THE FURLING OF THE FLAGS
The close of the long and bitter struggle had come; to those who had
cast their fortunes with the South it seemed almost as the end of the
world. I had thought to write of those last sad days, to picture them
in all their contrasting light and shadow, but now I cannot. There are
thoughts too deep for human utterance, memories too sacred for the pen.
I rejoice that I was a part of it; that to the lowering of the last
tattered battle-flag I remained constant to the best traditions of my
house. I cannot sit here now, beneath the protecting shadow of a flag
for which my son fought and died, and write that I regret the ending,
for years of peace have taught us of the South lessons no less valuable
than did the war; yet do I rejoice to-day that, having once donned the
gray, I wore it until the last shotted gun voiced its grim message to
the North.
It is hardly more than a dream now, sometimes vague and shadowy, again
distinct with living figures and historic scenes. I require but to close
my eyes to behold once more those slender lines of ragged, weary, hungry
men, to whom fighting had become synonymous with life. I pass again
through the fiery rain of those last fierce battles, when in desperation
we sought to check the unnumbered blue legions that fairly crushed us
beneath their weight. The vividness of the memory burns my brain as
by fire,--the ghastly faces of the dead, the unuttered agony of the
wounded, the patient suffering of the living. Day by day, night by
night, we grew less in numbers, and our thin lines contracted; divisions
shrank into regiments, companies to platoons. Men knew that the
inevitable was upon them, yet smiled into one another's face and went
forth to die. It was pitiable; it was magnificent. Hungry we fought,
unsheltered we slept; our dead were lying with the enemy, while we who
yet lived for the duty of another day fronted the bayonets with hearts
of courage and sadly prophetic souls. Everywhere to front and rear, to
left and right, stretched that same blue wall tipped with cruel steel;
in constant hail of iron the shells fell upon us, darkening the day-sky,
and turning night into a hell of flame. There was no retreat, no
loophole of escape; we could but stay, suffer, and perish. Like men
afflicted with some incurable malady, we who were of that stricken
remnant sternly, grimly looked into the eyes of death and waited for the
end.
I saw it all; I held a part in it all. Upon that April day which
witnessed the turning of the last sad page in this tragedy, I stood
without the McLean house, ankle deep in the trampled mud of the yard,
surrounded by a group of Federal officers. Within was my commander, the
old gray hero of Virginia, together with the great silent soldier of the
North.
Few about me spoke as we waited in restless agony. No one addressed me,
and I think there must have been a look in my face which held them dumb.
We knew well what hung upon the balance then; that within those humble
walls was being consummated one of the great events of history. To the
men in blue it meant home, and victory, and peace; to those in gray,
suffering, and struggle, and defeat.
I know not how long I waited, standing beside my horse, with head half
bowed upon his neck, seeing the figures about me as in a dream. At last
the door was flung open, and those within came forth. He was in advance
of them all. In that pale, stern, kindly face, and within the depths
of those sorrowful gray eyes, I read instantly the truth--_the Army
of Northern Virginia was no more._ Yet with what calm dignity did this
defeated chieftain pass down that blue lane, his head erect, his eyes
undimmed--as dauntless in that awful hour of surrender as when he rode
before his cheering legions of fighting men. Only as he came to where
I stood, and caught the look of suffering upon my face, did he once
falter, and then I noted no more than the slight twitching of his lips
beneath the short gray beard.
“Captain Wayne,” he said, with all his old-time courtesy, “I shall have
to trouble you to ride to General Hills's division and request him to
cease all firing at once.”
I turned reluctantly away from him, knowing full well in my heart I was
bearing my last order, and rode at a hard trot down the road between
long lines of waiting Federal infantry. I scarcely so much as saw
them, for my head was bent low over the saddle pommel, and my eyes were
blurred with tears.
* * * * *
The sun lay hot and golden over the dusty roads and fenceless fields.
The air was vocal with blare of trumpets and roll of drums, while
everywhere the eye rested upon blue lines and long columns of marching
troops. I formed one of a little gray squad moving slowly southward--a
mere fragment of the fighting men of the Confederacy, making their way
homeward as best they might. As the roads forked I left them, for here
our paths diverged, and it chanced I was the only one whose hope lay
westward.
Silently, thoughtfully I trudged on for an hour through the thick red
dust. My horse, sorely wounded in our last skirmish, limped painfully
behind me, his bridle-rein flung carelessly over my arm. Out yonder,
where the sun pointed the way with streams of fire, I was to take up
life anew. Life! What was there left to me in that word? A deserted,
despoiled farm alone awaited my coming; hardly a remembered face,
scarcely a future hope. The glitter of a passing troop of cavalry drew
my mind for an instant to Edith Brennan, but I crushed the thought.
Even were she free, what had I now to place at her proud feet,--I, a
penniless, defeated, homeless man? No, that was all over, even as the
cause for which I had fought; love and ambition must lie buried in the
same grave. The clothes I wore, that tattered suit of faded gray, soiled
by months of hard service in the open, was all I possessed in the wide
world, save the starved and wounded animal limping dejectedly at my
heels. The mere conception of it, the picture of kneeling thus attired
at her feet, brought with it a grim smile, which a deep heartache
instantly chased away. Besides, she was not free, and no dream of love
might inspire me to toil and hope. With clinched teeth I drove her
memory from me, back into that dim past where lurked all that had been
worthy in my life. Sternly I resolved that her face should henceforth
abide with those others--the shadowy comrades of many a battlefield.
In this spirit I plodded on, my step heavy, my head bowed, wearied alike
in heart and body. My temples throbbed with the heat of the sun, my eyes
were dulled, my throat caked by the swirling dust. At a cross-roads a
Federal picket halted me, and I aroused sufficiently to hand him the
paper which entitled me to safe passage through the lines. He was a man
well along in years, with thoughtful eyes and kindly face, and I spoke
to him out of my sheer loneliness.
“No doubt you are rejoicing that the long struggle is so nearly ended?”
I said as he handed me back the paper and motioned me to pass on. “Have
you a family in the North?”
“A wife and five children up in Michigan, sir,” he answered civilly. “I
guess they are counting the days now. And you, sir?”
“Oh, I have some acres of worn-out land over yonder, and but little
else.”
“Well, you're a sight better off than some, I s'pect. It's been pretty
tough on all of you, but if you fellows only work like you fought you'll
have things a humming before long.”
There was homely comfort in his philosophy which for the moment cheered
me. Perhaps he was right; the energy and bravery of the South, crippled
as it now was, might yet conquer our present misfortune, and prove it a
blessing in disguise. I had gone a hundred yards or more, this thought
still in my mind, when I became aware that he was calling after me.
“Hey, there, you gray-back!” he shouted, “hold on a bit!”
As I came to a pause and glanced back, wondering if there could be
anything wrong with my parole, he swung his cap and pointed.
“That officer coming yonder wants to speak with you.”
Across the open field at my right, hidden until then by a slight rise
of ground, a mounted cavalryman was riding rapidly toward me, the
wind blowing back his cape so as to make conspicuous its bright yellow
lining. For the moment his lowered head prevented recognition, but as he
cleared the ditch and came up smiling, I saw it was Caton.
“By Jove, Wayne, but this is lucky!” he exclaimed, springing to the
ground beside me. “I've actually been praying for a week past that I
might meet you. Holmes, of your service, told me you had pulled through,
but everything is in such confusion that to hunt for you would have been
the proverbial quest after a needle in a haystack. You have been paroled
then?”
“Yes, I'm completely out of it at last,” I answered, feeling to the full
the deep sympathy expressed by his face. “It was a bitter pill, but one
which had to be taken.”
“I know it, old fellow,” and his hand-grasp on mine tightened warmly.
“Of course I 'm glad, there's no use denying that, glad we won; glad the
old Union has been preserved as our fathers gave it to us; glad slavery
on this continent has passed away for ever, and so will you be before
you die. Yet I am sincerely sorry for those who have given their all and
lost. God knows you fought a good fight, fought as Americans only can,
even though it was in a bad cause. That is the pity of it; such heroism,
such sacrifice, and all wasted. If you have been beaten there is no
disgrace in it, for no other nation in this world could ever have
accomplished it. But this was a case of Greek meeting Greek, and we had
the money, the resources, and the men. But, Wayne, I tell you, I do not
believe there is to-day a spark of bitterness in the heart of a fighting
Federal soldier. We fought you to a finish because it's in our blood; we
whipped you because we were compelled to in order to preserve the Union,
but we'd share our last cent, or last crust, with any gray-back now. I
know I feel as if every paroled Confederate were a brother in need.”
“I know, Caton,” I said,--and the words came hard,--“your fighting men
respect us, even as we do them. It has been a sheer game of which could
stand the most punishment, and the weaker had to go down. I know all
that, but, nevertheless, it is a terrible ending to so much of hope,
suffering, and sacrifice.”
“Yes,” he admitted soberly, “you have given your all. But those who
survive have a wonderful work before them. They must lay anew the
foundations; they are to be the rebuilders of States. You were going
home?”
I smiled bitterly at this designation of my journey's end.
“Yes, if you can so name a few weed-grown fields and a vacant
negro cabin. I certainly shall have to lay the foundation anew most
literally.”
“Will you not let me aid you?” he questioned eagerly. “I possess some
means, and surely our friendship is sufficiently established to warrant
me in making the offer. You will not refuse?”
“I must,” I answered firmly. “Yet I do not value the offer the less.
Sometime I may even remind you of it, but now I prefer to dig, as the
others must. I shall be the stronger for it, and shall thus sooner
forget the total wreck.”
For a few moments we walked on together in silence, each leading
his horse. I could not but note the contrast between us in dress and
bearing. Victory and defeat, each had stamped its own.
“Wayne,” he asked at length, glancing furtively at me, as if to mark the
effect of his words, “did you know that Mrs. Brennan was again with us?”
The name thus spoken set my heart to instant throbbing, but I sought to
answer carelessly. Whatever he may have surmised, it was plainly my duty
to hide our secret still.
“I was not even aware she had been away.”
“Oh, yes; she returned North immediately after your last parting, and
came back only last week. So many wives and relatives of the officers
have come down of late, knowing the war to be practically at an end,
that our camp has become like a huge picnic pavilion. It is quite the
fashionable fad just now to visit the front. Mrs. Brennan accompanied
the wife of one of the division commanders from her State--Connecticut,
you know.”
There was much I longed to ask regarding her, but I would not venture to
fan his suspicions. In hope that I might turn his thought I asked, “And
you; are you yet married?”
He laughed good-humoredly. “No, that happy day will not occur until
after we are mustered out. Miss Minor is far too loyal a Virginian ever
to become my wife while I continue to wear this uniform. By the way,
Mrs. Brennan was asking Celia only yesterday if she had heard anything
of you since the surrender.”
“She is at Appomattox, then?”
“No, at the headquarters of the Sixth Corps, only a few miles north from
here.”
“And the Major?”
Caton glanced at me, a peculiar look in his face, but answered simply:
“Naturally I have had small intimacy with him after what occurred at
Mountain View, but he is still retained upon General Sheridan's staff.
At Mrs. Brennan's request we breakfasted together yesterday morning, but
I believe he is at the other end of the lines to-day.”
We sat down upon a bank, our conversation drifting back to their
uneventful ride northward, and later to our experiences during those
last weeks of war. I have often reflected since on the vivid contrast we
must have made while resting there, each holding the rein of his horse,
our animals as widely differing in appearance as ourselves. Both were
typical of the two services in those last days. Caton was attired in
natty uniform, fleckless and well groomed, his linen immaculate, his
buttons gleaming, the rich yellow stripes of his arm of the service
making marked contrast with the blue he wore and the green he sat upon.
I, on the other hand, was haggard from hard, sleepless service and
insufficient food, my shapeless old slouch hat and dull gray jacket torn
and disfigured, the marks of rank barely discernible.
But his manly, hopeful spirit reawakened my courage, and for the time I
forgot disaster while listening to his story of love and his plans for
the future. His one thought was of Celia and the Northern home so soon
now to be made ready for her coming. The sun sank lower into the western
sky, causing Caton to draw down his fatigue cap until its glazed visor
almost completely hid his eyes. With buoyant enthusiasm he talked on,
each word drawing me closer to him in bonds of friendship. But the
time of parting came, and after we had promised to correspond with each
other, I stood and watched while he rode rapidly back down the road we
had traversed together. At the summit of the hill he turned and waved
his cap, then disappeared, leaving me alone, with Edith's face more
clearly than ever a torture to my memory of defeat,--her face, fair,
smiling, alluring, yet the face of another man's wife.