Judiths in the world, but the voice--he knew the voice--somewhere he had
heard it. The moon was coming; it had crossed the other man's feet and
was creeping up his twisted body. It would reach his face in time, and,
if he could keep from fainting again, he would see.
"Water! water! water!"
Why did not some one answer? Crittenden called and called and called;
but he could little more than whisper. The man would die and be thrown
into that trench; or _he_ might, and never know! He raised himself on
one elbow again and dragged his quivering body after it; he clinched his
teeth; he could hear them crunching again; he was near him now; he would
not faint; and then the blood gushed from his mouth and he felt the
darkness coming again, and again he heard:
"Judith--Judith!"
Then there were footsteps near him and a voice--a careless voice:
"He's gone."
He felt himself caught, and turned over; a hand was put to his heart for
a moment and the same voice:
"Bring in that other man; no use fooling with this one."
When the light came back to him again, he turned his head feebly. The
shape was still there, but the moonlight had risen to the dead man's
breast and glittered on the edge of something that was clinched in his
right hand. It was a miniature, and Crittenden stared at
it--unwinking--stared and stared while it slowly came into the strong,
white light. It looked like the face of Judith. It wasn't, of course,
but he dragged himself slowly, slowly closer. It was Judith--Judith as
he had known her years ago. He must see now; he _must_ see _now_, and he
dragged himself on and up until his eyes bent over the dead man's face.
He fell back then, and painfully edged himself away, shuddering.
"Blackford! Judith! Blackford!"
He was face to face with the man he had longed so many years to see; he
was face to face at last with him--dead.
As he lay there, his mood changed and softened and a curious pity filled
him through and through. And presently he reached out with his left hand
and closed the dead man's eyes and drew his right arm to his side, and
with his left foot he straightened the dead man's right leg. The face
was in clear view presently--the handsome, dare-devil face--strangely
shorn of its evil lines now by the master-sculptor of the spirit--Death.
Peace was come to the face now; peace to the turbulent spirit; peace to
the man whose heart was pure and whose blood was tainted; who had lived
ever in the light of a baleful star. He had loved, and he had been
faithful to the end; and such a fate might have been his--as justly--God
knew.
Footsteps approached again and Crittenden turned his head.
"Why, he isn't dead!"
It was Willings, the surgeon he had known at Chickamauga, and Crittenden
called him by name.
"No, I'm not dead--I'm not going to die."
Willings gave an exclamation of surprise.
"Well, there's grit for you," said the other surgeon. "We'll take him
next."
"Straighten _him_ out there, won't you?" said Crittenden, gently, as
the two men stooped for him.
"Don't put him in there, please," nodding toward the trench behind the
tents; "and mark his grave, won't you, Doctor? He's my bunkie."
"All right," said Willings, kindly.
"And Doctor, give me _that_--what he has in his hand, please. I know
her."
* * * * *
A tent at Siboney in the fever-camp overlooking the sea.
"Judith! Judith! Judith!"
The doctor pointed to the sick man's name.
"Answer him?"
But the nurse would not call his name.
"Yes, dear," she said, gently; and she put one hand on his forehead and
the other on the hand that was clinched on his breast. Slowly his hand
loosened and clasped hers tight, and Crittenden passed, by and by, into
sleep. The doctor looked at him closely.
He had just made the rounds of the tents outside, and he was marvelling.
There were men who had fought bravely, who had stood wounds and the
surgeon's knife without a murmur; who, weakened and demoralized by fever
now, were weak and puling of spirit, and sly and thievish; who would
steal the food of the very comrades for whom a little while before they
had risked their lives--men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high
plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an
exception. This man, Crittenden, was one. When sane, he was gentle,
uncomplaining, considerate. Delirious, there was never a plaint in his
voice; never a word passed his lips that his own mother might not hear;
and when his lips closed, an undaunted spirit kept them firm.
"Aren't you tired?"
The nurse shook her head.
"Then you had better stay where you are; his case is pretty serious.
I'll do your work for you."
The nurse nodded and smiled. She was tired and worn to death, but she
sat as she was till dawn came over the sea, for the sake of the girl,
whose fresh young face she saw above the sick man's heart. And she knew
from the face that the other woman would have watched just that way for
her.
XIII
The thunder of big guns, Cervera's doom, and truce at the trenches. A
trying week of hot sun, cool nights, tropical rains, and fevers. Then a
harmless little bombardment one Sunday afternoon--that befitted the day;
another week of heat and cold and wet and sickness. After that, the
surrender--and the fierce little war was over.
Meantime, sick and wounded were homeward bound, and of the Crittendens
Bob was the first to reach Canewood. He came in one morning, hungry and
footsore, but with a swagger of importance that he had well earned.
He had left his Young Captain Basil at Old Point Comfort, he said, where
the boy, not having had enough of war, had slipped aboard a transport
and gone off with the Kentucky Legion for Porto Rico--the unhappy Legion
that had fumed all summer at Chickamauga--and had hoisted sail for Porto
Rico, without daring to look backward for fear it should be wigwagged
back to land from Washington.
Was Basil well?
"Yas'm. Young Cap'n didn' min' dat little bullet right through his neck
no mo'n a fly-bite. Nothin' gwine to keep dat boy back."
They had let him out of the hospital, or, rather, he had gotten out by
dressing himself when his doctor was not there. An attendant tried to
stop him.
"An' Young Cap'n he jes drew hisself up mighty gran' an' says: 'I'm
going to join my regiment,' he says. 'It sails to-morrow.' But Ole Cap'n
done killed," Bob reckoned; "killed on top of the hill where they druv
the Spaniards out of the ditches whar they wus shootin' from."
Mrs. Crittenden smiled.
"No, Bob, he's coming home now," and Bob's eyes streamed. "You've been a
good boy, Bob. Come here;" and she led him into the hallway and told him
to wait, while she went to the door of her room and called some one.
Molly came out embarrassed, twisting a corner of her apron and putting
it in her mouth while she walked forward and awkwardly shook hands.
"I think Molly has got something to say to you, Bob. You can go, Molly,"
she added, smiling.
The two walked toward the cabin, the negroes crowding about Bob and
shaking him by the hand and asking a thousand absurd questions; and
Bob, while he was affable, was lordly as well, and one or two of Bob's
possible rivals were seen to sniff, as did other young field hands,
though Bob's mammy was, for the first time in her life, grinning openly
with pride in her "chile," and she waved the curious away and took the
two in her own cabin, reappearing presently and walking toward the
kitchen.
Bob and Molly sat down on opposite sides of the fireplace, Bob
triumphant at last, and Molly watching him furtively.
"I believe you has somethin' to say to me, Miss Johnson," said Bob,
loftily.
"Well, I sut'nly is glad to welcome you home ag'in, Mistuh Crittenden,"
said Molly.
"Is you?"
Bob was quite independent now, and Molly began to weaken slightly.
"An' is dat all you got to say?"
"Ole Miss said I must tell you that I was mighty--mean--to--you--when
you went--to--de wah, an' that--I'm sorry."
"Well, _is_ you sorry?"
Molly was silent.
"Quit yo' foolin', gal; quit yo' foolin'."
In a moment Bob was by her side, and with his arm around her; and Molly
rose to her feet with an ineffectual effort to unclasp his hands.
"Quit yo' foolin'!"
Bob's strong arms began to tighten, and the girl in a moment turned and
gave way into his arms, and with her head on his shoulder, began to cry.
But Bob knew what sort of tears they were, and he was as gentle as
though his skin had been as white as was his heart.
* * * * *
And Crittenden was coming home--Colour-Sergeant Crittenden, who had got
out of the hospital and back to the trenches just in time to receive
flag and chevrons on the very day of the surrender--only to fall ill of
the fever and go back to the hospital that same day. There was Tampa
once more--the great hotel, the streets, silent and deserted, except for
the occasional officer that rode or marched through the deep dust of the
town, and the other soldiers, regulars and volunteers, who had suffered
the disappointment, the heat, sickness, and hardship of war with little
credit from the nation at large, and no reward, such even as a like
fidelity in any path of peace would have brought them.
Half out of his head, weak and feverish, Crittenden climbed into the
dusty train and was whirled through the dusty town, out through dry
marshes and dusty woods and dusty, cheerless, dead-flowered fields, but
with an exhilaration that made his temple throb like a woman's.
Up through the blistered, sandy, piney lowlands; through Chickamauga
again, full of volunteers who, too, had suffered and risked all the ills
of the war without one thrill of compensation; and on again, until he
was once more on the edge of the Bluegrass, with birds singing the sun
down; and again the world for him was changed--from nervous exaltation
to an air of balm and peace; from grim hills to the rolling sweep of
low, brown slopes; from giant-poplar to broad oak and sugar-tree; from
log-cabin to homestead of brick and stone. And so, from mountain of Cuba
and mountain of his own land, Crittenden once more passed home. It had
been green spring for the earth when he left, but autumn in his heart.
Now autumn lay over the earth, but in his heart was spring.
As he glanced out of the window, he could see a great crowd about the
station. A brass band was standing in front of the station-door--some
holiday excursion was on foot, he thought. As he stepped on the
platform, a great cheer was raised and a dozen men swept toward him,
friends, personal and political, but when they saw him pale, thin,
lean-faced, feverish, dull-eyed, the cheers stopped and two powerful
fellows took him by the arms and half carried him to the station-door,
where were waiting his mother--and little Phyllis.
When they came out again to the carriage, the band started "Johnny Comes
Marching Home Again," and Crittenden asked feebly:
"What does all this mean?"
Phyllis laughed through her tears.
"That's for you."
Crittenden's brow wrinkled in a pathetic effort to collect his thoughts;
but he gave it up and looked at his mother with an unspoken question on
his lips. His mother smiled merely, and Crittenden wondered why; but
somehow he was not particularly curious--he was not particularly
concerned about anything. In fact, he was getting weaker, and the
excitement at the station was bringing on the fever again. Half the time
his eyes were closed, and when he opened them on the swiftly passing
autumn fields, his gaze was listless. Once he muttered several times, as
though he were out of his head; and when they drove into the yard, his
face was turning blue at the lips and his teeth began to chatter. Close
behind came the doctor's buggy.
Crittenden climbed out slowly and slowly mounted the stiles. On the top
step he sat down, looking at the old homestead and the barn and the
stubble wheat-fields beyond, and at the servants coming from the
quarters to welcome him, while his mother stood watching and fondly
humouring him.
"Uncle Ephraim," he said to a respectful old white-haired man, "where's
my buggy?"
"Right where you left it, suh."
"Well, hitch up--" Raincrow, he was about to say, and then he remembered
that Raincrow was dead. "Have you got anything to drive?"
"Yessuh; we got Mr. Basil's little mare."
"Hitch her up to my buggy, then, right away. I want you to drive me."
The old darky looked puzzled, but Mrs. Crittenden, still with the idea
of humouring him, nodded for him to obey, and the old man turned toward
the stable.
"Yessuh--right away, suh."
"Where's Basil, mother?"
Phyllis turned her face quickly.
"He'll be here soon," said his mother, with a smile.
The doctor looked at his flushed face.
"Come on, my boy," he said, firmly. "You must get out of the sun."
Crittenden shook his head.
"Mother, have I ever done anything that you asked me not to do?"
"No, my son."
"Please don't make me begin now," he said, gently. "Is--is she at home?"
"Yes; but she is not very well. She has been ill a long while," she
added, but she did not tell him that Judith had been nursing at Tampa,
and that she had been sent home, stricken with fever.
The doctor had been counting his pulse, and now, with a grave look,
pulled a thermometer from his pocket; but Crittenden waved him away.
"Not yet, Doctor; not yet," he said, and stopped a moment to control his
voice before he went on.
"I know what's the matter better than you do. I'm going to have the
fever again; but I've got something to do before I go to bed, or I'll
never get up again. I have come up from Tampa just this way, and I can
go on like this for two more hours; and I'm going."
The doctor started to speak, but Mrs. Crittenden shook her head at him,
and Phyllis's face, too, was pleading for him.
"Mother, I'll be back in two hours, and then I'll do just what you and
the doctor say; but not now."
* * * * *
Judith sat bare-headed on the porch with a white shawl drawn closely
about her neck and about her half-bare arms. Behind her, on the floor of
the porch, was, where she had thrown it, a paper in which there was a
column about the home-coming of Crittenden--plain Sergeant Crittenden.
And there was a long editorial comment, full of national spirit, and a
plain statement to the effect that the next vacant seat in Congress was
his without the asking.
The pike-gate slammed--her father was getting home from town. The buggy
coming over the turf made her think what a change a few months had
brought to Crittenden and to her; of the ride home with him the previous
spring; and what she rarely allowed herself, she thought of the night of
their parting and the warm colour came to her cheeks. He had never sent
her a line, of course. The matter would never be mentioned--it couldn't
be. It struck her while she was listening to the coming of the feet on
the turf that they were much swifter than her father's steady-going old
buggy horse. The click was different; and when the buggy, instead of
turning toward the stable, came straight for the stiles, her heart
quickened and she raised her head. She heard acutely the creak of the
springs as some one stepped to the ground, and then, without waiting to
tie his horse, stepped slowly over the stiles. Unconsciously she rose to
her feet, not knowing what to think--to do. And then she saw that the
man wore a slouch hat, that his coat was off, and that a huge pistol was
buckled around him, and she turned for the door in alarm.
"Judith!"
The voice was weak, and she did not know it; but in a moment the light
from the lamp in the hallway fell upon a bare-headed, gaunt-featured man
in the uniform of a common soldier.
"Judith!"
This time the voice broke a little, and for a moment Judith stood
speechless--still--unable to believe that the wreck before her was
Crittenden. His face and eyes were on fire--the fire of fever--she could
not know that; and he was trembling and looked hardly able to stand.
"I've come, Judith," he said. "I haven't known what to do, and I've come
to tell you--to--ask----"
He was searching her face anxiously, and he stopped suddenly and passed
one hand across, his eyes, as though he were trying to recall something.
The girl had drawn herself slowly upward until the honeysuckle above her
head touched her hair, and her face, that had been so full of aching
pity for him that in another moment she must have gone and put her arms
about him, took on a sudden, hard quiet; and the long anguish of the
summer came out suddenly in her trembling lip and the whiteness of her
face.
"To ask for forgiveness," he might have said; but his instinct swerved
him; and--
"For mercy, Judith," he would have said, but the look of her face
stopped the words in an unheard whisper; and he stooped slowly, feeling
carefully for a step, and letting himself weakly down in a way that
almost unnerved her again; but he had begun to talk now, quietly and
evenly, and without looking up at her.
"I'm not going to stay long. I'm not going to worry you. I'll go away in
just a moment; but I had to come; I had to come. I've been a little
sick, and I believe I've not quite got over the fever yet; but I
couldn't go through it again without seeing you. I know that, and
that's--why--I've--come. It isn't the fever. Oh, no; I'm not sick at
all. I'm very well, thank you----"
He was getting incoherent, and he knew it, and stopped a moment.
"It's you, Judith----"
He stopped again, and with a painful effort went on slowly--slowly and
quietly, and the girl, without a word, stood still, looking down at him.
"I--used--to--think--that--I--loved--you. I--used--to--think I
was--a--man. I didn't know what love was, and I didn't know what it was
to be a man. I know both now, thank God, and learning each has helped me
to learn the other. If I killed all your feeling for me, I deserve the
loss; but you must have known, Judith, that I was not myself that
night. You did know. Your instinct told you the truth; you--knew--I
loved--you--then--and that's why--that's why--you--God bless
you--said--what--you--did. To think that I should ever dare to open my
lips again! but I can't help it; I can't help it. I was crazy,
Judith--crazy--and I am now; but it didn't go and then come back. It
never went at all, as I found out, going down to Cuba--and yes, it did
come back; but it was a thousand times higher and better love than it
had ever been, for everything came back and I was a better man. I have
seen nothing but your face all the time--nothing--nothing, all the time
I've been gone; and I couldn't rest or sleep--I couldn't even die,
Judith, until I had come to tell you that I never knew a man could love
a woman as--I--love--you--Judith. I----"
He rose very slowly, turned, and as he passed from the light, his
weakness got the better of him for the first time, because of his wounds
and sickness, and his voice broke in a half sob--the sob that is so
terrible to a woman's ears; and she saw him clinch his arms fiercely
around his breast to stifle it.
* * * * *
It was the old story that night--the story of the summer's heat and
horror and suffering--heard and seen, and keenly felt in his delirium:
the dusty, grimy days of drill on the hot sands of Tampa; the long,
long, hot wait on the transport in the harbour; the stuffy, ill-smelling
breath of the hold, when the wind was wrong; the march along the coast
and the grewsome life over and around him--buzzard and strange bird in
the air, and crab and snail and lizard and scorpion and hairy tarantula
scuttling through the tropical green rushes along the path. And the
hunger and thirst and heat and dirt and rolling sweat of the last day's
march and every detail of the day's fight; the stench of dead horse and
dead man; the shriek of shell and rattle of musketry and yell of
officer; the slow rush through the long grass, and the climb up the
hill. And always, he was tramping, tramping, tramping through long,
green, thick grass. Sometimes a kaleidoscope series of pictures would go
jumbling through his brain, as though some imp were unrolling the scroll
of his brain backward, forward, and sidewise; a whirling cloud of sand,
a driving sheet of visible bullets; a hose-pipe that shot streams of
melted steel; a forest of smokestacks; the flash of trailing
phosphorescent foam; a clear sky, full of stars--the mountains clear and
radiant through sunlit vapours; camp-fires shooting flames into the
darkness, and men and guns moving past them. Through it all he could
feel his legs moving and his feet tramping, tramping, tramping through
long green grass. Sometimes he was tramping toward the figure of a
woman, whose face looked like Judith's; and tramp as he could, he could
never get close enough through that grass to know whether it was Judith
or not. But usually it was a hill that he was tramping toward, and then
his foothold was good; and while he went slowly he got forward and he
reached the hill, and he climbed it to a queer-looking little
block-house on top, from which queer-looking little blue men were
running. And now and then one would drop and not get up again. And by
and by came his time to drop. Then he would begin all over again, or he
would go back to the coast, which he preferred to do, in spite of his
aching wound, and the long wait in the hospital and the place where poor
Reynolds was tossed into the air and into fragments by a shell; in spite
of the long walk back to Siboney, the graves of the Rough Riders and the
scuttling land-crabs; and the heat and the smells. Then he would march
back again to the trenches in his dream, as he had done in Cuba when he
got out of the hospital. There was the hill up which he had charged. It
looked like the abode of cave-dwellers--so burrowed was it with
bomb-proofs. He could hear the shouts of welcome as his comrades, and
men who had never spoken to him before, crowded about him.
How often he lived through that last proud little drama of his soldier
life! There was his Captain wounded, and there was the old Sergeant--the
"Governor"--with chevrons and a flag.
"You're a Sergeant, Crittenden," said the Captain.
He, Crittenden, in blood and sympathy the spirit of secession--bearer
now of the Stars and Stripes! How his heart thumped, and how his head
reeled when he caught the staff and looked dumbly up to the folds; and
in spite of all his self-control, the tears came, as they came again and
again in his delirium.
Right at that moment there was a great bustle in camp. And still holding
that flag, Crittenden marched with his company up to the trenches. There
was the army drawn up at parade, in a great ten-mile half-circle and
facing Santiago. There were the red roofs of the town, and the
batteries, which were to thunder word when the red and yellow flag of
defeat went down and the victorious Stars and Stripes rose up. There
were little men in straw hats and blue clothes coming from Santiago, and
swinging hammocks and tethering horses in an open field, while more
little men in Panama hats were advancing on the American trenches,
saluting courteously. And there were American officers jumping across
the trenches to meet them, and while they were shaking hands, on the
very stroke of twelve, there came thunder--the thunder of two-score and
one salutes. And the cheers--the cheers! From the right rose those
cheers, gathering volume as they came, swinging through the centre far
to the left, and swinging through the centre back again, until they
broke in a wild storm against the big, green hills. A storm that ran
down the foothills to the rear, was mingled with the surf at Siboney and
swung by the rocking transports out to sea. Under the sea, too, it sang,
along the cables, to ring on through the white corridors of the great
capitol and spread like a hurricane throughout all the waiting land at
home! Then he could hear bands playing--playing the "Star-Spangled
Banner"--and the soldiers cheering and cheering again. Suddenly there
was quiet; the bands were playing hymns--old, old hymns that the soldier
had heard with bowed head at his mother's knee, or in some little old
country church at home--and what hardships, privations, wounds, death of
comrades had rarely done, those old hymns did now--they brought tears.
Then some thoughtful soldier pulled a box of hardtack across the
trenches and the little Spanish soldiers fell upon it like schoolboys
and scrambled like pickaninnies for a penny.