IV: May 5, 1862

IV

MAY 5, 1862

I

THEY WERE ALL AT WILLIAMSBURG AGAIN FOR GRAN’S BIRTHDAY in October.

Ransom had gone with Lee into West Virginia at the end of July, and as soon as Lafe could be moved Louise took him home to England Street, accompanied by Eden and Felicity, who no longer had any reason to stay in Richmond. Sedgwick was in camp on the Manassas Line, chafing at the inactivity of the Southern Command, which had failed to follow up its victory at Manassas. Johnston had fortified Centreville, only twenty miles from Washington, and the flag on his outposts flew derisively within sight of the capital. The Peninsula defences were well advanced, but Magruder was hampered by lack of transport and an inadequate commissary.

By October it was seen that Lee’s West Virginia campaign had come to nothing and he was recalled to Richmond with some loss of prestige.

Ransom was indignant over the whole thing. He said that Lee had regarded it as a forlorn hope in any case, and that he had been harried and thwarted at every turn by the fatal mistakes of his subordinates. Lee made no excuses and prepared no report to lay the blame where it belonged. But for Davis’

personal faith in him, he might have been shelved forever. A Federal fleet had arrived off the coast of South Carolina and Davis chose Lee to go down and organize the defences there. The appointment was not popular with the fire-eaters of Richmond. They said Granny Lee was too polite for this war, and added that perhaps he would do better with a spade than with a sword.

The week that Lee spent in Richmond conferring with Davis gave Ransom leave just in time to come to Gran’s birthday party.

Sedgwick, too, got leave from the dreary tents around Centreville. He was thin, but had by some miracle kept well in the midst of measles, pneumonia, dysentery, and typhoid which struck down men on all sides of him. Sedgwick did not value his life very highly these days, and so it seemed he was in no danger of losing it. Lafe, whose convalescence had

been long, with many relapses, took comfort from the dynamic presence of his tall soldier son, and a closer understanding and affection existed between them than ever before.

Sedgwick told them picturesque stories about a young cavalry officer known as Jeb Stuart, a great dandy in his dress, whose hard-riding, hard-bitten troopers sang as they rode, even on the most taxing marches, if silence was not an essential part of the manœuvre. Sedgwick had made up his mind to get out of the infantry regiment and become a horse soldier with Stuart. Meanwhile, Sue watched him almost timidly. He was different, there were things about him now which were unfamiliar to her, and she had always known him so well. He had towards her a laughing, almost paternal air which was all he dared allow himself of their lifelong intimacy. And she missed his tenderness, and wondered if it was gone forever.

The birthday party was not very gay. Except for the men who, like Dabney, were serving with Magruder below Williamsburg, the afternoon reception was attended largely by women, and there was a general want of good spirits among them. Even the most ardent Secessionists had begun to realize that the war was not won at Manassas. Those who had clung obstinately to the conviction that England would intervene on the side of the South because of her cotton trade had begun to doubt. The pinch of the blockade was already being felt, till even the simplest necessaries, like hairpins, needles, calico, and sugar, were often entirely missing in the shops. Coffee had gone up to thirty cents a pound, tea was hard to find and was saved for invalids, everyone was trying to devise substitutes for sugar.

Gran had been through it all before. Under her prudent guidance, the household had laid in supplies to stock a small shop before the price-gouging began.

Christmas was even less cheerful. Sedgwick could not get leave; the Institute discouraged holiday travel by the cadets, so that Fauquier, too, was lacking; Ransom was stuck at Coosawhatchie with Lee. Lafe insisted that he was well enough now to resume field duty, and was setting out with Louise for Richmond again directly after New Year’s, hoping for an appointment to the staff of Johnston or Longstreet, as Beauregard had gone to Kentucky.

On Christmas morning when Pharaoh unlocked the front door he found on the threshold a square white parcel tied with stout cord. A tag attached to

it was addressed to Mrs. Julian Day—that was Gran, and everyone guessed at once who had sent it.

With some ceremony and excitement it was taken up to her room and she sat up in bed to receive it, discarding her half-finished breakfast tray.

Eden and Felicity watched her, smiling, while she opened it—Gran did love a gift. It was a heavy cardboard box of goodies from Gautier’s, which had run the blockade from Washington—marvels of marzipan and crystallized sugar, almonds coated with chocolate, mysterious gems of silver paper tied with gauze ribbon and little nosegays—Gran exclaimed like a child. It was not until afternoon that they came to the bottom layer.

Gran had come down to the drawing room in her best dress, in case anyone called, and they were sitting in a group round the fire, and Myrta was exploring the square white box for the single sweet she was allowed to choose, when she cried suddenly, “Oh, look, there’s something more!”

The bottom layer revealed two wrapped packages, and one of them was marked with Eden’s name. She had to open it there before them all, her cheeks rather pink—a small box with Galt’s gilt signature on the lid, and inside it a blue sapphire ring set with diamonds.

“Oh!” cried Myrta in an envious ecstasy. “Oh, Eden, he must be rich as Crow-sis!”

Felicity’s eyebrows rose, and she glanced at Gran, who refused to return her look.

“Put it on, Dee,” said Gran, for Eden sat staring at the lovely thing in its box without making a move to possess it.

“Yes, do put it on, Dee, what luck you’re wearing a blue dress!” said Sue.

Eden lifted the ring from its white satin bed and slipped it on her third finger. It was a perfect fit. The large, pure stone shone unbelievably, lit by the diamond points which surrounded it.

“Oh!” said Myrta again, spellbound. “I wish I was engaged to Cabot Murray!’ What’s in your parcel, Gran?”

It was an eighteenth-century silver vinaigrette made like a heart-shaped locket with L’Amitié engraved on an embossed ribbon scroll across it. When you opened the snap top it revealed a grid exquisitely pierced in a design of heartsease and leaves, and when you sniffed there was the sharp sweet tang of French smelling salts.

“To think of all that lying on the doorstep!” said Sue. “How do you think it got there, Dee?”

“The rivers are full of smugglers,” Felicity told her quietly. “It would have been more to the point, I’m afraid, if he had sent quinine and calomel for our poor soldiers.”

“But not so much like him,” murmured Gran.

That night Eden crept downstairs after everyone was asleep and posted a letter to Cabot Murray on her own doorstep. But when she went down in the dawn to see, it was still there. No one had come back for a message.

“Well, at least he can be sure you won’t forget him now!” Gran consoled her, laughing.

II

A Yankee general named McClellan had been given command of the Federal Army in Virginia, in place of MacDowell, who could never live down Manassas. He was an engineer, and had gone to the Crimea as an observer with a Military Commission when he was only twenty-nine. His assignment now, at the age of thirty-five, was to take Richmond. He was hard, vigorous, up-to-date, and conceited, with a liking for personal fame.

And during the winter of 1861-62 he built an army of citizen soldiers which was rather like himself. As spring came in, there was uncertainty in the South as to whether he would hurl it first against the troops encamped near the old Manassas battlefield or try to flank them and come at Richmond up the Peninsula.

In March Johnston suddenly withdrew his army from the Manassas Line to south of the Rappahannock, where he could more easily cover all available routes to Richmond, and could in case of need unite quickly with Magruder below Williamsburg. McClellan promptly occupied the deserted camp at Centreville. Then from Alexandria he embarked his army for Fortress Monroe, where he arrived on April second.

Changes had taken place on the Confederate side too.

After undue elation following the Manassas success, the South was now depressed and discouraged by a series of disasters in the West, where Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Nashville had all fallen to an obscure Federal general named Grant. They were next briefly cheered by the exploits of the

iron-clad dreadnaught Merrimac, but then there was a rumour that Richmond was going to be given up without a fight. That came to nothing, but the March enrollment of all men between eighteen and forty-five for conscription did not raise their spirits. Davis recalled Lee to Richmond in something like despair, and Ransom wrote disgustedly to Felicity soon after his return from the Carolina coast:

“Things have gone from bad to worse—now let Lee try! And even now they won’t give him a free hand. Davis believes in him—says he does—but keeps him at a desk at Richmond headquarters and clings jealously to his own rights as Commander-in-Chief with a deathlike grip.

Johnston still commands in the field. People here are beginning to realize the odds against us—we are 9,000 against 23,000, for one thing.

“Lee expects an attack on the Peninsula as soon as roads are firmer. I am of two minds about your safety. You are in the line of march there, but Richmond is after all their goal, and is now a very unpleasant place to be, besides. It is full of refugees from the Norfolk area, which is considered to be in danger, as well as from the northern part of the State.

Food is scarce and very dear. Meat isn’t fit to eat, butter and eggs are never seen any more, coffee and tea are luxuries of the past. Poor Johnston has lost three small children by scarlet fever. I think you had better stay where you are for the present. Lee and I are two Spartan bachelors inhabiting the Spotswood. His wife is at White House on the York River, and he does not think it wise to bring her here in her present state of health. Our long hours at the office leave us little time for social life.

“Sedgwick has been in town on a few days’ leave, much elated over his transfer to Stuart’s cavalry, a coveted post. But you know that, of course, as he has sent home for a remount. He says if you cannot sing Oh Susannah and make up a new and shocking verse as you go you can’t get into the cavalry at all! He looks well, and is the only person I know who seems to be enjoying this war. I saw Lafe for a few minutes yesterday—he’s not very happy since his assignment to General Johnston, who is irascible to a degree. I wish you could persuade Louise to come home, she is as likely to see him there as here now, and it is lonely for her at the Spotswood, though Sally is anything but that!

“The newspapers nowadays are enough to make you want to cut your throat, and in their zeal to inform the public leak all sorts of the most vital information to the enemy. We need time desperately—time and ammunition, which is endlessly delayed by the blockade. Everyone is calling for reinforcements, even Stonewall Jackson….”

He did not add that there was sickening anxiety in Richmond for Magruder’s little force on the Peninsula. And Felicity, when she answered the letter, did not tell him that the women of Williamsburg were making sandbags for Magruder out of everything from tablecloths to their silk dresses.

On the fourth of April McClellan advanced on Yorktown.

III

For Tibby Day it all had a weird nightmare quality of repetitiousness.

She had been there before. But now, in the fortifications made by the British in 1781 and lately improved by modern engineering, Magruder held Yorktown against the enemy, and Dabney was with the men who slept on their arms in the trenches at the other end of the Warwick Line, which ran north and south across the Peninsula along the little river of that name.

Magruder’s ranks were thin and overworked, and everyone knew that in the face of any real attack he must give ground to the last fortifications, only two miles east of Williamsburg—where he had constructed a fort named for himself, and numerous redoubts and rifle pits, and had felled trees on the far side of open land to form a natural abatis of logs.

It was all improvised and undermanned, but it was all there was. And it brought McClellan to a standstill outside Yorktown on the fifth, and to everyone’s surprise he went into camp and began digging parallels and making redoubts of his own as though for an elaborate siege in the George Washington manner.

When this had gone on for days, and still McClellan seemed in no hurry to attack, Williamsburg relaxed a little. Dabney rode into town for a few hours’ leave, and told with joyous laughter how Magruder, always theatrical, was stage-managing his outnumbered forces to make them look like more—how on involved, meaningless manœuvres designed only for

show, he even marched companies in a circle like a stage army, at the edge of dense woods, as though he shifted whole regiments for some obscure purpose hidden by the trees from the watchers only a few hundred yards away. And McClellan, peering through his field glasses, receiving reports from his observation balloon which went up daily, was gratifyingly deceived, and considered his force inadequate for assault, never dreaming he outnumbered Magruder more than three to one.

When Dabney had gone back to the line, tall and confident and swaggering a little in his freshened-up grey uniform, Gran comforted Felicity. “We always win at Yorktown,” she said.

The next day, while Eden sat with her knitting in Gran’s room after dinner, Pharaoh’s soft tap on the door preceded his doubtful entrance with a soiled and rumpled white envelope in his hand.

“Nigger chile nobody ever saw befo’ bring dis-yere to Micah in de stables,” he explained apologetically, “swearin’ it’s fer Miss Eden. ’Tain’t so written on de outside, but Micah bring it into de house, an’ nigger chile done disappear.”

Eden held out her hand for the letter with misgivings. From tact or caution the envelope was unaddressed. She glanced at Gran uncertainly.

“Thank you, Pharaoh,” said Gran, dismissing him with a placid smile.

“Open it, Dee.”

Eden broke the seal rather daintily. The paper inside was clean, and the message was brief:

Beloved, I am here with McClellan. When I got the assignment I had no idea it would bring me so near to you so soon. I think of you always, for you belong to me by a law which was not made in Richmond or Washington, nor can it ever be revoked by any legislature yet devised by man. Whatever happens now, I hope with all my heart that it will not bring grief or disaster to your household. Rest assured that my part in the coming campaign will be that of an observer only. I shall not fire a shot.

C.

Eden finished reading it with a little moan and dropped the paper in her grandmother’s lap.

“What difference does that make!” she said, and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, what difference does he think it makes!”

“It was all he could say,” said Gran, when she had read the message through. “He meant it for your comfort.” Eden was sobbing, and she reached to lay a small, frail hand on the shaken shoulders, but her face was serene. “There, there,” she said. “Don’t take it so hard Dee. Wars don’t last forever. I know. I can remember the last time before Yorktown— how I cried! But he came back safe. Most of them come back safe. I can remember—”

Towards the middle of the month General Johnston arrived from Richmond with Lafe riding in the group of officers which followed him, and Lafe got nearly an hour to visit Gran and to give them all the news.

From him they heard that the Confederates were beaten at Shiloh, after they had so nearly won—that man Grant again, and another named Sherman.

The Manassas army, Lafe said, was now encamped near Richmond, and Johnston wanted to keep it there and withdraw Magruder to the Richmond side of the Chickahominy as well. Lee and Davis were in favour of sending it to Magruder’s support on the Peninsula. The next few days would decide.

Ransom had become indispensable to Lee at the Richmond headquarters, Lafe said, and Sedgwick had been on leave again in his new glory of cavalry boots and sabre. Jeb Stuart was likely to choose his men on whims, and Lafe told the story of Sedgwick’s transfer with laughter which did not mask his pride.

Sedgwick had taken his favourite horse, Cherry, back to Centreville with him for company, after his October leave, Judah riding behind him on a sober little mare named Jingle. Soon after they reached camp again Sedgwick had ridden over to the cavalry camp near-by to see the horses, and was standing with his bridle over his arm chatting to a friend when Stuart passed by on his own blood bay. The general’s eyes ran swiftly over Cherry’s points, and he drew rein. “Whose horse is that?” he demanded.

Sedgwick presented himself respectfully as Cherry’s owner. Stuart’s eyes lingered on Cherry. “I’d like to try him,” he remarked. “Would you like to try my Skylark, here?” Sedgwick would like nothing better. Stuart dismounted, tossed his reins to Sedgwick, swung into Cherry’s saddle.

Sedgwick was up on Skylark simultaneously. “Come on!” said Stuart, and they were off, trot, canter, wheel, parade walk, full gallop over broken

ground—they pulled up at last, far from the camp, and eyed each other with mutual respect. “Did you ever time him over the half-mile?” Stuart asked wistfully, and just as Sedgwick replied with regret in the negative a bullet whizzed past their heads, followed by another, and another.

“I think we have ridden towards the enemy outposts, sir,” said Sedgwick, without blinking.

“Must be we have,” Stuart agreed, with a glance in the direction from which the shots were fired, as two more came whining over. “Shootin’ high

—they always do.” He put Cherry to a leisurely trot back towards their own lines, and Sedgwick followed. “Cavalry gallops at the enemy and trots away from him!” the general advised him cheerfully. “A good man on a good horse needn’t ever get into any real trouble, with any luck at all.”

They rode back to camp side by side at an easy pace, and exchanged horses again. The next day Sedgwick was ordered to report for duty to General Stuart. It was only a question of time now, said Lafe, until Stuart discovered that Sedgwick had the sort of singing voice derisively known in the family as nigger tenor, and could, of course, play a guitar.

Lafe left Williamsburg with Johnston the same day they came, and Ransom wrote that it had been decided after a stormy conference at headquarters to reinforce Magruder with the Manassas army—which meant that Louise was returning to Williamsburg at once with Sally as both Lafe and Sedgwick would arrive there within the next few days. Lee is not allowed to fight this war in the saddle, Ransom added bitterly. Only to give advice, which as a rule is most ungraciously received. No one but McClellan would have hesitated so long to attack as things are now:

“Must we tell them Cabot is with McClellan?” Eden inquired of her grandmother.

“I don’t see the necessity,” was the reply. “We burned the message, didn’t we?”

Eden nodded drearily.

“I hate having to burn my love letters!” she cried. “It’s—humiliating!”

“You’ve still got the ring,” Gran consoled her.

Johnston made his headquarters at the Vest house in the Duke of Gloucester Street. For days the reinforcements poured through the streets of Williamsburg and out towards Yorktown—Harvey Hill came first with his Carolinians; then Longstreet and Early, Pickett, and A. P. Hill; and Stuart’s

famous cavalry, who rode into town singing, led by their general’s own lusty baritone:

“If you want to smell hell—

If you want to have fun—

If you want to catch the devil—

Jine the cav-al-ree!”

There were veteran troops from Manassas in Johnston’s army, and newly organized units as well—a very cheering sight to the inhabitants of Williamsburg. Things perked up there in no time, though Johnston was gloomy and warned Huger at Norfolk to prepare to evacuate if he fell back from Yorktown. Johnston had not wanted to come to the Peninsula, and he did not want to stay there. Meanwhile, he viewed McClellan’s complicated siege operations with a disparaging eye.

Lafe could live at home now, and Sedgwick often clanked in to town in sabre and spurs from the cavalry camp. Sedgwick was already sporting the yellow sash of a captain on the Staff, and even as Ransom had said seemed actually to be enjoying the war—as quite possibly he might, for there is nothing like cavalry life for taking a man’s mind off himself.

There was daily cannonading to and fro as April wore on, but with scant result on either side. And there was daily sniping at McClellan’s observation balloon, which was never hit, and much riding back and forth from the front line to the Vest house by orderlies and staff officers.

Johnston’s headquarters were nothing like as gay as Magruder’s had been—

he ranked Magruder, who fell back gracefully before his superior officer—

but there was considerable social life all the same, especially where the cavalry went.

Next to horses Jeb Stuart loved music and dancing, loved to sing and hear singing, and kept always with him a sort of personal minstrel, a man named Sweeny who played the banjo and knew all the songs. It was said that Stuart went to any lengths to entice away from any other commander any man with a good singing voice, and that men who were bored in the infantry or artillery moved heaven and earth to get into the cavalry, where the fun was.

Large, laughing, bearded, booted, with a tasselled yellow silk sash and an ostrich plume in his broad-brimmed hat, General Stuart dined out in Williamsburg with great success—and one night with Sedgwick as his host he bowed over Gran’s hand, coaxed Eden to play and sing his favourite Oh Susannah with him as a joke on young Sue, made Sedgwick sing Lorena to the guitar, flirted with Sally, flattered Felicity, and spoke to Louise with simple affection for her son, who, he said, was a fellow after his own heart.

When the evening was over they were all agreed that there was no one like General Stuart, and were proud that Sedgwick should be serving under his command. There was just one thing, said Sedgwick confidentially. The cavalry camp was always bone dry. If you wanted a drink you had to go next door to Longstreet’s gang.

The weather was foul for spring in Virginia, with a continuous cold downpour of rain enlivened by thunderstorms. On the evening of the first of May Lafe brought home word of the loss of New Orleans—which some felt was the whole war lost, with Farragut in possession of the lower Mississippi and Grant outside Corinth.

While they discussed it, grave-faced, in England Street, Sedgwick’s spurs announced his arrival in the hall and he came in looking keyed up and ready for anything.

“I think we’re moving,” he told his father. “The sick and wounded are ordered out to Richmond. Things are stirring somehow. What’s up, do you know?”

“Yes,” said Lafe cautiously. “We may be pulling out of here.”

“Without a fight?” cried Sedgwick incredulously.

“You’ll get a fight, all right, in the cavalry,” Lafe promised him grimly.

“You’ll get the rear guard action while we drag the baggage wagons through this mud!”

“You mean we’re evacuating?” Sedgwick demanded. “Then what in the name of commonsense did we come here for?”

“We came to delay McClellan as long as we could—which we have done. Johnston never wanted to come here. He is convinced that now McClellan is about ready to open with his batteries and blow us right off the Peninsula. We haven’t got the guns to compete with his, you know, once he turns loose on us.”

“But—what about the town?” asked Sedgwick, thinking of his womenfolk, and Lafe sighed with a glance at Louise where she sat sewing within reach of his hand.

“Better than fighting for it, maybe. If we clear out they will march right through it, after us. The fight will come later, in front of Richmond, just as Johnston intended all along.”

“Oh, the deuce!” said Sedgwick. “I haven’t hung about here for two mortal weeks just to fight a nasty little rear guard action with the whole Federal Army!”

“It’s what you’re going to get, all the same,” said Lafe.

And it was, only a little nastier than anyone expected.

On that Saturday night, May third, Johnston pulled his men out of the Warwick Line under cover of a cannonade, and began to pour them back through Williamsburg towards the Chickahominy and New Kent Courthouse—back towards Richmond. It was still raining. Magruder’s men went first, so that Dabney in the vanguard reached the town in the mid-morning hours after slogging through deep mud all night from Lee’s Mill, past Fort Magruder from where the spires of Williamsburg were visible in the wet dawn, and into the Duke of Gloucester Street, where people lined the sides of the road under umbrellas and waterproofs to wave goodbye. A halt was made, and the tired men snatched cups of coffee and sandwiches and home cooking from the loving hands of the women who came to see them pass.

The Street was by then a bottomless sink of mud—the wagons sank in it up to the hubs and stalled whole regiments, the officers’ horses ploughed through it knee deep, and the whole town had become a scene of shouting, cursing, frantic confusion, with the crack of the long mule-whips like pistol shots and the fluent mule-lingo of the coloured drivers a profane babel of tongues. It was still raining. And to the east there was the dull boom of cannon and the rattle of musket fire, for McClellan had discovered the retreat at daybreak, occupied Yorktown at once, and organized himself for pursuit.

About one o’clock on Sunday, when the streets were jammed with baggage wagons and the draggled, drenched companies were detouring round them and the whole fifty thousand of the Peninsula command seemed to be packed into the town, the firing to the east grew suddenly quite loud,

spreading a new alarm—the Federal pursuit was driving the Southern cavalry in. Johnston was seen to confer with a muddy courier. And then, most unbelievably, a whole brigade was turned and marched back in their own tracks to occupy Fort Magruder and hold up the Yankee advance.

There was going to be a battle after all.

IV

McClellan’s pursuit was much closer than Johnston had counted on, the Confederate progress to the rear much slower than he liked. Johnston himself led the way back to Fort Magruder, flagging in another brigade as he went, and it came to a race for the Fort to occupy it in sufficient force to hold the other army off it till artillery could get into position.

Johnston won by a nose, and the Federals recoiled under a hot fire into the woods. By that time darkness fell and it was pouring rain harder than ever.

At daybreak the main Confederate army began worming its way westward through Williamsburg again, and the Federals opened a sharp artillery fire on the Fort. Johnston, who had caught a few hours’ sleep at his Williamsburg headquarters during the night, returned to the Fort and ordered back more men from the retreating files.

The battle for Fort Magruder raged all day long, and the fighting was often intense. Stuart led charge after charge in his favourite column of squadrons formation—the squadrons following each other at a distance of only twelve paces or so, solid blocks of yelling men standing in their stirrups at a pounding gallop, with the white glitter of sabres above them and the gouts of mud from their horses’ hooves spattering like bullets all around them.

About midday they charged McClellan’s hard-pressed centre at the edge of the wood opposite the Fort, and as they wheeled and fanned out and circled back to re-form, Sedgwick saw in his path a blue-coated officer who was just disentangling himself from a horse which had pitched headlong and thrown him heavily. Two or three other mounted Federals had scattered among the trees and escaped. The dismounted man dodged the trooper ahead of Sedgwick and stumbled back, favouring a twisted knee, squarely in front of Cherry, who was at a hard canter. Just in time, Sedgwick saw his

face, and Cherry rose on his hind legs, snorting and outraged at the drag on his tender mouth.

“Get to hell out of here, Cabot Murray, do you want to be killed?” yelled Sedgwick furiously, and thundered on in the wake of the squadron.

Grinning in spite of the pain in his wrenched knee, Cabot made his way back among the trees to where one of General Hooker’s orderlies and a man from the New York Tribune had hung about waiting for him.

“Well, that was close!” said the Tribune man. “I thought you were a goner, and I shut my eyes! What did he say to you?”

“Something rude—I couldn’t hear,” said Cabot briefly, not wishing to claim acquaintance in this company with the man in grey who had refrained from riding him down. “My horse is finished. You’d better go on out of this, I’ll get back somehow.”

“Rubbish!” said the Tribune man. “This beast will carry double for a while. Get up behind me, I think they’re going to come in again.”

Thus the Press, who had come down to the front lines to see for themselves how Hooker’s New Jersey troops were standing punishment, retired prudently from the hottest part of the field.

By twilight the firing had thinned all along the line and the Yankees seemed to have had enough. General Early had been badly wounded in a fracas at the northern end of the Confederate front, and Stuart’s cavalry had not been out of fire all day. But Johnston left the field before dark, convinced that he had gained enough time for his withdrawal towards Richmond. Some cavalry and part of Longstreet’s men were left at the Fort as a holding force and most of the rest set out again on the bottomless roads which led back through Williamsburg, taking the wounded with them.

There were no ambulances, and no wagons could be spared for their transportation beyond the town. Those who could not march would have to remain in Williamsburg to become prisoners of war.

The thunder of the big guns rattled the windows in Williamsburg all day, and some of the citizens went out, wearing waterproofs and carrying umbrellas, to see the battle. Those who took their carriages soon bogged down, adding to the confusion on the roads, and when they tried to pursue their investigations on foot were ridden over and around by profane cavalry detachments and caused splits and fissures in the infantry columns moving up into position as they gathered in bewildered, deafened knots in fancied

shelter debating their retreat homeward. Those who rode out on horseback were likely to venture under fire in innocent curiosity, to the rage and distraction of the officers, who would order them behind the lines only to come upon them a few minutes later, still in the way.

Just at lamplighting time, when the guns were slacking off, the Spragues’ coachman, Daniel, was shown into the Days’ living-room by Pharaoh. Eden and Felicity sat there together, white and silent, trying to sew and knit as calmly as Gran did, and to endure until this dreadful day was over. They looked up at Daniel, who was dripping in a waterproof and panting from his hurried progress through the choked, streaming streets, each of them dreading to hear his message.

“Miss Felicity, ma’am, Miss Louise sont me to tell you all de wounded has begun to come in an’ dey’s a-sortin’ of ’em out down at de College, an’

could use mo’ help—”

“Is there anyone—has she heard from—?”

“Oh, Lawdy, ma’am, none o’ our folks is hurt, leastways far’s we know now—Marse Lafe, he rid off wid Gin’ral Johnston, not a scratch on him, praise de Lawd, an’—”

“Sedgwick?”

“Marse Sedgwick ain’ showed up yit, ma’am—but ain’ no call to git skeered ’bout dat, ’cause Gin’ral Stuart hisself ain’ come by yit—an’ you know yo’self de Gin’ral ain’ gwine let nothin’ happen to dat boy, ma’am—”

“I’ll come along to the College at once.” Felicity rose and laid aside her thimble. “Pharaoh, tell Mammy to fetch my things and an umbrella.”

“I’ll go too,” said Eden, and after a doubtful moment Felicity consented.

Susannah was out in the Duke of Gloucester Street with the devoted Micah at her heels, trying to hold an umbrella over her while she watched for the return of the cavalry from the field. They told her everywhere she asked that General Stuart would be among the last to leave But she had already stood for an hour in the rain among other white-faced women, watching while the long, stumbling lines of exhausted infantry ploughed towards the rear; peering eagerly at each group of mounted men, in her search for Stuart and his aides. The mare, Jingle, had come home to England Street alone in the dusk with an empty saddle, mired up to her mane and with a deep sabre cut in her neck above a half-severed rein. And while she was only a remount, and there had been no sign of Cherry or the

other horse Sedgwick had with him, Jingle’s appearance was alarming, and after she had heard of it Sue could not be kept in the house.

Once while she waited there in the rain with Micah, a woman who stood next her had uttered a cry of joy and run out into the straggling files and been caught up in the arms of a soaking man in grey, and she went on down the muddy road with him, still held in the circle of his arm, to be with him as long as she could—a man who was at least safe, Sue thought enviously, even though he must keep on towards Richmond—but the woman who loved him knew he was alive to-night….

Sue stood where the feeble light of a street lamp above her fell on the men as they passed—their drawn faces were lighted, too, by an occasional lantern on a foundering wagon or a flare in the hand of a hurrying courier.

She had no idea how long she had stood there, nor how long she must wait till she knew about Sedgwick. She wore an old waterproof of Fauquier’s which nearly touched the ground, and she had tied a kerchief over her hair, which escaped in little rings and curls around her ears, shining with wet.

Her feet were soaked and cold, and Micah in his waterproof and sou’wester shook like a dog with chill.

“I had a dream de odder night, when ever’ thing was still, I thought I saw Susannah, a-comin’ down de hill—”

“Hark!” said Micah, and—

“It’s them!” cried Sue. “That’s Stuart’s men, they always sing!”

“Oh Susannah! Oh, don’t you cry for me!

I’ve come from Alabama, wid ma banjo on ma knee!

Oh, Su-san-nah!—”

Five men, riding easy at the head of a splashing column which sang as it came—five men with waterproofs over their yellow sashes, their wide hats pulled low; in the centre, the long-legged boy general who was their leader

—and then Sweeney, who knew all the words—and the adjutant, who wore a moustache—and two others—but not Sedgwick—

“It rained all night de day I left, de weather it was dry,

De sun so hot I froze to death, Susannah, don’t you cry! —

Oh Su-san-nah!—”

Before Micah saw her move, Sue was out into the muddy road, dodging between horses’ heads, to catch at General Stuart’s stirrup. He threw up a hand to halt the column behind him, reined in sharply, and leaned to see who she was.

“Oh, please—have you seen my cousin Sedgwick? His horse came home alone— is Sedgie with you—?”

“Honey,” said Jeb Stuart gently, “I haven’t seen him since roundabout noon-time—second charge we made down to the wood he was right behind me—lost him when we wheeled—he didn’t come in to re-form.”

She was staring up at him, her knuckles against her mouth. He reached down a hand in its white buckskin gauntlet, coated with mud, and gripped her shoulder sympathetically, while the endless, deafening chorus bellowed around them.

“Now, hold up, honey—lots of hope yet—they’re bringing in the wounded to the College, why don’t you try over there?”

A mounted orderly floundered up, yelling a message in the general’s other ear. Micah had arrived at her side and was pulling her back in frantic anxiety from among the horses’ feet. She went with him, dazed, unresisting, docile,

“De bull-jine bust, de hoss ran off, I thought I sure would die, I shut ma eyes to hold ma breff,

Susannah, don’t you cry!

Oh, Su-SAN-NAH! —”

“Where’s that girl?” Stuart was demanding of his shadow, Sweeney.

“Gone to the College, I reckon. Should I have hung on to her?”

Stuart glanced about hopelessly into the lantern-lit confusion, and put the column in motion again. The song passed on, with its tireless and terrible improvisations, towards the College and out along the Jamestown road.

When Sue and Micah arrived at the College she found Felicity and Eden at work with the surgeons among the stretchers laid out in rows on the floor.

The damp, warm air was heavy with stench, through which curled the sickly smell of chloroform. They assured her that Sedgwick was not there, and Louise turned white at the question even while she shook her head. But Sue passed on doggedly down the lines of wounded men to make sure. The face of one was swathed in bandages, so that she bent above him. “Please tell me your name,” she said gently, but there was no answer, and it occurred to her to look at his hands—they were not Sedgwick’s hands—she straightened and went on, turned at the end of the line and went back along the other side. He was not there.

Felicity came and caught her by the arm and ordered her to go home at once and change into dry clothes. Sue nodded obediently and left the College, Micah close behind her.

“Where now?” he queried, raising the umbrella above her.

“There must be more wounded,” she said dully. “We’ll have to find them.”

They found them at the schoolhouse, and at the Post Office store, lying in rows on the floor, leaning against the wall because there was no place to sit down, crouched on the steps at the edge of the rain, cradling a roughly bandaged arm or hand until their turn with the doctor came. No one pushed or demanded attention first, no one complained of delay which was added agony, no one seemed to think he was quite as badly off as the next man, very few of them made any sound at all except sometimes under the surgeon’s probe. Patiently Sue passed between the dreadful stretchers, viewing unspeakable horrors with unseeing eyes because there was only one thing she looked for—Sedgwick’s face. And then they seemed to have come to the end of the wounded, and still they had not found him.

Sue stood on the steps of the store, staring eastward through the streaming night while the army scuffled and scraped and cursed its way past her to the rear. It seemed as though she knew where he was. It seemed as though if only she could get to the battlefield she would find him, at the edge of a dark belt of trees, lying in the mud with Cherry’s dead weight pinning him down—

Micah touched her arm fearfully, peering into her face.

“Sho’ you ain’ gwine faint, Miss Sue? You look awful bad—”

It was gone, like putting out a light—the feeling that she knew where he was. Her feet were wet and cold, she was muddy to the knees, her soaked skirts dragged at her hoop, she was hungry from missing her dinner—but worst of all, that strong, surging certainty that she could find him was driven away by Micah’s voice. She had had it, though—for just a few seconds she had known exactly where to look for Sedgie….

“We’re going down to the battlefield,” she said, starting towards home.

“Come on and saddle up.”

“Well, ’fore de Lawd!” breathed Micah, following in a trance. “Yo’ ma sho’ nuff gwine have a fit.”

“I’m not going to ask her. Hurry up, Micah, pick your feet up!”

“I’s pickin’ ’em up an’ puttin’ ’em down in de wet,” Micah mumbled, sloshing beside her. “Ain’ had my dinner,” he added in an aggrieved aside.

“Neither have I,” she reminded him. “Neither has he.”

They reached the stables by a stealthy detour of the house, and lighted a shaded lantern there. By comparison with the night outside, the dry, hay-scented air seemed sweet and cosy, and the pampered horses munched contentedly in the box-stalls.

“Saddle Philomel,” Sue commanded. “And hurry, Micah! Then saddle Firefly for yourself, and we’ll take Laurel for him.”

“Lordy, Miss Sue, Marse Ransom sho’ gwine gib us de debbil ’bout takin’ all dis good hoss flesh out on sich a night!”

But Micah set to work, and when he led Philomel out of her stall saddled and ready to start, Sue’s discarded hoop lay in a circle of tapes and wire on the stable floor and she stood slim and straight with her wet skirts clinging to her, waiting to mount.

They knew every foot of the way towards Yorktown, having ridden over it dozens of times by daylight. Micah went first with the lantern, leading Laurel, Philomel splashing daintily behind. They took the back roads and private lanes to get out of town unnoticed, and even then they met stragglers and walking wounded and a small troop of cavalry. Once a grey-clad man caught drunkenly at the stirrup of the led horse, demanding a lift in the other direction. Micah pushed him off angrily and he reeled away into the darkness, muttering threats. When the cavalry troop came up, Micah and Sue took to the drenched bushes at the roadside and waited, shivering, till the quagmire which passed for a road was clear again.

Finally the dark shape of the Fort loomed on their left, with here and there a point of light—Longstreet’s men were even now abandoning the last posts, and once again Sue and Micah drew back from the road until the weary companies had passed on their way to Williamsburg.

“Reckon we got it all to ourselves now,” said Micah lonesomely.