a messmate putting up a chimneyof notched sticks across the little roadway through the pines.

  "You'd better get Pinetop to daub your chinks for you," he suggested. "Hecan make a mixture of wet clay and sandstone that you couldn't tell frommortar."

  "You jest wait till I git through these shoes an' I'll show you," remarkedPinetop, from the woodpile, where he was making moccasins of untanned beefhide laced with strips of willow. "I ain't goin' to set my bar' feet onthis frozen groun' agin, if I can help it. 'Tain't so bad in summer, but, Id'clar it takes all the spirit out of a fight when you have to runbar-footed over the icy stubble."

  "Jack Powell lost his shoes in the battle of Fredericksburg," said Baker,as he carefully fitted his notched sticks together. "That's why he gotpromoted, I reckon. He stepped into a mud puddle, and his feet came out buthis shoes didn't."

  "Well, I dare say, it was cheaper for the Government to give him a titlethan a pair of shoes," observed Dan, cynically. "Why, you are going in forluxury! Is that pile of oak shingles for your roof? We made ours of railscovered with pine tags."

  "And the first storm that comes along sweeps them off--yes, I know. By theway, can anybody tell me if there's a farmer with a haystack in theseparts?"

  "Pinetop got a load about three miles up," replied Dan, emptying his pipeagainst the door sill. "I say, who is that cavalry peacock over yonder? ByGeorge, it's Champe!"

  "Perhaps it's General Stuart," suggested Baker witheringly, as Champe camecomposedly between the rows of huts, pursued by the frantic jeers of theassembled infantry.

  "Take them earrings off yo' heels--take 'em off! Take 'em off!" yelled thechorus, as his spurs rang on the stones. "My gal she wants 'em--take 'emoff!"

  "Take those tatters off your backs--take 'em off!" responded Champe, genialand undismayed, swinging easily along in his worn gray uniform, his blackplume curling over his soft felt hat.

  As Dan watched him, standing in the doorway, he felt, with a suddenmelancholy, that a mental gulf had yawned between them. The last grimmonths which had aged him with experiences as with years, had left Champeapparently unchanged. All the deeper knowledge, which he had bought withhis youth for the price, had passed over his cousin like the clouds,leaving him merely gay and kind as he had been of old.

  "Hello, Beau!" called Champe, stretching out his hand as he drew near. "Ijust heard you were over here, so I thought I'd take a look. How goes thewar?"

  Dan refilled his pipe and borrowed a light from Pinetop.

  "To tell the truth," he replied, "I have come to the conclusion that thefun and frolic of war consist in picket duty and guarding mule teams."

  "Well, these excessive dissipations have taken up so much of your time thatI've hardly laid eyes on you since you got routed by malaria. Any news fromhome?"

  "Grandma sent me a Christmas box, which she smuggled through, heaven knowshow. We had a jolly dinner that day, and Pinetop and I put on our firstclean clothes for three months. Big Abel got a linsey suit made atChericoke--I hope he'll come along in it."

  "Oh, Beau, Beau!" lamented Champe. "How have the mighty fallen? You aren'tso particular now about wearing only white or black ties, I reckon."

  "Well, shoestrings are usually black, I believe," returned Dan, with alaugh, raising his hand to his throat.

  Champe seated himself upon the end of an oak log, and taking off his hat,ran his hand through his curling hair. "I was at home last summer on afurlough," he remarked, "and I declare, I hardly knew the valley. If weever come out of this war it will take an army with ploughshares to bringthe soil up again. As for the woods--well, well, we'll never have them backin our day."

  "Did you see Uplands?" asked Dan eagerly.

  "For a moment. It was hardly safe, you know, so I was at home only a day.Grandpa told me that the place had lain under a shadow ever sinceVirginia's death. She was buried in Hollywood--it was impossible to bringher through the lines they said--and Betty and Mrs. Ambler have taken thisvery hardly."

  "And the Governor," said Dan, with a tremor in his voice as he thought ofBetty.

  "And Jack Morson," added Champe, "he fell at Brandy Station when I was withhim. At first he was wounded only slightly, and we tried to get him to therear, but he laughed and went straight in again. It was a sabre cut thatfinished him at the last."

  "He was a first-rate chap," commented Dan, "but I never knew exactly whyVirginia fell in love with him."

  "The other fellow never does. To be quite candid, it is beyond mycomprehension how a certain lady can prefer the infantry to thecavalry--yet she does emphatically."

  Dan coloured.

  "Was grandpa well?" he inquired lamely.

  With a laugh Champe flung one leg over the other, and clasped his knee.

  "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," he responded. "Grandpa'sthoughts are so much given to the Yankees that he has become actuallyangelic to the rest of us. By the way, do you know that Mr. Blake is in thearmy?"

  "What?" cried Dan, aghast.

  "Oh, I don't mean that he really carries a rifle--though he swears he wouldif he only had twenty years off his shoulders--but he has become ourchaplain in young Chrysty's place, and the boys say there is more gunpowder in his prayers than in our biggest battery."

  "Well, I never!" exclaimed Dan.

  "You ought to hear him--it's better than fighting on your own account. LastSunday he gave us a prayer in which he said: 'O Lord, thou knowest that weare the greatest army thou hast ever seen; put forth thy hand then but avery little and we will whip the earth.' By Jove, you look cosey here," headded, glancing into the hut where Dan and Pinetop slept in bunks of straw."I hope the roads won't dry before you've warmed your house." He shookhands again, and swung off amid the renewed jeers that issued from the opendoorways.

  Dan watched him until he vanished among the distant pines, and then,turning, went into the little hut where he found Pinetop sitting before arude chimney, which he had constructed with much labour. A small book wasopen on his knee, over which his yellow head drooped like a child's, andDan saw his calm face reddened by the glow of the great log fire.

  "Hello! What's that?" he inquired lightly.

  The mountaineer started from his abstraction, and the blood swept to hisforehead as he rose from the half of a flour barrel upon which he had beensitting.

  "'Tain't nothin'," he responded, and as he towered to his great height hisfair curls brushed the ceiling of crossed rails. In his awkwardness thebook fell to the floor, and before he could reach it, Dan had stooped, witha laugh, and picked it up.

  "I say, there are no secrets in this shebang," he said smiling. Then thesmile went out, and his face grew suddenly grave, for, as the book fellopen in his hand, he saw that it was the first primer of a child, and onthe thumbed and tattered page the word "RAT" stared at him in capitalletters.

  "By George, man!" he exclaimed beneath his breath, as he turned fromPinetop to the blazing logs.

  For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the tragedyof hopeless ignorance for an inquiring mind, and the shock stunned him, atthe moment, past the power of speech. Until knowing Pinetop he had, in thelofty isolation of his class, regarded the plebeian in the light of analien to the soil, not as a victim to the kindly society in which hehimself had moved--a society produced by that free labour which haddegraded the white workman to the level of the serf. At the instant thetruth pierced home to him, and he recognized it in all the grimness of itspathos. Beside that genial plantation life which he had known he saw risingthe wistful figure of the poor man doomed to conditions which he could notchange--born, it may be, like Pinetop, self-poised, yet with an untaughtintellect, grasping, like him, after the primitive knowledge which shouldbe the birthright of every child. Even the spectre of slavery,
which hadshadowed his thoughts, as it had those of many a generous mind around him,faded abruptly before the very majesty of the problem that faced him now.In his sympathy for the slave, whose bondage he and his race had striven tomake easy, he had overlooked the white sharer of the negro's wrong. To menlike Pinetop, slavery, stern or mild, could be but an equal menace, and yetthese were the men who, when Virginia called, came from their little cabinsin the mountains, who tied the flint-locks upon their muskets and foughtuncomplainingly until the end. Not the need to protect a decayinginstitution, but the instinct in every free man to defend the soil, hadbrought Pinetop, as it had brought Dan, into the army of the South.

  "Look here, old man, you haven't been quite fair to me," said Dan, afterthe long silence. "Why didn't you ask me to help you with this stuff?"

  "Wall, I thought you'd joke," replied Pinetop blushing, "and I knew yo'nigger would."

  "Joke? Good Lord!" exclaimed Dan. "Do you think I was born with so short amemory, you scamp? Where are those nights on the way to Romney when youcovered me with your overcoat to keep me from freezing in the snow? Where,for that matter, is that march in Maryland when Big Abel and you carried methree miles in your arms after I had dropped delirious by the roadside? Ifyou thought I'd joke you about this, Pinetop, all I can say is that you'veturned into a confounded fool."

  Pinetop came back to the fire and seated himself upon the flour barrel inthe corner. "'Twas this way, you see," he said, breaking, for the firsttime, through his strong mountain reserve. "I al'ays thought I'd like toread a bit, 'specially on winter evenings at home, when the nights are longand you don't have to git up so powerful early in the mornings, but when Iwas leetle thar warn't nobody to teach me how to begin; maw she didn't knownothin' an' paw he was dead, though he never got beyond the first readerwhen he was 'live."

  He looked up and Dan nodded gravely over his pipe.

  "Then when I got bigger I had to work mighty hard to keep things goin'--an'it seemed to me every time I took out that thar leetle book at night I gotso dead sleepy I couldn't tell one letter from another; A looked jest likeZ."

  "I see," said Dan quietly. "Well, there's time enough here anyhow. It willbe a good way to pass the evenings." He opened the primer and laid it onhis knee, running his fingers carelessly through its dog-eared pages. "Doyou know your letters?" he inquired in a professional tone.

  "Lordy, yes," responded Pinetop. "I've got about as fur as this hereplace." He crossed to where Dan sat and pointed with a long forefinger tothe printed words, his mild blue eyes beaming with excitement.

  "I reckon I kin read that by myself," he added with an embarrassed laugh."T-h-e c-a-t c-a-u-g-h-t t-h-e r-a-t. Ain't that right?"

  "Perfectly. We'll pass on to the next." And they did so, sitting on thehalves of a divided flour barrel before the blazing chimney.

  From this time there were regular lessons in the little hut, Pinetopdrawling over the soiled primer, or crouching, with his long legs twistedunder him and his elbows awkwardly extended, while he filled a sheet ofpaper with sprawling letters.

  "I'll be able to write to the old woman soon," he chuckled jubilantly, "an'she'll have to walk all the way down the mounting to git it read."

  "You'll be a scholar yet if this keeps up," replied Dan, slapping him uponthe shoulder, as the mountaineer glanced up with a pleased and shiningface. "Why, you mastered that first reader there in no time."

  "A powerful heap of larnin' has to pass through yo' head to git a leetle tostick thar," commented Pinetop, wrinkling his brows. "Air we goin' to havethe big book agin to-night?"

  "The big book" was a garbled version of "Les Miserables," which, afterrunning the blockade with a daring English sailor, had passed from regimentto regiment in the resting army. At first Dan had begun to read with onlyPinetop for a listener, but gradually, as the tale unfolded, a group ofeager privates filled the little hut and even hung breathlessly about thedoorway in the winter nights. They were mostly gaunt, unwashed volunteersfrom the hills or the low countries, to whom literature was only a vastsilence and life a courageous struggle against greater odds. To Dan thepicturesqueness of the scene lent itself with all the force of its stronglights and shadows, and with the glow of the pine torches on the open page,his eyes would sometimes wander from the words to rest upon the kindlingfaces in the shaggy circle by the fire. Dirty, hollow-eyed, unshaven, itsat spellbound by the magic of the tale it could not read.

  "By Gosh! that's a blamed good bishop," remarked an unkempt smoker oneevening from the threshold, where his beef-hide shoes were covered withfine snow. "I don't reckon Marse Robert could ha' beat that."

  "Marse Robert ain't never tried," put in a companion by the fire.

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

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

  It was during this winter that Dan learned how one man's influence may fuseindividual and opposing wills into a single supreme endeavour. The Army ofNorthern Virginia, as he saw it then, was moulded, sustained, and madeeffective less by the authority of the Commander than by the simple powerof Lee over the hearts of the men who bore his muskets. For a time Dan hadsought to trace the groundspring of this impassioned loyalty, seeking areason that could not be found in generals less beloved. Surely it was notthe illuminated figure of the conqueror, for when had the Commander heldcloser the affection of his troops than in that ill-starred campaign intoMaryland, which left the moral victory of a superb fight in McClellan'shands? No, the charm lay deeper still, beyond all the fictitious aids offortune--somewhere in that serene and noble presence he had met one eveningas the gray dusk closed, riding alone on an old road between level fields.After this it was always as a high figure against a low horizon that he hadseen the man who made his army.

  As the long winter passed away, he learned, not only much of the spirit ofhis own side, but something that became almost a sunny tolerance, of thegreat blue army across the Rappahannock. He had exchanged Virginian tobaccofor Northern coffee at the outposts, and when on picket duty along the coldbanks of the river he would sometimes shout questions and replies acrossthe stream. In these meetings there was only a wide curiosity with littlebitterness; and once a friendly New England picket had delivered areligious homily from the opposite shore, as he leaned upon his rifle.

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

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

  "Plenty. The war's interfered considerably with the tobacco crop, ain'tit?"

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

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

  "Can't say. What things?"

  "Do you always carry bowie knives into battle?"

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

  "When you catch a runaway nigger do you chop him up in little pieces andthrow him to the hogs?"

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

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

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

  "Well, you Rebels take the breath out of me," commented the picket acrossthe river; and then, as the relief came, Dan hurried back to look for themail bag and a letter from Betty. For Betty wrote often these days--letterssometimes practical, sometimes impassioned, always filled with cheer, andoften with bright gossip. Of her own struggle at Uplands and the long dayscrowded with work, she wrote no word; all her sympathy, all her largepassion, and all her wise advice in little matters were for Dan from thebeginning to the end. She made h
im promise to keep warm if it werepossible, to read his Bible when he had the time, and to think of her atall hours in every season. In a neat little package there came one day agray knitted waistcoat which he was to wear when on picket duty beside theriver, "and be very sure to fasten it," she had written. "I have sewed thebuttons on so tight they can't come off. Oh, if I had only papa andVirginia and you back again I could be happy in a hovel. Dear mamma saysso, too."

  And after much calm advice there would come whole pages that warmed himfrom head to foot. "Your kisses are still on my lips," she wrote one day."The Major said to me, 'Your mouth is very warm, my dear,' and I almostanswered, 'you feel Dan's kisses, sir.' What would he have said, do youthink? As it was I only smiled and turned away, and longed to run straightto you to be caught up in your arms and held there forever. O my beloved,when you need me only stretch out your hands and I will come."