CLEAVE AND JUDITH
The hospital at Charlottesville, unlovely and lovely, ghastly and vital,
brutal, spiritual, a hell of pain and weakness, another region of
endeavour and helpfulness, a place of horror, and also of strange
smiling, even of faint laughter, a country as chill as death and as warm
as love--the hospital at Charlottesville saw the weary morning grow to
weary noon, the weary noon change toward the weary latter day. The women
who nursed the soldiers said that it was lovely outside, and that all
the peach trees were in bloom. "We'll raise you a little higher," they
said, "and you can see for yourself. And look! here is your broth, so
good and strengthening! And did you hear? We won on the Peninsula
to-day!"
At four o'clock Judith Cary gave to another her place beside a typhoid
pallet and came out into the emerald and rose, the freshness and
fragrance of the spring. The Greenwood carriage was waiting. "We'll go,
Isham," said Judith, "by the University for Miss Lucy."
Isham held open the door. "No'm, Miss Judith. Miss Lucy done sont wuhd
dat de ladies'll be cuttin' out nuniforms clean 'twel dark. She say don'
wait fer her--Mrs. Carter'll bring her home."
Judith entered the carriage. An old acquaintance, passing, paused to
speak to her. "Isn't there a greater stir than usual?" she asked.
"Some of General Ewell's men are over from Gordonsville. There goes
General Dick Taylor now--the one in grey and white! He's a son, you
know, of Zachary--Old Rough and Ready. General Jackson, too, has an
officer here to-day, checking the stores that came from Richmond.--How
is it at the hospital?"
"It is very bad," said Judith. "When the bands begin to play I laugh and
cry like all the rest, and I wave and clap my hands, and I would fight
on and on like the rest of you, and I do not see that, given people as
they are, the war could have been avoided, and I would die to win, and I
am, I hope, a patriot--and yet I do not see any sense in it! It hurts me
as I think it may hurt the earth. She would like, I believe, something
better than being a battlefield.--There is music again! Yesterday a man
died, crying for the band to hush. He said it drowned something he
needed to hear."
"Yes, yes," replied her friend, nodding his head. "That is perfectly
true. That is very true, indeed!--That band's coming from the station.
They're looking for a regiment from Richmond.--That's a good band! What
are they playing--?"
"Bright flowers spring from the hero's grave,
The craven knows no rest,--
Thrice cursed the traitor and the knave,
The hero thrice is blessed--"
The Greenwood carriage rolled out of the town into the April country.
The fruit trees were in bloom, the woods feathering green, the quiet and
the golden light inestimable after the moaning wards. The carriage went
slowly, for the roads were heavy; moreover the former carriage horses
were gone to the war. These were two from the farm, somewhat old and
stiff, willing, but plodders. They went half asleep in the soft
sunshine, and Isham on the box went half asleep too. Judith would have
been willing to sleep, but she could not. She sat with her gaze upon the
fair spring woods and the amethystine hills rising to blue skies. The
carriage stopped. Isham bent down from the box. "Miss Judith, honey, er
gent'man's on de road behin' us, ridin' ter overtek de kerridge."
"Wait for him, then," said Judith. "There is some message, perhaps."
While they waited she sat with folded hands, her eyes upon the purple
hills, her thoughts away from Albemarle. The sound that Isham made of
surprise and satisfaction did not reach her. Until she saw Cleave's face
at the window she thought him somewhere in the Valley--fighting,
fighting! in battle and danger, perhaps, that very day.
Her eyes widened, her face had the hush of dawn; it was turned toward
him, but she sat perfectly still, without speaking. Only the door was
between them, the glass down. He rested his clasped hands on the ledge,
and his dark, moved face looked in upon her. "Judith," he said, "I did
not know.--I thought it was one of the others.... I hope that you are a
little glad to see me."
Judith looked at him a moment longer, then swayed a little forward. She
bent her head. Her cheek touched his clasped hands, he felt her kiss
upon them, and her forehead resting there.
There was a moment's silence, deep, breathless, then Cleave spoke.
"Judith ... Am I mad?"
"I believe that you love me," she said. "If you do not, it does not
matter.... I have loved you for two years."
"Maury Stafford?"
"I have never believed that you understood--though what it was that made
you misunderstand I have never guessed.... There is no Maury Stafford.
There never was."
He opened the door. "Come out," he said. "Come out with me into the
light. Send the carriage on."
She did so. The road was quiet, deserted, a wide bright path between the
evening hills. Dundee following them, they walked a little way until
they came to a great rock, sunk in the velvet sward that edged a wood.
Here they sat down, the gold light bathing them, behind them fairy
vistas, fountains of living green, stars of the dogwood and purple
sprays of Judas tree. "How I misunderstood is no matter now," said
Cleave. "I love you, and you say that you love me. Thank God for it!"
They sat with clasped hands, their cheeks touching, their breath
mingling. "Judith, Judith, how lovely are you! I have seen you always,
always!... Only I called it 'vision,' 'ideal.' At the top of every deed
I have seen your eyes; from the height of every thought you have
beckoned further! Now--now--It is like a wonderful home-coming ... and
yet you are still there, above the mountains, beckoning, drawing--There
and here, here in my arms!... Judith--What does 'Judith' mean?"
"It means 'praised.' Oh, Richard, I heard that you were wounded at
Kernstown!"
"It was nothing. It is healed.... I will write to your father at once."
"He will be glad, I think. He likes you.... Have you a furlough? How
long can you stay?"
"Love, I cannot stay at all. I am on General Jackson's errand. I must
ride on to Gordonsville--It would be sweet to stay!"
"When will you come again?"
"I do not know. There will be battles--many battles, perhaps--up and
down the Valley. Every man is needed. I am not willing to ask even a
short furlough."
"I am not willing that you should.... I know that you are in danger
every day! I hear it in the wind, I see it in every waving bough.... Oh,
come back to me, Richard!"
"I?" he answered, "I feel immortal. I will come back."
They rose from the rock. "The sun is setting. Would you rather I went on
to the house? I must turn at once, but I could speak to them--"
"No. Aunt Lucy is in town, Unity, too.... Let's say good-bye before we
reach the carriage."
They went slowly by the quiet road beneath the flowering trees. The
light was now only on the hilltops; the birds were silent; only the
frogs in the lush meadows kept up their quiring, a sound quaintly
mournful, weirdly charming. A bend of the road showed them Isham, the
farm horses, and the great old carriage waiting beneath a tulip tree.
The lovers stopped, took hands, moved nearer each to the other, rested
each in the other's arms. Her head was thrown back, his lips touched her
hair, her forehead, her lips. "Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
He put her in the carriage, kissed her hands as they lay on the door
ledge, and stood back. It was not far to the Greenwood gates; the old,
slow horses moved on, the carriage rounded a leafy turn, the road was
left to the soldier and his horse.
Cleave rode to Gordonsville that night as though he carried Heaven with
him. The road was fair, the moon was high. Far-flung, beautiful odours
filled the air; the red ploughed earth sent its share, the flowering
fruit trees theirs, the flowers in the wood, the mint by the stream. A
light wind swung them as from a censer; the moved air touched the young
man's forehead. He took off his hat; he rode rapidly with head held
high. He rode for hours, Dundee taking the way with even power, a
magnificently silent friend. Behind, on an iron grey, came the orderly.
Riding thus together, away from organization and discipline, the
relations between the two men, officer and private, were perfectly
democratic. From Rude's Hill across the Massanuttons and from Swift Run
Gap to Charlottesville they had been simply comrades and fellow
Virginians. They were from adjoining counties, where the one had
practised law and the other had driven a stage. There were differences
in breeding, education, and employment; but around these, recognized by
both, stretched the enormous plane of humanity. They met there in simple
brotherliness. To-night, however, Cleave had spoken for silence. "I want
to be quiet for a while, Harris.--There is something I have to think
of."
[Illustration: THE LOVERS]
The night was all too short for what he had to think of. The pink flush
of dawn, the distant view of Ewell's tents, came too soon. It was hard
to lower the height and swell of the mind, to push back the surging
thoughts, to leave the lift and wonder, the moonlight, and the flowering
way. Here, however, were the pickets; and while he waited for the
corporal of the guard, standing with Harris on a little hill, before
them the pink sky, below them a peach orchard, pink too, with a
lace-like mist wreathing the trees, he put golden afternoon and
moonlight night in the bottom of his heart and laid duty atop.
Ewell's camp, spread over the rolling hills and lighted by a splendid
sunrise, lay imposingly. To the eyes of the men from the Valley the
ordered white tents of Trimble's and Taylor's and the Maryland line had
an air luxuriously martial. Everything seemed to gleam and shine. The
guns of the parked batteries gave back the light, the colours seemed
silken and fine, the very sunrise gun had a sonorousness lacking to
Chew's Blakeley, or to McLaughlin's six-pounders, and the bugles blowing
reveille a silvery quality most remarkable. As for the smoke from the
camp-fires--"Lord save us!" said Harris, "I believe they're broiling
partridges! Of all the dandy places!"
Cleave laughed. "It's not that they are so fine, but that we are so
weather-beaten and rusty! They're only in good working-day trim. We'll
have to polish up at Rude's Hill."
"This is the 1st Maryland on the hillside," said the guide the corporal
had given; "there with the blue flag. Mighty fine feathers, but I reckon
they're gamecocks all right! Elzey's Brigade's over beside the
woods--Virginian to the backbone. Trimble's got a fine lot--Georgians
and Alabamians and Mississippians. Here come some of the 2d Virginia
Cavalry! Ain't they pretty?"
They were. But Harris stood up for the absent Valley. "Huh! Ashby's good
enough for me! Ashby's got three stallions--the white he's fondest of,
and a black like a piece of coal, and a red roan--"
The guide nodded energetically. "Oh, we think a heap of Ashby ourselves!
There ain't anybody that the men listen about more eagerly. We ain't
setting up on this side of the mountains to beat _him_! But I reckon the
2d and the 6th'll do right well when they get a chance. Yes, sir,
General Taylor's Brigade. He's got a lot of Frenchmen from
Louisiana--Acadians I've heard them called--and they can't speak a word
of English, poor souls!--There goes their band again. They're always
playing, dancing, and cooking rice. We call them Parlavoos--name of
their county, I reckon.--He's got Wheat's Battalion, too. Sorrow a bit
of a Frenchman there--they're Irish Tartars!--That's headquarters, sir.
By the apple orchard."
An aide brought Cleave to a fair-sized central tent, set beside a great
wine sap just coming into bloom. Around it was a space of trodden earth,
to one side a cheerful fire and a darky cook, in front a pine table,
over which a coloured boy was spreading a very clean tablecloth. Out of
the tent came a high, piping voice. "Good-morning, Hamilton! What is it?
What is it?--An officer from General Jackson? All right! All right! glad
to see him. Tell him to wait--Jim, you black idiot, what have I done
with that button?"
The aide smiled, Cleave smiled. There was something in the voice that
announced the person, quaintly rough, lovable and gallant,--"dear Dick
Ewell." He came out presently, a small man with a round bald head, hook
nose and bright eyes.
"This the officer? Glad to see you, Major--Major Cleave? Stay to
breakfast. Bob, you black rascal, another plate! Can't give you
much,--mysterious inward complaint, myself,--can't eat anything but
frumenty.--Well, sir, how is General Jackson?"
"Quite well, general."
"Most remarkable man! Wants to tie a bandage round everybody's eyes but
his own!"--all this plaintively treble. "Would ask to have it off if I
was facing a firing party, and in the present circumstances don't like
it at all!--Did you happen to meet any of my couriers?"
"Yes, general. One at the foot of the Massanuttons, one in Elk Run
Valley."
"Got to send them. Got to ask what to do. By God, out on the plains with
fifty dragoons I'd know! And here President Davis has made me a
major-general, and I don't know!--Draw up to the table, sir, draw up!
You can drink coffee; I can't. Can't sleep at night; don't want to lie
down; curl up on the ground and think of my fifty dragoons.--Well, sir,
and what does General Jackson say?"
"I have a letter for you, sir."
He presented it. Ewell, head on one side like a bird, took and opened
the paper. "I really do believe the sun's up at last! What does he say?
'_Move in three days by Stanardsville. Take a week's rations. Rest on
Sunday. Other directions will be given as needed._' Hm! Highly
characteristic! Never anything more than a damned dark lantern!--Well,
it's something to know that we're going by Stanardsville and are to rest
on Sunday! Where is Stanardsville?"
"It is a few miles this side of Swift Run Gap."
The general helped his guest to cornbread and himself began upon
frumenty. "All right! I'll move, and I suppose when I get there old
Jackson'll vouchsafe another gleam.--Bob, you damned Ethiopian, where
are your wits? Fill Major Cleave's cup.--Glad to welcome you, major, to
Camp Ewell. Pretty tidy place, don't you think?"
"I do indeed, sir."
"Have you seen Dick Taylor's beauties--his Creoles and Tigers and Harry
Hayes, 7th Louisiana? The Maryland Line, too, and Trimble and Elzey?
Damned fine army! How about yours over there?" He indicated the Blue
Ridge with a bird-like jerk, and helped himself again to frumenty.
"Your description applies there, too, sir. It's a little rough and
ready, but--it's a damned fine army!"
"Kernstown didn't shake it?"
"Kernstown was as much a victory as a defeat, sir. No, it didn't shake
it."
"_Morale_ good?"
"Extraordinarily so. That army is all right, sir."
"I wish," said Ewell plaintively, "that I knew what to make of General
Jackson. What do you make of him, major?"
"I make a genius, sir."
Ewell raised his shoulder and ducked his head, his bright round eyes
much like a robin's. "And he isn't crazy?"
"Not in the very least."
"Well, I've had my doubts. I am glad to hear you say that. I want to
think mighty well of the man who leads me. That Romney trip now?--of
course, I only heard Loring's side. He doesn't just wind in and out of
mountains for the fun of doing it?"
"I think that, generally speaking, he has some other object in view,
sir. I think that acquaintance with General Jackson will show you what I
mean. It develops confidence in a very marked fashion."
Ewell listened bright-eyed. "I am glad to hear you say that, for damn
me, confidence is what I want! I want, sir, to be world-without-end-sure
that my commanding officer is forever and eternally right, and then I
want to be let go ahead!--I want to be let feel just as though I were a
captain of fifty dragoons, and nothing to do but to get back to post by
the sunset gun and report the work done!--And so you think that when my
force and old Jackson's force get together we'll do big things?"
"Fairly big, sir. It is fortunate to expect them. They will arrive the
sooner."
Ewell bobbed his head. "Yes, yes, that's true! Now, major, I'm going to
review the troops this morning, and then I'll write an answer for
General Jackson, and you'll take it to him and tell him I'm coming on by
Stanardsville, just as he says, and that I'll rest on Sunday. Maybe even
we'll find a church--Presbyterian." He rose. "You'd better come with
me.--I've got some more questions to ask. Better see my troops, too. Old
Jackson might as well know what beautiful children I've got. Have you
any idea yourself what I'm expected to do at Stanardsville?"
"I don't know what General Jackson expects, sir. But my own idea is that
you'll not be long at Stanardsville."
"He'll whistle again, will he?"
"I think so. But I speak without authority."
"There's an idea abroad that he means to leave the Valley--come
east--cross the mountains himself instead of my crossing them. What do
you think of that?"
"I am not in his council, sir. The Valley people would hate to see him
go."
"Well, all that I can say is that I hope Banks is puzzled, too!--Jim,
Jim! damn you, where's my sword and sash?"
As they went Ewell talked on in his piping voice. "General Jackson
mustn't fling my brigades against windmills or lose them in the
mountains! I'm fair to confess I feel anxious. Out on the plains when we
chase Apaches we chase 'em! We don't go deviating like a love vine all
over creation.--That's Harry Hayes's band--playing some Frenchy thing or
other! Cavalry's over there--I know you've got Ashby, but Flournoy and
Munford are right wicked, too!"
"The--Virginia is with you, sir?"
"Yes. Fine regiment. You know it?"
"I know one of its officers--Major Stafford."
"Oh, we all know Maury Stafford! Fine fellow, but damned restless.
General Taylor says he is in love. I was in love once myself, but I
don't remember that I was restless. He is. He was with Loring but
transferred.--You went to Romney together?"
"Yes, we went together."
"Fine fellow, but unhappy. Canker somewhere, I should say. Here we are,
and if General Jackson don't treat my army well, I'll--I'll--I'll know
he's crazy!"
The review was at last over. Back under the wine sap Ewell wrote his
answer to Jackson, then, curled in a remarkable attitude on the bench
beneath the tree ("I'm a nervous major-general, sir. Can't help it.
Didn't sleep. Can't sleep."), put Cleave through a catechism searching
and shrewd. His piping, treble voice, his varied oaths and quaintly
petulant talk, his roughness of rind and inner sweetness made him,
crumpled under the apple tree, in his grey garb and cavalry boots, with
his bright sash and bright eyes, a figure mellow and olden out of an
ancient story. Cleave also, more largely built, more muscular, a little
taller, with a dark, thin, keen face, the face of a thinking
man-at-arms, clad in grey, clean but worn, seated on a low stool beneath
the tinted boughs, his sword between his knees, his hands clasped over
the hilt, his chin on his hands--Cleave, too, speaking of skirmishes, of
guns and horsemen, of the massed enemy, of mountain passes and fordable
rivers, had the value of a figure from a Flemish or Venetian canvas. The
form of the moment was of old time, old as the smell of apple blossoms
or the buzzing of the bees; old as these and yet persistently, too, of
the present as were these. The day wore on to afternoon, and at last the
messenger from Jackson was released.
The--Virginia had its encampment upon the edge of a thick and venerable
wood, beech and oak, walnut and hickory. Regimental headquarters was
indeed within the forest, half a dozen tents pitched in a glade sylvan
enough for Robin Hood. Here Cleave found Stafford sitting, writing,
before the adjutant's tent. He looked up, laid down his pen and rose.
"Ah! Where did you come from? I thought you in the Valley, in training
for a brigadier!" He came forward, holding out his hand. "I am glad to
see you. Welcome to Camp Ewell!"
Cleave's hand made no motion from his side. "Thank you," he said. "It
is good when a man can feel that he is truly welcome."
The other was not dull, nor did he usually travel by indirection. "You
will not shake hands," he said. "I think we have not been thrown
together since that wretched evening at Bloomery Gap. Do you bear malice
for that?"
"Do you think that I do?"
The other shrugged. "Why, I should not have thought so. What is it,
then?"
"Let us go where we can speak without interruption. The woods down
there?"
They moved down one of the forest aisles. The earth was carpeted with
dead leaves from beneath which rose the wild flowers. The oak was
putting forth tufts of rose velvet, the beech a veil of pale and satiny
green. The sky above was blue, but, the sun being low, the space beneath
the lacing boughs was shadowy enough. The two men stopped beside the
bole of a giant beech, silver-grey, splashed with lichens. "Quiet enough
here," said Stafford. "Well, what is it, Richard Cleave?"
"I have not much to say," said Cleave. "I will not keep you many
moments. I will ask you to recall to mind the evening of the seventeenth
of last April."
"Well, I have done so. It is not difficult."
"No. It would, I imagine, come readily. Upon that evening, Maury
Stafford, you lied to me."
"I--"
"Don't!" said Cleave. "Why should you make it worse? The impression
which, that evening, you deliberately gave me, you on every after
occasion as deliberately strengthened. Your action, then and since,
brands you, sir, for what you are!"
"And where," demanded Stafford hoarsely, "where did you get this
precious information--or misinformation? Who was at the pains to
persuade you--no hard matter, I warrant!--that I was dealing falsely?
Your informant, sir, was mistaken, and I--"
A shaft of sunshine, striking between the boughs, flooded the space in
which they stood. It lit Cleave's head and face as by a candle closely
held. The other uttered a sound, a hard and painful gasp. "You have seen
her!"
"Yes."
"Did she tell you that?"
"No. She does not know why I misunderstood. Nor shall I tell her."
"You have seen her--You are happy?"
"Yes, I am happy."
"She loves you--She is going to marry you?"
"Yes."
The wood stood very quiet. The shaft of light drew up among the boughs.
Stafford leaned against the trunk of the beech. He was breathing
heavily; he looked, veritably, a wounded man. "I will go now," said
Cleave. "I had to speak to you and I had to warn you. Good-day."
He turned, the leaves crisp beneath his footfall. "Wait," said Stafford.
"One moment--" He drew himself up against the beech. "I wish to tell you
why I--as you phrase it--lied to you. I allowed you to rest under that
impression which I am not sure that I myself gave you, because I thought
her yet trembling between us, and that your withdrawal would be
advantageous to my cause. Not for all of Heaven would I have had her turn
to you! Now that, apparently, I have lost her irrevocably, I will tell you
that you do not love her as I do. Have I not watched you? Did she die
to-day, you would go on to-morrow with your _Duty_--_Duty_--_Duty_--! For
me, I would kill myself on her grave. Where you and I were rivals and
enemies, now we are enemies. Look out for me, Richard Cleave!" He began to
laugh, a broken and mirthless sound. "Look out for me, Richard Cleave. Go!"
"I shall," said Cleave. "I will not keep a watch upon you in such a
moment, nor remember it. I doubt neither your passion nor your
suffering. But in one thing, Maury Stafford, you have lied again. I love
as strongly, and I love more highly than you do! As for your
threats--threatened men live long."
He turned, left the forest glade and came out into the camp lying now
beneath the last rays of the sun. That evening he spent with Ewell and
his staff, passed the night in a friendly tent, and at dawn turned
Dundee's head toward the Blue Ridge.