Читать книгу Action at Aquila - Hervey Allen - Страница 7

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The pattern of alternate light and shade from the ports of the old bridge through which the head of his horse seemed to proceed like some animal in a weird legend, the hollow boom of Black Girl's hoofs in the long wooden cavern, marked in the colonel's mind the crossing of the river that flowed between the lands of peace and the realms of war.

As he came out in the sunlight on the other side, the familiar sight of a long line of army wagons climbing up from the river on the Carlisle Pike, bound south for Sheridan, confirmed his fancy. For a rough interchange of greetings and the whole-souled profanity of the drivers and escort as he passed along the train welcomed him with authentic vocabulary into the regions of Mars.

And it must be confessed that the smell of leather and horses, the squealing of wheels, the familiar odour from bags of coffee, beans, and bacon brought back memories of field and camp-fires that seemed, with a strange contradiction, also to be welcoming him home. For many years now the stars had been his roof and the trees his canopy; the ever-changing fields of war the landscape of his home--in the saddle. A horse was now almost like a part of his own body.

As he rode rapidly past the wagons he took the opportunity by light blows of his gauntlet about the tender ears of Black Girl to break her of the dangerous habit of neighing at every horse she met. It was a bad, it might be a fatal, habit for a soldier's mount. Black Girl, being female, laid her ears back and neighed the more. She could not, however, avoid the spurs. Her punishment was light, but she tore down the dusty highway towards Carlisle. He let her have her head half the way.

There was just a touch of autumn in the air. Here and there a maple burned gloriously before him. Constellations of golden pumpkins lay scattered amongst the cornstalks. The wheat sheaves were piled high. It was a bountiful harvest, but it was being taken in late. Only a year earlier Lee's invasion had swept over these border counties. Most of the mules and horses were gone and nearly all the wagons. And there had been subsequent raids for more horses and fodder. Many people, even lawyers and ministers in the smaller towns, still went hatless, barefoot, or in the flimsiest of pumps and slippers. From Chambersburg to York, Pennsylvania had been swept clean of hats and shoes, and had not yet reshod itself. Many women's shoes had gone South too, for the Army of Northern Virginia had wives--even babies, it appeared.

At Carlisle the colonel stayed the night. Part of the town was still in ruins from the bombardment of the year before. How Lee had massed his troops there, and the various adventures of people in the vicinity: that and the rebel raid of two months previous were the common talk of the neighbourhood. The colonel left early next morning and again overtook his friends of the wagon train encountered the day before. They were plodding steadily ahead, having camped outside the town overnight. Through the afternoon the long, wavering ranges of the Alleghenies began to climb above the horizon until the ridge of Tuscarora Mountain towered like a fortress against the western sky.

The distant sight of the green Appalachians never failed to make his heart leap up and to increase his fund of spirits. He regarded the calm, fertile, and magnificent valleys that lay between their wavelike, forested heights as the most characteristically native of any scenery in America--and he had seen a great deal of the United States both East and West. This Appalachian country was not huge, barren, and monotonous like so much of the West. There was nothing here to suggest that perhaps one had always better be moving. On the contrary, there was a kind of overtone from the countryside that whispered, "Tarry, traveller, tarry. Here is comfort for the soul of man. Here are verdancy and peace."

For two hundred years, under the King's Peace and the Federal Union, the benign promise of these valleys had been fostered and matured. In them European bones had grown longer, old ways of life had been forgotten and new habits formed. These kindly, rolling mountains had rocked the cradle of a new, perhaps a better, race--the North Americans. And the hope of that race was peace.

For if there was anything "new and better" about America it was the hope of peace--of peace on a more secure, vaster, continental scale than had ever been tried or attempted before. Oceans to the east and west of her, arid wilderness to the south, and the self-same friendly people to the north--the nation could not be seriously threatened by anything but disturbance from within.

And now that had come. If Lee and his gallant rebels succeeded, if the South successfully asserted her independence, a great armed barrier would stretch across the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There would be wars, endless Gettysburgs, raids, burnings, implacable anger and growing hatred, reprisals for generations to come.

Already the ancient, grim, and merry game of "Harry the Border" had begun.

The Valley of Virginia was laid waste from end to end. Neutral Maryland and the teeming southern counties of Pennsylvania with their shady towns, long the abodes of decency and peace, were ablaze with alarm lest the same fate should befall them.

In three years two blood-letting invasions and a constant series of raids had wrought incalculable havoc all along the Mason and Dixon line. The country on both sides of it was already full of new cemeteries and smoking villages. And as yet the bonds of federal union were only loosened. How when they were gone?--when every state was sovereign to do wrong! Or would it end even there?

Virginia had already divided in two and was fighting herself internally. Sinister accounts of villages "occupied" and ravaged by guerrillas who cared nothing for either cause, but a great deal for other people's property, were rife. In those hills to the south the dreadful revelries of chaos were already going on. Those hills the colonel regarded as rightfully the castles of a peace destined to endure for ages to come. His love for his nation was still somewhat English and was closely connected with the land. Those hills were to him the symbols of his country and, when he looked at them, he knew what he was fighting for.

For arguments about slavery and the negro, he cared little. They might be the ancient cause of this war. He could do nothing now about causes, but he could help to prevent the effects; save the future from continual chaos.

About four o'clock that afternoon he rode into Chambersburg, where the "effects" were abundantly evident. The town was mostly in ruins. Two hundred and fifty houses had been burned by Early's men seeking horses, shoes, fodder, and a half-million in cash--and other sundries scarce in Virginia. This had been only a few weeks before. A village of temporary shacks and shebangs had already sprung up amid the ashes. In the business section of the town, shops and stores were gallantly making shift as best they could to carry on with "business as usual" signs and a new stock of goods. The lower story of the old hotel had been made habitable, and the combined dining-room and bar, in particular, was doing a roaring, boom-time business, with the added excitement of the approaching election in full swing.

Chambersburg was one American town where the presence of the army was now genuinely desired and appreciated. The colonel found his uniform an easy passport to more hospitality and conviviality than he was able to enjoy. In some of its aspects the scene at the bar reminded him of his early Western days. All that was needed was the presence of a few drunken Indians to complete the illusion that Chambersburg was a frontier town. A number of rough-and-ready brethren as well as respectable citizens, farmers, sutlers, wagoners, soldiers, and politicians filled the room with a roar of talk and eddying tobacco smoke. One "Judge" Bristline, the henchman of Thaddeus Stevens "over to Lancaster," was busy turning out the regular Republican vote. He proved to be not only affable, but breezy. He stood against the bar with a glass of whisky before him, smoking a large El Sol cigar and welcoming every new-comer like a long-lost son. It was the colonel who made the initial mistake of starting a conversation that threatened to have no earthly end. . . .

"Bad as it is, it ain't as though the guerrillas had come here," said a young militia officer, interrupting Judge Bristline, but only temporarily. "The rebels were in a hurry because Averell's men were hard on their heels, but there was no one murdered, and I didn't hear of none of the girls being molested. That crowd that rode into Chambersburg last July looked like brigands, all right, but they had discipline. You will have to admit that."

"Yep," said Judge Bristline, who was more or less the oracle of the tavern, "you'll have to admit that." As the judge spoke he settled comfortably over the brass rail one high arch of a pair of fine new boots he had recently purchased in Philadelphia, and squinted reflectively into a tall glass of raw rye whisky.

"When the rebels came there was no promiscuous looting. They were in too much of a hurry for that. Yet when they burned this town, they burned it methodically. The half-million dollars they levied on us was taken in a positively cavalier manner. That is, what they could get of it. No promissory notes were accepted. Some of our citizens paid cash promptly for the first time in their lives. When they saw the money going off in boxes in a wagon they could scarcely believe it. It was just like a minstrel show taking all the small change out of town. Not much worse, either. They might have gotten all they demanded but they didn't know how to go about it. They don't know how rich these towns are, and cavaliers, you know, have always been poor financiers.

"The shoe business, however, was more annoying. That was an individual affair. They just stopped you in the street or went into your house or office and took the shoes off your feet or out of the closet. It was most humiliatin'. And it was a mistake, because they took both Democratic and Republican shoes. And I have observed that ever since then a barefooted Copperhead is as ardent a Union man as a black Republican. Yes, sir, it was evident that the Union meant shoes."

"Among other things, I hope," laughed the colonel.

"Admittedly, but below all--shoes," continued the judge, taking a deep swallow and fixing the flames of two bar lights in line in the remaining amber of his glass.

"You see, I'm a reflecting man. I look deep into things," said he, twirling his glass about, "after they happen, maybe. But like most people along the border, I've thought a good deal about what they call 'Lee's invasion,' and it occurs to me that, if Jeff Davis was responsible for it, phrenologically speaking he must have a hollow instead of a bump of sagacity under that shock of statesman's hair he sports. After all, he's an American and he used to be a good politician. So he must know that in America, next to love the most important thing is state politics. They say he sent Lee up North to force foreign recognition for the Confederacy--England, I suppose. What a damn-fool stunt that was! Trying to make friends with England, sir, he thoroughly antagonized Pennsylvania!"

The judge brought his fist down on the bar so that a dozen bottles jumped and everyone in the place looked at him.

"You can laugh if you like," he continued almost grimly; "you can say that I talk like a cider-barrel statesman or call me a barroom patriot." He refilled his glass, again held it up, and looked through the clear whisky at the lights.

"Never mind if I seem to be taking a strange view of things. Remember that I am now looking at affairs through one of the finest focusing mediums known to the mind of man. And what I say is that when Lee invaded Pennsylvania he sealed the fate of the South."

At this point the judge felt impelled to swallow his view of things.

"Gentlemen," said he, inspired now and no longer addressing the colonel in particular but everybody in the room, and an unseen audience besides, "--gentlemen of the bar, did you ever pause to consider the grand old Keystone Commonwealth? There are forty-five thousand square miles of her. She rolls superbly through mountain, valley, and plain from the Delaware to the Ohio. She teems with millions of hardy and prosperous citizens. In the East she deals with the seven seas. In the West she makes what all the world must have. Her farms are fabulously fertile and her mines pour forth the wealth of Golconda. Her many cities are beehives of ingenious artisans. Her philosophy is always the one that eventually prevails. Alone, and by herself, she constitutes one of the powerful nations of the earth. And it was this mighty commonwealth, a nigh and good neighbour to Virginia, that an armed rabble led by plantation owners mounted on hunting horses fell upon with fire, sword, and bloody slaughter. What for? To gain the possible recognition of England three thousand miles away! Was that strategy, was that statesmanship?"

"No!" the whole room roared back at him.

There was a great thumping of glasses and bottles, a stamping of feet--and not a little laughter.

"Make us another speech, judge," someone called.

"Where's your uniform?" yelled a soldier near the door, and dodged out.

The judge was instantly much embarrassed. He had not meant to make a speech. He had simply been a little overinspired by his "view of things," as he hastily explained to the colonel while leading him firmly by the arm to a table in the corner. There was no escaping him.

On this furlough the colonel seemed to be doomed to listen to other people's views on the war. Well, it was natural enough, he supposed. Civilians seemed to think that every soldier, every veteran in particular, was more interested in the war than in anything else. The colonel made up his mind then and there that as soon as the judge got through speaking his piece he would go out and saddle Black Girl, no matter what hour it was, and ride--ride away--over the mountains if necessary, to some valley that was peaceful.

"No," insisted the judge, "I should not have made a speech, although it was a good one about Lee's invasion, but I could write a book about it."

"I am sure you could," admitted the colonel hastily.

"But I won't," said the judge, "I'll just give you a few random impressions of it that will tend to confirm the point which I recently made, ahem, before the bar, as it were."

The colonel settled himself resignedly, but with an air of polite attention.

"Well, sir, when the rebels first poured into this town I couldn't believe it. I was surprised. What surprised me? Why, they seemed to have come out of the past. It wasn't that they were in Pennsylvania that was so astonishing. It was that they were in the present. Talk, clothes, manners, the way they acted was, well, it was colonial! Damn me, I can't quite explain it, maybe, but it seemed like hearing echoes and watching ghosts of something I thought I'd forgotten. They seemed like so many yesterdays trying to palm themselves off as the heirs of tomorrow. And that's what made us all feel that for certain they'd have to clear out. Time itself seemed to be against them. I believe they felt uneasy about it themselves. They acted that way. Taking old hats and shoes too!

"Old Mrs. Patterson who lives down the Old York Road--she's nearly eighty--told me the same thing. 'Land sakes,' she says, 'I'd forgotten folks could look that way. They come tearin' down the road like somethin' out of an old, bad story of hard times. Them officers with long, droopy capes ridin' loose on rangy horses, with a curl in their hats, so bearded and proud. It's like what English Uncle Ned used to tell us about fightin' Boney. And the cannon comin' tearin' and bumpin' after 'em. That's what they wanted our good wagon wheels fer! And if you think the riders went by fast, you ought to've saw their foot soldiers. They don't march like our boys, all regular and together. They come stormin' along, bare feet and tattered trousers; cursin', whistlin', lettin' out yowls. It was the yowlin' made us all so mad. You could tell that people what whoop like that ain't fer law an' order, even at their own homes. No, sir, they don't march together. Each one fer himself with long strides kind o' wolfin' it along, and long rifles straight back over their shoulders. I never seen so many lean faces under broad felt hats all et round the brim. Land! Folks ain't wore hats like that around here sence the stumps was took out. Swan ef I know where they got 'em. 'Course they was hungry! They just et us out o' house and home. That's all they took in the house 'cept shoes. A general and his staff come in the yard and I give 'em a bakin' o' blackberry pie. There they set eatin' wedges of pie and tryin' to keep the juice from runnin' down onto their dusty breasts by wipin' their mouths with their gloves. I give the general a bottle of elderberry wine too. He stuck it in his holster like a pistol and thanked me like a gentleman. I guess maybe he was one. Our little Billy was a-settin' by the pump watchin', and he speaks up sudden-like and says "Hurrah for Abe Lincoln!" "That's right, son," says the general, "stick up fer your own side." And they all galloped off laughin', latherin' down the road with the dust rollin'. My, there was a sight of 'em. All day they kept comin' down the hill. You'd see a bunch of old flags against the sky and hear 'em yowlin', and then another hull colyum ud go by. After a while we jes' closed the shutters and set in the parlour like it was a funeral. When we come out the horses was gone and most o' the hay, and wagon wheels. That's what we're tryin' to get the government to pay fer now--the United States government! They ought to pay or keep people like that where they belong. It was like somethin' let out. Next day our John jes' went off and jined the militia. "I ain't a-goin' to stand fer it," he says. Next thing we heard was about Gettysburg. Served 'em right!'"

The judge was an excellent mimic. In the rôle of old Mrs. Patterson he had again contrived to get the attention of the entire room. The colonel was amused despite himself.

"Laugh if you want," said the judge, "but that's history. You see, the point I'm making is that the personal appearance of the rebels in Pennsylvania was a mistake. After we saw 'em we knew they couldn't win. You'll always read about Gettysburg in the books after this, but what you won't read, and what I know, is that it wouldn't have made much difference if they'd won. They'd have been awful tired even after a victory. They might even have got into Baltimore, or Washington or Philadelphia--and there they'd have been waiting for English help. They wouldn't ever have gotten North. Do you remember how the farmers turned out and shot the British off around Lexington? Well, it would have been like that only on a big, big scale. It's a long walk up three hundred miles of the Susquehanna, with fine shooting from every hill, and then you come to the border of New York. What Lee's invasion did was to turn out the posse comitatus of the nation to put his people down. Up to that time the war had been fought by Abe Lincoln's government from Washington with the U. S. Army. Lee turned out the militia of the big powerful states against him. What Lincoln's and Governor Curtin's proclamations and bounties and the draft couldn't do, the invasion of Pennsylvania did. It got swarms of men for the Army of the Potomac. That's the finest army the world has ever seen. The more you beat it the better it gets. And now it has a great man for its general. Let's drink to him," cried the judge. "It's on me. This nonsense about two governments in one country is soon going to be over."

"To the last battle then," said the colonel.

"The only one that finally counts," said the judge. They drank.

The judge seized the colonel's sleeve. "I want to tell you one thing more," said he earnestly.

"Good Lord, man," said the colonel, "I won't run off with your best audience, even if it's me. But a bargain! Only one thing--not two. I've got to go--sometime!"

"I know it," replied the judge, looking rueful nevertheless. "It's too bad. But did you see the rebels in Pennsylvania?"

"No, sir, I was in Virginia at the time," laughed the colonel.

"It would have encouraged you to have seen them in Pennsylvania."

"I can scarcely conceive that it would," said the colonel.

"But it would have. You see, they came all excited and full of enthusiasm as though they'd won a victory just by invading. They came 'yowlin'' along the roads, as old Mrs. Patterson said. And after a while the yowls kind of died away. I talked to some of them here before they burned the town. They were surprised and discouraged already. There were more men about than they'd ever seen before, even in peacetimes. And white men. No signs of war. The most prosperous towns most of 'em had ever seen, and farms like they hadn't dreamed of.

"'You didn't know theh was a wah till we-all come No'th, did you?' a young feller from Mississippi says to me.

"'No,' I says, 'not unless we read about it in the papers.'

"'How fah across is it, strangeh?'

"'How far across what?'

"'How fah across Yankee-land till ye git to Canada?' he jerks out, kind o' firin' up as though I ought to be able to read his mind.

"'Oh, about seven hundred miles, stranger-r-r,' I growls. 'And swarmin' with militia!'

"'Shucks,' he says, looking kind o' sody-biscuit green. 'They told us you was all tuckered out at the No'th. 'Tain't so, is it?'

"'Nope,' say I, 'it ain't.'

"'Well, if it's that fah across Yankee-land,' he adds kind o' soft, 'I'll jes' esk fer yer shoes.'

"So I got down on the kerb and unlaced 'em.

"'You can keep yoh co-at,' he says, 'it would make my par look like an abolitionist. Er you one?'

"'No, my pa owned niggers right here once and not so long ago.'

"'Do tell,' says he. 'Well, then, ah reckon ah'll take the co-at!'

"Now that's one thing I want to tell you, but there's another thing I want to ask you."

The long-suffering colonel nodded and took a restorative drink. The judge joined him.

"It's this. That same day as I walked, rather I should say, sir, as I limped barefooted down Main Street, there was a couple of young rebels looking in Mrs. Tubb's window. She's our milliner. And one says to the other, 'Lookee, Telfare, thar's moh poke bonnets in that thar window than you'll ever see in fohty Easters at Ninety-Six.'

"Now what do you think he meant by that?"

"Ninety-Six is a town in one of the Carolinas, I believe," replied the colonel.

"No! You don't say so! Ninety-Six! Why, that proves the point I've been making all along," cried the judge, his face brightening irrationally. "If you want to talk that kind of arithmetic I'd put it this way: They have as much chance of beating us as Ninety-Six is to Philadelphia. Do you get my point?" He looked a little confused. "You will," he insisted, "if you take my point of view."

He raised the glass in the air and looked at the light again. He seemed to be having some difficulty with his eyes. And the glass was empty. The finger which had been detaining the colonel by the sleeve all evening now relaxed. The colonel carefully detached himself and rose, leaving the judge sitting there looking through his glass. He almost tiptoed over to the bar.

"What do I owe?" said he.

"Are you payin' for the judge too?" whispered the barkeep thoughtfully.

"Yes," said the colonel, "rather than disturb him now, I'd . . ."

The man nodded.

"Well, the judge came in about three o'clock this afternoon."

"Old Thad Stevens over to Lancaster says he's going to make 'em pay for all the trouble they put us to," began the judge.

"Lord!" said the colonel, looking frantically at the barkeep.

"Seven-fifty," said the barkeep.

The colonel paid and ran.

Judge Bristline continued to sit in the corner looking through his empty glass. He had lost his point of view. One eye had set up a Confederacy of its own and insisted upon deviating from the true line of sight. Where there should have been one light, the judge saw two.

The colonel looked up and saw ten thousand. He was standing outside once more, breathing freely, and looking up at the stars.

All about him rose the blackened chimneys and fire-scarred walls of the burnt town. Here and there amid the ruins a light twinkled from the window of a house where the inhabitants had returned and set about repairs. There was already quite a number of these cheerful beacons of returning peace, but the place still smelled of charred, damp wood and had about it the indescribable, owlish air of ruin and a great burning. The memories thus aroused were for the colonel, momentarily at least, unbearable. It smelled like the Valley of Virginia.

He must get away from this. Only about three weeks of his precious leave remained. For each one of these weeks he had already spent a year in the midst of war, and that part of his furlough which lay behind him had, it seemed, been devoted to the same thing--nothing but talk about the war. If he could only get a few days', even a few hours' change! Perhaps in the remote Fulton County Valley just to the west, where there were no railroads and where few raids had come, he might find--oh, well, just a brief respite. That was all he was looking for. Black Girl would be tired, but she was now a soldier's horse and in any event she must get used to being frequently roused at night.

He borrowed a lantern, and going to the stables, which were as yet only half-roofed-in, he roused the mare, gave her an extra feed and a good rub-down. She stood patiently while he saddled her. She made no effort to refuse the bit. . . . He was glad to see that already she trusted him. "Poor beast," he murmured, "this is not your quarrel, but you will probably be killed in it--bearing your master." He rode out, quietly keeping to the turf.

Some hours later he was ascending the long winding road that leads over a high ridge of Tuscarora Mountain to the Fulton Valley beyond. It was well after midnight when he reached the crest and one of the great views of the Eastern United States burst upon him.

The remnant of a late moon rode high, pouring a solemn glory into the giant furrow between the straight lines of mountains. Farm and hamlet, orchard, wood and meadow lay preternaturally clear in a metallic light. Southward as far as the eye could see a little river of quicksilver glittered in S-shaped curves. There was not the slightest suggestion of movement anywhere. It was like a glimpse into the hidden Garden of the Hesperides.

Here, if anywhere--thought the colonel.

He removed his hat and let the cool night breeze run through his hair. Black Girl stood, her feet apart, breathing slowly. Miles below, a few lamps in the valley marked the village of McConnellsburg.