Читать книгу The Girl at the Halfway House - Emerson Hough - Страница 6

When the band major was twenty miles away in front of Louisburg his trumpets sounded always the advance. The general played the game calmly. The line of the march was to be along the main road leading into the town. With this course determined, the general massed his reserves, sent on the column of assault, halted at the edge of the wood, deployed his skirmishers, advanced them, withdrew them, retreated but advanced again, ever irresistibly sweeping the board in toward the base of Louisburg, knight meeting knight, pawn meeting pawn, each side giving and taking pieces on the red board of war.

The main intrenchments erected in the defences of Louisburg lay at right angles to the road along which came the Northern advance, and upon the side of the wood nearest to the town. Back of the trenches lay broken fields, cut up by many fences and dotted with occasional trees. In the fields both the wheat and the flowers were now trampled down, and a thousand industrious and complaining bees buzzed protest at the losing of their commerce. The defences themselves were but earthworks, though skilfully laid out. Along their front, well hidden by the forest growth, ran a line of entangling abattis of stakes and sharpened interwoven boughs.

In the centre of the line of defence lay the reserves, the boys of Louisburg, flanked on either side by regiments of veterans, the lean and black-haired Georgians and Carolinians, whose steadiness and unconcern gave comfort to more than one bursting boyish heart. The veterans had long played the game of war. They had long since said good-bye to their women. They had seen how small a thing is life, how easily and swiftly to be ended. Yellow-pale, their knees standing high in front of them as they squatted about on the ground, their long black hair hanging down uncared for, they chewed, smoked, swore, and cooked as though there was no jarring in the earth, no wide foreboding on the air. One man, sitting over his little fire, alternately removed and touched his lips to the sooty rim of his tin cup, swearing because it was too hot. He swore still more loudly and in tones more aggrieved when a bullet, finding that line, cut off a limb from a tree above and dropped it into his fire, upsetting the frying pan in which he had other store of things desirable. Repairing all this damage as he might, he lit his pipe and leaned against the tree, sitting with his knees high in front of him. There came other bullets, singing, sighing. Another bullet found that same line as the man sat there smoking.

Overhead were small birds, chirping, singing, twittering. A long black line of crows passed, tumbling in the air, with much confusion of chatter and clangour of complaint that their harvest, too, had been disturbed. They had been busy. Why should men play this game when there were serious things of life?

The general played calmly, and ever the points and edges and fronts of his advance came on, pressing in toward the last row of the board, toward the line where lay the boys of Louisburg. Many a boy was pale and sick that day, in spite of the encouraging calm or the biting jests of the veterans. The strange sighings in the air became more numerous and more urgent. Now and then bits of twigs and boughs and leaves came sifting down, cut by invisible shears, and now and then a sapling jarred with the thud of an unseen blow. The long line in the trenches moved and twisted restlessly.

In front of the trenches were other regiments, out ahead in the woods, unseen, somewhere toward that place whence came the steadiest jarring of artillery and the loudest rattling of the lesser arms. It was very hard to lie and listen, to imagine, to suspect, to dread. For hours the game went on, the reserves at the trenches hearing now distinctly and now faintly the tumult of the lines, now receding, now coming on. But the volume of the tumult, and its separation into a thousand distinct and terrifying sounds, became in the average ever an increasing and not a lessening thing. The cracker-popping of the musketry became less and less a thing of sport, of reminiscences. The whinings that passed overhead bore more and more a personal message. These young men, who but lately had said good-bye to the women of their kin, began to learn what war might mean. It had been heretofore a distant, unmeasured, undreaded thing, conquerable, not to be feared. It seemed so sweet and fit to go forth, even though it had been hard to say good-bye!

Now there began to appear in the woods before the trenches the figures of men, at first scattered, then becoming steadily more numerous. There came men bearing other men whose arms lopped loosely. Some men walked with a hand gripped tightly to an arm; others hobbled painfully. Two men sometimes supported a third, whose head, heavy and a-droop, would now and then be kept erect with difficulty, the eyes staring with a ghastly, sheepish gaze, the face set in a look of horrified surprise. This awful rabble, the parings of the defeated line in front, dropped back through the woods, dropped back upon the young reserves, who lay there in the line. Some of them could go no farther, but fell there and lay silent. Others passed back into the fields where droned the protesting bees, or where here and there a wide tree offered shelter. Suddenly all the summer air was filled with anguish and horror. Was this, then, the War?

And now there appeared yet other figures among the trees, a straggling, broken line, which fell back, halted, stood and fired always calmly, coolly, at some unseen thing in front of them. But this line resolved itself into individuals, who came back to the edge of the wood, methodically picking their way through the abattis, climbing the intervening fences, and finally clambering into the earthworks to take their places for the final stand. They spoke with grinning respect of that which was out there ahead, coming on. They threw off their coats and tightened their belts, making themselves comfortable for what time there yet remained. One man saw a soldier sitting under a tree, leaning against the trunk, his knees high in front of him, his pipe between his lips. Getting no answer to his request for the loan of the pipe, he snatched it without leave, and then, discovering the truth, went on none the less to enjoy the luxury of a smoke, it seeming to him desirable to compass this while it yet remained among the possibilities of life.

At last there came a continued, hoarse, deep cheering, a roaring wave of menace made up of little sounds. An officer sprang up to the top of the breastworks and waved his sword, shouting out something which no one heard or cared to hear. The line in the trenches, boys and veterans, reserves and remnants of the columns of defence, rose and poured volley after volley, as they could, into the thick and concealing woods that lay before them. None the less, there appeared soon a long, dusty, faded line, trotting, running, walking, falling, stumbling, but coming on. It swept like a long serpent parallel to the works, writhing, smitten but surviving. It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it. It writhed, roared, but it broke through. It swept over the rail fences that lay between the lines and the abattis, and still came on! This was not war, but Fate!

There came a cloud of smoke, hiding the face of the intrenchments. Then the boys of Louisburg saw bursting through this suffocating curtain a few faces, many faces, long rows of faces, some pale, some red, some laughing, some horrified, some shouting, some swearing—a long row of faces that swept through the smoke, following a line of steel—a line of steel that flickered, waved, and dipped.