LIX
IN A LABYRINTH
For ladies' funerals, we say, mortars and siege-guns, as a rule, do notpause. But here at Vicksburg there was an hour near the end of each daywhen the foe, for some mercy to themselves, ceased to bombard, and inone of these respites that procession ventured forth in which rode thefevered Anna: a farm wagon, a battered family coach, a carryall or two.
Yet in the midst of the graveyard rites there broke out on the unseenlines near by, northward, an uproar of attack, and one or two shellsburst in plain view, frightening the teams. The company leaped into thevehicles any way they could and started townward over a miserable roadwith the contest resounding on their right. As they jostled along theedge of a wood that lay between them and the firing some mishap to thefront team caused all to alight, whereupon a shell, faultily timed, cametearing through the tree-tops and exploded in the remains of a fenceclose beyond them. Amid thunder, smoke, and brute and human terror theremounting groups whirled away and had entirely left the scene beforethat was asked which none could tell: Where was Anna?
Anna herself did not know, could not inquire of her own mind. With aconsciousness wholly disembodied she was mainly aware of a great painthat seemed to fill all the region and atmosphere, an atmosphere chargedwith mysterious dim green light and full of great boomings amid acrackle of smaller ones; of shouts and cheers and of a placid quaking ofmyriad leaves; all of which things might be things or only diversmanifestations of her undefinable self.
By and by through the pain came a dream of some one like her living in acertain heaven of comfort and beauty, peace, joy, and love named"Callender House"; but the pain persisted and the dream passed into ahorrible daytime darkness that brought a sense of vast changes near andfar; a sense of many having gone from that house, and of many havingmost forbiddenly come to it; a sense of herself spending years andyears, and passing from world to world, in quest of one Hilary, HilaryKincaid, whom all others believed to be dead or false, or both, but whowould and should and must be found, and when found would be alive andhale and true; a sense of having, with companions, been all at oncefrightfully close to a rending of the sky, and of having tripped as shefled, of having fallen and lain in a thunderous storm of invisible hail,and of having after a time risen again and staggered on, an incalculabledistance, among countless growing things, fleeing down-hill, too weak toturn up-hill, till suddenly the whole world seemed to strike hardagainst something that sent it reeling backward.
And now her senses began feebly to regather within truer limits and totell her she was lying on the rooty ground of a thicket. Dimly shethought to be up and gone once more, but could get no farther than thethought although behind her closed lids glimmered a memory of deadlycombat. Its din had passed, but there still sounded, just beyond thiscovert, fierce commands of new preparation, and hurried movements inresponse--a sending and bringing, dismissing, and summoning of men andthings to rear or front, left or right, in a fury of supply and demand.
Ah, what! water? in her face? Her eyes opened wildly. A man was kneelingbeside her. He held a canteen; an armed officer in the foe's blue. Withlips parting to cry out she strove to rise and fly, but his silentbeseechings showed him too badly hurt below the knees to offer aid orhindrance, and as she gained her feet she let him plead with stifledeagerness for her succor from risks of a captivity which, in starvingVicksburg and in such plight, would be death.
He was a stranger and an enemy, whose hurried speech was stealthy andwhose eyes went spying here and there, but so might it be just thensomewhere with him for whom she yet clung to life. For that one's sake,and more than half in dream, she gave the sufferer her support, and witha brow knit in anguish, but with the fire of battle still in his wastingblood, he rose, fitfully explaining the conditions of the place andhour. To cover a withdrawal of artillery from an outer to an inner worka gray line had unexpectedly charged, and as it fell back with its guns,hotly pressed, a part of the fight had swung down into and half acrossthis ravine, for which another struggle was furiously preparing on bothsides, but which, for him, in the interval, was an open way ofdeliverance if she would be his crutch.
In equal bewilderment of thought and of outer sense, pleadingly assuredthat she would at once be sent back under flag of truce, with compassiondeepening to compulsion and with a vague inkling that, failing the whiteflag, this might be heaven's leading back to Callender House and thejewel treasure, to Mobile and to Hilary, she gave her aid. Beyond thethicket the way continued tangled, rough and dim. Twice and again thestricken man paused for breath and ease from torture, though the soundsof array, now on two sides, threatened at every step to become the cryof onset. Presently he stopped once more, heaved, swayed and, despiteher clutch, sank heavily to the ground.
"Water!" he gasped, but before she could touch the canteen to his lipshe had fainted. She sprinkled his face, but he did not stir. She gazed,striving for clear thought, and then sprang up and called. What word?Ah, what in all speech should she call but a name, the name of him whosewarrant of marriage lay at that moment in her bosom, the name of him whobefore God and the world had sworn her his mated, life-long protection?
"Hilary!" she wailed, and as the echoes of the green wood died,"Hilary!" again. On one side there was more light in the verdure thanelsewhere and that way she called. That way she moved stumblingly andnear the edge of a small clear space cried once more, "Hilary!...Hilary!"
Kincaid's Battery Page 59