NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS
The two women clasped hands again and looked at each other as Harley
disappeared amid the smoke.
"He has left us," said Mrs. Markham.
"Yes, but he has gone to his country's need," said his sister proudly.
Then they were silent again. Night, smoky, cloudy and dark, thick with
vapours and mists, and ashes and odours that repelled, was coming down
upon the Wilderness. Afar in the east the fire in the forest still
burned, sending up tongues of scarlet and crimson over which sparks flew
in myriads. Nearer by, the combat went on, its fury undimmed by the
darkness, its thunder as steady, as persistent and terrible as before.
Helen was struck with horror. The battle, weird enough in the day, was
yet more so in the darkness, and she could not understand why it did not
close with the light. It partook of an inhuman quality, and that scene
out there was more than ever to her an inferno because the flaming pit
was now enclosed by outer blackness, completely cut off from all else--a
world to itself in which all the passions strove, and none could tell to
which would fall the mastery.
She felt for the moment horror of both sides, North and South alike, and
she wished only that the unnatural combat would cease; she did not care
then--a brief emotion, though--which should prove the victor.
It was a dark and solemn night that came down over the Wilderness and
the two hundred thousand who had fought all day and still fought amid
its thickets. Never before had that thin, red soil--redder now--borne
such a crop, and many were glad that the darkness hid the sight from
their enemies. The two Generals, the master minds who had propelled
their mighty human machines against each other, were trying to reckon
their losses--with the battle still in progress--and say to themselves
whether they had won or lost. But this battlefield was no smooth and
easy chessboard where the pawns might be moved as one wills and be
counted as they fell, but a wilderness of thickets and forests and hills
and swamps and valleys where the vast lines bent or twisted or
interlaced and were lost in the shades and the darkness. Count and
reckon as they would, the two Generals, equal in battle, face to face
for the first time--could not give the total of the day. It was still an
unadded sum, and the guns, despite the night, were steadily contributing
new figures. This was the flaw in their arithmetic; nothing was
complete, and they saw that they would have to begin again to-morrow.
So, with this day's work yet unfinished, they began to prepare, sending
for new regiments and brigades, massing more cannon, and planning
afresh.
But all these things were unknown to Helen as she sat there at the
window with Mrs. Markham. Her thoughts wandered again to Wood, that
splendid figure on horseback, and she sought to identify him there among
the black marionettes that gyrated against the red background. But with
the advance of night the stage was becoming more indistinct, the light
shed over it more pallid and shifting, and nothing certain could be
traced there. All the black figures were mixed in a confused whirl, and
where stood the South and where the North neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham
could tell.
The night was thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours that
oppressed throat and nostrils. The wind seemed to have died, but the
fine dust of ashes still fell and the banks of nauseous smoke floated
about aimlessly.
New fear assailed the two women for the first time--not so much fear of
the shells and the bullets, but of the night and its mysteries and the
weird combat that was still going on there where the light was so pallid
and uncertain. Once again those who fought had become for them
unreal--not human beings, but imps in an inferno of their own creation.
They wished now that Harley was still with them. Whatever else he might
be, he was brave and he would defend them. They looked around fearfully
at the shadows that were encroaching upon the house. The rain of ashes
and dust began to annoy them, and they moved a little closer to each
other.
Helen glanced back once. The inside of the house was now in total
darkness, and out of it came the monotonous wailing of the black woman.
It occurred suddenly to Helen that the servant had crouched there crying
the whole day long. But she said nothing to her and turned her back to
the window.
"It is dying now," said Mrs. Markham.
The dull red light suddenly contracted and then broke into intermittent
flashes. The sound of the cannon and the rifles sank into the low
muttering of distant thunder. The two women felt the house under them
cease to tremble. Then the intermittent flashes, too, disappeared, the
low rumbling died away like the echo of a distant wind, and a sudden and
complete silence, mystic and oppressive in its solemnity, fell over the
Wilderness. Only afar the burning forest glowed like a torch.
The silence was for awhile more terrifying than the battle to which they
had grown used. It hung over the forest and them like something visible
that enfolded them. They breathed a hot, damp air heavy with ashes and
smoke and dust, and their pulses throbbed painfully in their temples.
Around them all the time was that horrible deathlike pall of silence.
They spoke, and their voices, attuned before to the roar of the battle,
sounded loud, shrill and threatening. Both started, then laughed weakly.
"Is it really over?" exclaimed Mrs. Markham, hysterically.
"Until to-morrow," replied Helen, with solemn prevision.
She turned to the inner blackness of the house and lighted a candle,
which she placed on the table, where it burned with an unsteady yellow
light, illuminating the centre of the room with a fitful glow, but
leaving the corners still in darkness. Everything lay under its veil of
ashes--the table, the floor, and the bed on which Harley had slept.
Helen felt a strange sort of strength, the strength of excitement and
resolve. She shook the black woman by the arm and bade her bring food.
"We must eat, for we shall have work to do," she said to Mrs. Markham,
and nodded her head toward the outside.
It was the task of but a few minutes, and then the two women prepared to
go forth. They knew they would be needed on this night, and they
listened to hear the ominous sounds that would be a call to them. But
they heard nothing. There was the same dead, oppressive stillness. Not a
leaf, not a blade of grass seemed to stir. Helen looked once more from
the window. Afar in the east the forest still burned, but the light
there was pallid, grayish, more of the quality of moonlight than of
fire, and looked dim. Directly before her in the forest where the battle
had been all was black, silent and impenetrable. It was true there were
faint lights here and there as of torches that had burned badly, but
they were pin-points, serving only to deepen the surrounding blackness.
Once or twice she thought she saw figures moving slowly, but she was not
sure. She heard nothing.
Helen was in an unreal world. An atmosphere new, fiery and surcharged
surrounded her, and in its heat little things melted away. Only the
greater remained. That life in Richmond, bright and gay in many of its
aspects, lived but a few days since, was ages and ages ago; it belonged
to another world. Now she was in the forest with the battle and the
dead, and other things did not count.
The door stood wide open, and as Helen prepared to go another woman
entered there, a woman young like herself, tall, wrapped in a long brown
cloak, but bareheaded. Two or three stray locks, dark but edged with red
gold, strayed down. Her face, clear and feminine though it was, seemed
to Helen stronger than any other woman's face that she had ever seen.
Helen knew instinctively that this was a woman of the North, or at
least one with the North, and her first feeling was of hostility. So, as
the two stood looking at each other, her gaze at first was marked by
aversion and defiance. Who was she who had come with the other army, and
why should she be there?
But Lucia Catherwood knew both the women in the old house. She
remembered a day in Richmond when this girl, in lilac and rose, so fair
a representative of her South, welcomed a gallant general; and she
remembered another, a girl of the same years, lonely, an outcast in the
farthest fringe of the crowd--herself. Her first emotion, too, was
hostility, mingled with another feeling closely akin to it. She had seen
her with Prescott, and unwillingly had confessed them well matched. She,
too, asked what this woman was doing here in the forest beside the
battle; but these feelings had only a short life with her. There were
certain masculine qualities in Lucia Catherwood that tended to openness
and frankness. She advanced and offered her hand like a man to Helen.
"We come under different flags," she said, "but we cannot be enemies
here; we must be friends at least to-night, and I could wish that it
should always be so."
Her smile was so frank, so open, so engaging that Helen, whose nature
was the same, could resist her no longer. Despite herself she liked this
girl, so tall, so strong, with that clear, pure face showing a
self-reliance such as she had never before seen on the face of a woman.
Mrs. Markham yet hung back a little, cool, critical and suspicious, but
presently she cast this manner from her and spoke as if Lucia Catherwood
was her friend, one of long and approved standing.
"I think that our work is to be the same," said Helen simply, and the
other bowed in silent assent. Then the three went forth.
The field of battle, or rather the portion of it which came nearest to
them--it wound for miles through the thickets--lay a half-mile from the
house under the solid black veil of a cloudy night, the forest, and the
smoke that yet drifted about aimlessly. Outside the house the strange,
repellent odours grew stronger, as if it were the reek of some infernal
pit.
They advanced over open ground, and the field of conflict was still
black and soundless, though there was a little increase in the lights
that moved dimly there. The smoke assailed them again, and fine ashes
from the distant fire in the east now and then fell upon them. But they
noticed none of these things, still advancing with steady step and
unshrinking faces toward the forest.
The twinkling lights increased and sounds came at last. Helen would not
say to herself what they were. She hoped that her fancy deceived her;
but the three women did not stop. Helen looked at the tall, straight
young figure beside her, so strong, so self-reliant, and she drew
strength from her companion--now she was such. They walked side by side,
and Mrs. Markham came behind. Helen began to feel the influence of a
personality, a will stronger than her own, and she yielded to it without
further question and without reluctance, having the feeling that she had
known this girl a long time.
The trembling lights of the forest increased, moving about like so many
fireflies in the night; the nauseous odours grew heavier, more
persistent, and for a moment Helen felt ill; her head began to spin
around at the thought of what she was going to see, but quickly she
recovered herself and went on by the side of the girl who never
faltered. Helen wondered at such courage, and wondering, she admired.
The ground grew rougher, set with tiny hillocks and stones and patch
after patch of scrub bushes. Once Helen stumbled against something that
felt cold even through the leather of her shoe, and she shuddered. But
it was only a spent cannon ball lying peacefully among the bushes, its
mission ended.
They reached burnt ground--spots where the scanty grass or the bushes
had been set on fire by the cannon or the rifles. Many places still
burned slowly and sent up languid sparks and dull smoke. In other places
the ground was torn as if many ploughs had been run roughly over it,
and Helen knew that the shells and the cannon balls had passed in
showers. There were other objects, too, lying very quiet, but she would
not look at them, though they increased fast as they went on, lying like
seed sown above ground.
They were at the edge of the forest now, and here the air was thicker
and darker. The mists and vapours floated among the trees and lay like
warm, wet blankets upon their faces. They saw now many moving figures,
some bending down as if they would lift something from the earth, and
others who held lights. Occasionally they passed women like themselves,
but not often. Some of the men were in gray uniform and some in blue,
but they passed and repassed each other without question, doing the work
they had come there to do.
Here in the forest the area of burnt ground was larger, and many coils
of smoke rose languidly to join the banks of it that towered overhead.
The still objects, too, were lying as far as one could see, in groups
here, somewhat scattered there, but the continuity never broken, many
with their faces upturned to the sky as if they awaited placidly the
last call. Helen was struck by this peace, this seeming confidence in
what was to come. The passage, then, had not been so hard! Here, when
she stood in the centre of it all, the old feelings of awe returned, and
the real world, the world that she had known before this day, swung
farther and farther away.
There was still but little noise, for those who yet lived were silent,
waiting patiently, and the vast peace was more powerful in its
impression upon the mind than any tumult could have been. Helen looked
up once at the skies. They were black and overcast. But few stars
twinkled there. It was a fit canopy for the Wilderness, the gloomy
forest that bore such a burden. From a far point in the southwest came
the low rumble of thunder, and lightning, like the heat-lightning of a
summer night, glimmered fitfully. Then there was a faint, sullen sound,
the report of a distant cannon shot. Helen started, more in anger than
terror. Would they fight again at such a time? She felt blame for both,
but the shot was not repeated then. A signal gun, she thought, and went
on, unconsciously going where the strong young figure of Lucia
Catherwood led the way. She heard presently another distant cannon shot,
its solemn echoes rolling all around the horizon, but she paid no heed
to it. Her mind was now for other things.
An inky sky overhung the battlefield and all it held. Those nights in
the Wilderness were among the blackest in both ways this country has
ever known. Brigades and batteries moving in the dense scrub, seeking
better places for the fresh battle on the morrow, wandered sometimes
through each other's lines. Soldiers, not knowing whether they were
among friends or enemies, and not caring, drank in the darkness from the
same streams, and, overpowered by fatigue, North and South alike often
slept a soundless sleep under trees not fifty yards from one another;
but the two Generals, who were the supreme expression of the genius of
either side, never slept. They had met for the first time; each nearly
always a victor before, neither had now won. The result yet to come lay
hidden in the black Wilderness, and by smoking camp-fires they planned
for the next day, knowing well that they would meet again in a combat
fiercer, longer and deadlier than ever, the one always seeking to drive
on, the other always seeking to hold him back.
The Wilderness enclosed many secrets that night, hiding dead and living
alike. Many of the fallen lay unseen amid the ravines and hollows, and
the burning forest was their funeral pyre. Never did the Wilderness more
deserve its name; gloomy at any time, it had new attributes of solemn
majesty. Everything seemed to be in unison with those who lay there--the
pitchy blackness, the low muttering of distant thunder, the fitful
glimmer of the lightning, the stems of trees twisted and contorted by
the gleam of the uncertain flashes, the white faces of the slain
upturned to the sky seen dimly by the same light, the banks of smoke and
vapour yet floating through the forest, the strange, repellent odours,
and the heavy, melancholy silence.
Those who had come upon the field after the night began worked without
talk, the men from either side passing and repassing each other, but
showing no hostility. The three women, too, began to help them, doing
the errand upon which they had come, and their service was received
without question and without comment. No one asked another why he was
there; his duty lay plain before him.
It was Lucia Catherwood who took the lead, neither Helen nor Mrs.
Markham disputing her fitness for the place, too apparent to all to be
denied; it was she who never flinched, who, if she spoke at all, spoke
words of cheer, whose strength and courage seemed never to fail.
Thus the hours passed, and the character of the night in the Wilderness
did not change. There was yet compared with the tumult of the day a
heavy, oppressive silence; the smoke and the vapours did not go away,
the heavy atmosphere did not thin, and at intervals the distant thunder
rumbled and the fitful lightning glared over a distorted forest.
The three worked in silence, like those around them, faithful,
undaunted. Mrs. Markham, the cynical and worldly, was strangely changed,
perhaps the most changed of the three; all her affectations were gone,
and she was now only an earnest woman. And while the three worked they
always watched for one man. And this man was not the same with any one
of the three.
It was past midnight and Helen did not know how long she had been upon
the battlefield, working as she did in a kind of a dream, or rather
mist, in which everything was fanciful and unreal, with her head full of
strange sights and unheard sounds, when she saw two men ride side by
side and silently out of the black forest--two figures, one upright,
powerful, the other drooping, with head that swayed slightly from side
to side.
She knew them at once despite the shadows of the trees and the faint
moonlight--and it was what her thoughts had told her would come true.
It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erect
and so powerful could fall; nor had he.
She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them. Harley's head swayed
slightly from side to side, and his clothing showed red in the dim
moonlight. Wood held him in the saddle with one hand and guided the two
horses with the other. Both women were white to the lips, but it was
Helen who spoke first.
"I expected you," she said to Wood.
Wood replied that Harley was not hurt save by exhaustion from his
previous wounds. He had come, too, at a critical moment, and his coming
had been worth much to the South. But now he was half unconscious; he
must rest or die. The General spoke in simple words, language that one
would have called dialect, but Helen did not think of those things; his
figure was grander than ever before to her, because, despite the battle,
he had remembered to bring back her brother.
Mrs. Markham was quiet, saying no word, but she went with them to the
house, where Harley was placed on the very bed on which he had slept the
night before. Lucia Catherwood did not turn back, and was left alone on
the field, but she was neither afraid nor lonely. She, too, was looking
for some one--one whom she was in dread lest she find and whom she
wished to find nevertheless. But she had a feeling--how or whence it
came she did not know--that she would find him there. Always while she
helped the others, hour after hour, she looked for him, glancing into
every ravine and hollow, and neglecting no thicket or clump of bushes
that she passed. She believed that she would know him if she saw but the
edge of his coat or his hand.
At last she reached the fringe of the battlefield. The fallen forms were
fewer and the ground less torn by the tramplings of men and horses and
the wheels of guns, though the storm had passed, leaving its track of
ruin. Here, too, were burned spots, the grass still smouldering and
sending up tiny sparks, a tree or two twisted out of shape and
half-consumed by flames; a broken cannon, emblem of destruction, lying
wheelless on the ground. Lucia looked back toward the more populous
field of the fallen and saw there the dim lights still moving, but
decreasing now as the night waned. Low, blurred sounds came to her ears.
As for herself, she stood in the darkness, silvered dimly by a faint
moonlight, a tall, lithe young figure, self-reliant, unafraid.
She began now to search every hollow, to look among the bushes and the
ravines. She had heard from men of his own company that he was missing,
and she would not turn back while he was unfound. It was for this that
she had come, and he would need her.
She was on the farthest rim of the battlefield, where the lights when
she looked back were almost lost, and it seemed to be enclosed wholly by
the darkness and the vapours. No voice came from it, but in the forest
before her were new sounds--a curious tread as of many men together
stepping lightly, the clanging of metal, and now and then a neigh coming
faintly. This, she knew, were the brigades and the batteries seeking
position in the darkness for a new battle; but she was not afraid.
Lucia Catherwood was not thinking then of the Wilderness nor of the vast
tragedy that it held, but of a flight one snowy night from a hostile
capital, a flight that was not unhappy because of true companionship.
Formed amid hard circumstances, hers was not a character that yielded
quickly to sentiment, but when the barriers were broken down she gave
much.
She heard a tread in the brushwood. Some horses, saddles on and bridles
hanging--their riders lost, she well knew how--galloped near her, looked
at her a moment or two with wide eyes, and then passed on. Far to the
right she heard a faint cannon shot. If they were going to fight again,
why not wait until the next day? It could not be done in all this
darkness. A blacker night she had never seen.
She came to a tiny valley, a mere cup in the bleak, red ridges, well set
with rich green grass as if more fertile soil had gathered there, but
all torn and trampled, showing that one of the fiercest eddies of the
battle had centred in this spot. At the very edge lay two horses with
their outstretched necks crossed united in death. In the trampled grass
lay other dark figures which she could not pass without a shudder.
She paused here a moment because it seemed to be growing darker. The low
rumble of thunder from the far western horizon came again, all the more
threatening because of its faintness and distance. The lightning gleamed
a moment and by its quick flash she saw the one she was seeking.
He lay at the far edge of the little valley where the grass had grown
richest and tallest, and he was almost hidden by the long stems. It was
his face that she saw first, white and still in the lightning's glare,
but she did not believe that he was dead. Ah! that could not happen.
Raising his head in her arms, she rested it upon her knee, moistening
his lips with water that she carried in a flask. She was a strong woman,
both physically and mentally, far beyond the average of her sex, and now
she would not yield to any emotion. No; she would do what it was
necessary to do, and not until then would she even put her finger upon
his wrist to find if the pulse were still beating.
The wound was on the side of the head, under the hair, and she
remembered afterward how glad she was that the scar would always be
hidden by the hair. Strong enough to examine the nature of the injury,
she judged that it had been done by a fragment of shell, and she
believed that the concussion and loss of blood, rather than any fatal
wound, had caused Prescott's fall.
As she drew away the hair, washed the wound and bound it up with a strip
from her own dress, she was filled with a divine gladness. Not only was
she doing that which she wished most to do, but she was making
repayment. He would have died there had she not found him, and no one
else would have found him in that lone spot.
Not yet did she seek to move him or to bring help. She would have him to
herself for awhile--would watch over him like a mother, and she could do
as much as any surgeon. She was glad Helen and the other woman had
turned aside, for she alone had found him. No one else could claim a
share in saving him. He was for the time hers and hers alone, and in
this she rejoiced.
As his pulse was growing stronger she knew that he would live. No doubt
of it now occurred to her mind, and she was still happy. The battle of
the day that was gone and of the day that was to come, and all the
thousands, the living and the fallen, were alike forgotten. She
remembered only him.
Again came the tramp of riderless horses, and for a moment she was in
dread--not for herself, but for him--but again they turned and passed
her by. When the low, threatening note of the cannon shot came once more
she trembled lest the battle be renewed in the darkness and surge over
this spot; but silence only followed the report. Misty forms filed past
in the thicket. They were in blue, a regiment of her own people passing
in the darkness. She crouched low in the grass, holding his head upon
her knees, hiding again, not for herself, but for him. She would not
have him a prisoner, but preferred to become one herself, and cared
nothing for it. This was repayment. His pulse was growing stronger and
stronger and he uttered half-spoken words while his head moved slightly
upon her knees.
She did not know how long she had been there, and she looked back again
toward the field. It was now wholly in darkness, then lighted dimly by a
fitful flash of lightning. She must carry him to shelter, and without
taking thought, she tried to lift him in her arms. He was heavy, lying
like lead, and she put him down again, but very softly. She must go for
help. Then she heard once more the tread of those riderless horses and
feared for him. She could not leave him there alone. She made a mighty
effort, lifted him in her arms, and staggered toward the battlefield.