The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation''s Crisis by Joseph A. Altsheler
CHAPTER XI. A FAMILY AFFAIR
Two days after the battle of Antietam, Dick went with Colonel Winchesterto Washington on official duty. His nerves, shaken so severely by thatawful battle, were not yet fully restored and he was glad of the littlerespite, and change of scene. The sights of the city and the talk of menwere a restorative to him.
The capital was undoubtedly gay. The deep depression and fear thathad hung over it a few weeks ago were gone. Men had believed after theSecond Manassas that Lee might take Washington and this fear was notdecreased when he passed into Maryland on what seemed to be an invasion.Many had begun to believe that he was invincible, that every Northerncommander whoever he might be, would be beaten by him, but Antietam,although there were bitter complaints that Lee might have been destroyedinstead of merely being checked, had changed a sky of steel into a skyof blue.
Washington was not only gay, it was brilliant. Life flowed fast and itwas astonishingly vivid. A restless society, always seeking somethingnew flitted from house to house. Dick, young and impressionable, wouldhave been glad to share a little in it, but his time was too short. Hewent once with Colonel Winchester to the theatre, and the boy who hadthrice seen a hundred and fifty thousand men in deadly action hungbreathless over the mimic struggles of a few men and women on a paintedstage.
The second day after his arrival he received a letter from his motherthat had been awaiting him there. It had come by the way of Louisvillethrough the Northern lines, and it was long and full of news. Pendleton,she said, was a sad town in these days. All of the older boys andyoung men had gone away to the armies, and many of them had been killedalready, or had died in hospitals. Here she gave names and Dick's heartgrew heavy, because in this fatal list were old friends of his.
It was not alone the boys and young men who had gone, wrote Mrs. Mason,but the middle-aged men, too. Dr. Russell had kept the Pendleton Academyopen, but he had no pupil over sixteen years of age. There were notrustees, because they had all gone to the war. Senator Culver had beenkilled in the fighting in Tennessee, but she heard that Colonel Kentonwas alive and well and with Bragg's army.
The affairs of the Union, she continued, were not going well inTennessee and Kentucky. The terrible Confederate cavalryman Forrest hadsuddenly raided Murfreesborough in Tennessee, where Union regiments werestationed, and had destroyed or captured them all. Throughout the westthe Southerners were raising their heads again. General Bragg, it wassaid, was advancing with a strong army, and was already farther norththan the army of General Buell, which was in Tennessee. It was said thatLouisville, one of the largest and richest of the border cities, wouldsurely fall into the hands of the South.
Dick read the letter with changing and strong emotions. Amid theterrible struggles in the east, the west was almost blotted out ofhis mind. The Second Manassas and Antietam had great power to absorbattention wholly upon themselves. He had wholly forgotten for the timeabout Pendleton, the people whom he knew, and even his mother. Nowthey returned with increased strength. His memory was flooded withrecollections of the little town, every house and face of which he knew.
And so the Confederates were coming north again with a great army.Shiloh had been far from crushing them in the west. The letter hadbeen written before the Second Manassas, and that and Lee's great fightagainst odds at Antietam would certainly arouse in them the wish forlike achievements. He inferred that since the armies in the east wereexhausted, the great field for action would be for a while, in the west,and he was seized with an intense longing for that region which was hisown.
It was not coincidence, but the need for men that made Dick's wish cometrue almost at once. A few hours after he received his letter ColonelWinchester found him sitting in the lobby of the hotel in which Dick hadtwice talked with the contractor. But the boy was alone this time, andas Colonel Winchester sat down beside him he said:
"Dick, the capital has received alarming news from Kentucky. Buoyedup by their successes in the east the Confederacy is going to make aneffort to secure that state. Bragg with a powerful force is already onhis way toward Louisville, and we fear that he has slipped away fromBuell."
"So I've heard. I found here a letter from my mother, and she told meall the reports from that section."
"And is Mrs. Mason well? She has not been troubled by guerillas, or inany other way?"
"Not at all. Mother's health is always good, and she has not beenmolested."
"Dick, it's possible that we may see Kentucky again soon."
"Can that be true, and how is it so, sir?"
"The administration is greatly alarmed about Kentucky and the west. Thismovement of Bragg's army is formidable, and it would be a great blow forus if he took Louisville. Dispatches have been sent east for help. Myregiment and several others that really belong in the west have beenasked for, and we are to start in three days. Dick, do you know how manymen of the Winchester regiment are left? We shall be able to start withonly one hundred and five men, and when we attacked at Donelson we werea thousand strong."
"And the end of the war, sir, seems as far off as ever."
"So it does, Dick, but we'll go, and we'll do our best. Starting fromWashington we can reach Louisville in two days by train. Bragg, nomatter what progress he may make across the state, cannot be there then.If any big battle is to be fought we're likely to be in it."
The scanty remainder of the regiment was brought to Washington and twodays later they were in Louisville, which they found full of alarm.The famous Southern partisan leader, John Morgan, had been roamingeverywhere over the state, capturing towns, taking prisoners andthrowing all the Union communications into confusion by means of falsedispatches.
People told with mingled amusement and apprehension of Morgan'stelegrapher, Ellsworth, who cut the wires, attached his own instrument,and replied to the Union messages and sent answers as his generalpleased. It was said that Bragg was already approaching Munfordvillewhere there was a Northern fort and garrison. And it was said that Buellon another line was endeavoring to march past Bragg and get between himand Louisville.
But Dick found that the western states across the Ohio were respondingas usual. Hardy volunteers from the prairies and plains were pouringinto Louisville. While Dick waited there the news came that Bragghad captured the entire Northern garrison of four thousand men atMunfordville, the crossing of Green River, and was continuing his steadyadvance.
But there was yet hope that the rapid march of Buell and the gatheringforce at Louisville would cause Bragg to turn aside.
At last the welcome news came. Bragg had suddenly turned to the east,and then Buell arrived in Louisville. With his own force, the armyalready gathered there and a division sent by Grant from his station atCorinth, in Mississippi, he was at the head of a hundred thousand men,and Bragg could not muster more than half as many.
So rapid had been the passage of events that Dick found himself a memberof Buell's reorganized army, and ready to march, only thirteen daysafter the sun set on the bloody field of Antietam, seven hundred milesaway. Bragg, they said, was at Lexington, in the heart of the state, andthe Union army was in motion to punish him for his temerity in venturingout of the far south.
Dick felt a great elation as he rode once more over the soil of hisnative state. He beheld again many of the officers whom he had seen atDonelson, and also he spoke to General Buell, who although as taciturnand somber as ever, remembered him.
Warner and Pennington were by his side, the colonel rode before, and theWinchester regiment marched behind. Volunteers from Kentucky and otherstates had raised it to about three hundred men, and the new ladslistened with amazement, while the unbearded veterans told them ofShiloh, the Second Manassas and Antietam.
"Good country, this of yours, Dick," said Warner, as they rode throughthe rich lands east of Louisville. "Worth saving. I'm glad the doctorordered me west for my health."
"He didn't order you west for your health," said Pennington. "He orderedyou west to get killed for your country."
"Well, at any rate, I'm here, and as I said, this looks like a landworth saving."
"It's still finer when you get eastward into the Bluegrass," said Dick,"but it isn't showing at its best. I never before saw the ground lookingso burnt and parched. They say it's the dryest summer known since thecountry was settled eighty or ninety years ago."
Dick hoped that their line of march would take them near Pendleton, andas it soon dropped southward he saw that his hope had come true. Theywould pass within twenty miles of his mother's home, and at Dick'surgent and repeated request, Colonel Winchester strained a point andallowed him to go. He was permitted to select a horse of unusual powerand speed, and he departed just before sundown.
"Remember that you're to rejoin us to-morrow," said Colonel Winchester."Beware of guerillas. I hope you'll find your mother well."
"I feel sure of it, and I shall tell her how very kind and helpfulyou've been to me, sir."
"Thank you, Dick."
Dick, in his haste to be off did not notice that the colonel's voicequivered and that his face flushed as he uttered the emphatic "thankyou." A few minutes later he was riding swiftly southward over a roadthat he knew well. His start was made at six o'clock and he was surethat by ten o'clock he would be in Pendleton.
The road was deserted. This was a well-peopled country, and he saw manyhouses, but nearly always the doors and shutters of the windows wereclosed. The men were away, and the women and children were shutting outthe bands that robbed in the name of either army.
The night came down, and Dick still sped southward with no one appearingto stop him. He did not know just where the Southern army lay, but hedid not believe that he would come in contact with any of its flankers.His horse was so good and true, that earlier than he had hoped, he wasapproaching Pendleton. The moon was up now, and every foot of the groundwas familiar. He crossed brooks in which he and Harry Kenton and otherboys of his age had waded--but he had never seen them so low before--andhe marked the tree in which he had shot his first squirrel.
It had not been so many months since he had been in Pendleton, andyet it seemed years and years. Three great battles in which seventy oreighty thousand men had fallen were enough to make anybody older.
Dick paused on the crest of a little hill and looked toward the placewhere his mother's house stood. He had come just in this way in thewinter, and he looked forward to another meeting as happy. The moonlightwas very clear now and he saw no smoke rising from the chimneys, butthis was summer, and of course they would not have a fire burning atsuch an hour.
He rode on a little further and paused again at the crest of anotherhill. His view of Pendleton here was still better. He could see moreroofs, and walls, but he noticed that no smoke rose from any house.Pendleton lay very still in its hollow. On the far side he saw the whitewalls of Colonel Kenton's house shining in the moonlight. Somethingleaped in his brain. He seemed to have been looking upon such whitewalls only yesterday, white walls that stood out in a fiery haze, whitewalls that he could never forget though he lived to be a hundred.
Then he remembered. The white walls were those of the Dunkard church atAntietam, around which the blue and the gray had piled their bodies inmasses. The vast battlefield ranged past him like a moving panorama, andthen he was merely looking at Pendleton lying there below, so still.
Dick was sensitive and his affections were strong. He loved his motherwith a remarkable devotion, and his friends were for all time. Highlyimaginative, he felt a powerful stirring of the heart, at his secondreturn to Pendleton since his departure for the war. Yet he was chilledsomewhat by the strange silence hanging over the little town that heloved so well. It was night, it was true, but not even a dog barked athis coming, and there was not the faintest trail of smoke across thesky. A brilliant moon shone, and white stars unnumbered glittered anddanced, yet they showed no movement of man in the town below.
He shook off the feeling, believing that it was merely a sensitivenessborn of time and place, and rode straight for his mother's house. Thenhe dismounted, tied his horse to one of the pines, and ran up the walkto the front door, where he knocked softly at first, and then moreloudly.
No answer came and Dick's heart sank within him like a plummet in apool. He went to the edge of the walk, gathered up some gravel and threwit against a window in his mother's room on the second floor. That wouldarouse her, because he knew that she slept lightly in these times, whenher son was off to the wars. But the window was not raised, and he couldhear no sound of movement in the room.
Alarmed, he went back to the front door, and he noticed that while thedoor was locked the keyhole was empty. Then his mother was gone away.The sign was almost infallible. Had any one been at home the key wouldhave been on the inside.
His heart grew lighter. There had been no violence. No roving band hadcome there to plunder. He whistled and shouted through the keyhole,although he did not want anyone who might possibly be passing inthe road to hear him, as this town was almost wholly Southern in itssympathies.
There was still no answer, and leading his horse behind one of the pinetrees on the lawn, where it would not be observed, he went to the rearof the house, and taking a stick pried open a kitchen window. He hadlearned this trick when he was a young boy, and climbing lightly insidehe closed the window behind him and fastened the catch.
He knew of course every hall and room of the house, but the moment heentered it he felt that it was deserted. The air was close and heavy,showing that no fresh breeze had blown through it for days. It wasimpossible that his mother or the faithful colored woman could havelived there so long a time with closed doors and shuttered windows.
When he passed into the main part of his home, and touched a dooror chair, a fine dust grated slightly under his fingers. Here wasconfirmation, if further confirmation was needed. Dust on chairsand tables and sofas in the house in which his mother was present.Impossible! Such a thing could not occur with her there. It was not thewhite dust of the road or fields, but the black dust that gathers inclosed chambers.
He went up to his mother's room, and, opening one of the shutters a fewinches, let in a little light. It was in perfect order. Everythingwas in its place. Upon the dresser was a little vase containing someshrivelled flowers. The water in the vase had dried up days ago, and theflowers had dried up with it.
In this room and in all the others everything was arranged with orderand method, as if one were going away for a long time. Dick drew a chairnear the window, that he had opened slightly, and sat down. Much ofhis fear for his mother disappeared. It was obvious that she and herfaithful attendant, Juliana, had gone, probably to be out of the trackof the armies or to escape plundering bands like Skelly's.
He wondered where she had gone, whether northward or southward. Therewere many places that would gladly receive her. Nearly all the people inthis part of the state were more or less related, and with them the tieof kinship was strong. It was probable that she would go north, or east.She might have gone to Lexington, or Winchester, or Richmond, or even inthe hills to Somerset.
Well, he could not solve it. He was deeply disappointed because he hadnot found her there, but he was relieved from his first fear that theguerillas had come. He closed and fastened the window again, and thenwalked all through the house once more. His eyes had now grown so usedto the darkness that he could see everything dimly. He went into his ownroom. A picture of himself that used to hang on the wall now stood onthe dresser. He knew very well why, and he knew, too, that his motheroften passed hours in that room.
Below stairs everything was neatness and in order. He went into theparlor, of which he had stood in so much awe, when he was a littlechild. The floor was covered with an imported carpet, mingled brown andred. A great Bible lay upon a small marble-topped table in the centerof the room. Two larger tables stood against the wall. Upon them layvolumes of the English classics, and a cluster of wax flowers under aglass cover, that had seemed wonderful to Dick in his childhood.
But the
A famous portrait painter had arisen at Lexington when the canebrakewas scarcely yet cleared away from the heart of Kentucky. His workwas astonishing to have come out of a country yet a wilderness, and acentury later he is ranked among the great painters. But it is said thatthe best work he ever did is the pair of portraits that face each otherin the Mason home, and the other pair, the exact duplicates that faceeach other in the same manner in the Kenton house.
Dick opened a shutter entirely, and the light of the white moon, whitelike marble, streamed in. The sudden inpouring illuminated the room sovividly that Dick's heart missed a beat. It seemed, for a minute, thatthe two men in the portraits were stepping from the wall. Then his heartbeat steadily again and the color returned to his face. They had alwaysbeen there, those two portraits. Men had never lived more intensely thanthey, and the artist, at the instant his genius was burning brightest,had caught them in the moment of extraordinary concentration. Theirsouls had looked through their eyes and his own soul looking through hishad met theirs.
Dick gazed at one and then at the other. There was his greatgrandfather, Paul Cotter, a man of vision and inspiration, the greatestscholar the west had ever produced, and there facing him was his comradeof a long life-time, Henry Ware, the famous borderer, afterward thegreat governor of the state. They had been painted in hunting suits ofdeerskin, with the fringed borders and beaded moccasins, and raccoonskin caps.
These were men, Dick's great grandfather and Harry's. An immense pridethat he was the great-grandson of one of them suddenly swelled up in hisbosom, and he was proud, too, that the descendants of the borderers, andof the earlier borderers in the east, should show the same spirit andstamina. No one could look upon the fields of Shiloh, and Manassas andAntietam and say that any braver men ever lived.
He drew his chair into the middle of the room and sat and looked at thema long time. His steady gazing and his own imaginative brain, keyed tothe point of excitement, brought back into the portraits that singularquality of intense life. Had they moved he would not have beensurprised, and the eyes certainly looked down at him in full and amplerecognition.
What did they say? He gazed straight into the eyes of one and thenstraight into the eyes of the other, and over and over again. But theexpression there was Delphic. He must choose for himself, as they hadchosen for themselves, and remembering that he was lingering, when heshould not linger, he closed and fastened the window, slipped out at thekitchen window and returned to his horse.
He remounted in the road and rode a few paces nearer to Pendleton, whichstill lay silent in the white moonlight. He had no doubt now that manyof the people had fled like his mother. Most of the houses must beclosed and shuttered like hers. That was why the town was so silent.He would have been glad to see Dr. Russell and old Judge Kendrick andothers again, but it would have been risky to go into the center of theplace, and it would have been a breach, too, of the faith that ColonelWinchester had put in him.
He crushed the wish and turned away. Then he saw the white walls ofColonel Kenton's house shining upon a hill among the pines beyond thetown. He was quite sure that it would be deserted, and there was noharm in passing it. He knew it as well as his own home. He and Harry hadplayed in every part of it, and it was, in truth, a second home to him.
He rode slowly along the road which led to the quiet house. ColonelKenton had all the instincts so strong in the Kentuckians and Virginiansof his type. A portion of his wealth had been devoted to decoration andbeauty. The white, sanded road led upward through a great park, splendidwith oak and beech and maple, and elms of great size. Nearer the househe came to the cedars and clipped pines, like those surrounding hismother's own home.
He opened the iron gate that led to the house, and tied his horseinside. Here was the same desolation and silence that he had beheld athis own home. The grass on the lawn, although withered and dry from theintense drought that had prevailed in Kentucky that summer, was long andshowed signs of neglect. The great stone pillars of the portico, fromthe shelter of which Harry and his father and their friends had foughtSkelly and his mountaineers, were stained, and around their bases weredirty from the sand and earth blown against them. The lawn and even theportico were littered with autumn leaves.
Dick felt the chill settling down on him again. War, not war witharmies, but war in its results, had swept over his uncle's home as trulyas it had swept over his mother's. There was no sign of a human being.Doubtless the colored servants had fled to the Union armies, and to thefreedom which they as yet knew so little how to use. He felt a suddenaccess of anger against them, because they had deserted a master so kindand just, forgetting, for the moment that he was fighting to free themfrom that very master.
All the windows were dark, but he walked upon the portico and the dryautumn leaves rustled under his feet. He would have turned away, buthe noticed that the front door stood ajar six or eight inches. The factamazed him. If a servant was about, he would not leave it open, and ifrobbers were in the house, they would close it in order not to attractattention. It was a great door of massive and magnificent oak, highlypolished, with heavy bands of glittering bronze running across it. Butit was so lightly poised on its hinges, that, despite its great weight,a child could have swung it back and forth with his little finger.Henry Ware, who built the house after his term as governor was over, wasalways proud of this door.
Dick ran his hand along one of the polished bronze bars as he had oftendone when he was a boy, enjoying the cool touch of the metal. Thenhe put his thumb against the edge of the door, and pushed it a littlefurther open. Something was wrong here, and he meant to see what it was.He had no scruples about entering. He did not consider himself in theleast an intruder. This was his uncle's house, and his uncle and hiscousin were far away.
The door made no sound as it swung back, and soundless, too, was Dick ashe stepped within. It was dark in the big hall, but as he stood there,listening, he became conscious of a light. It proceeded from one of therooms opening into the hall on the right, and a door nearly closed onlyallowed a narrow band of it to fall upon the hall floor.
Dick, believing now that a robber had indeed come, drew a pistol fromhis pocket, stepped lightly across the hall and looked in at the door.
He checked a cry, and it was his first thought to go away as quietly ashe had come. He had seen a man in the uniform of a Confederate colonel,sitting in a chair, and staring out at one of the little side windowswhich Dick could not see from the front, and which was now open. It washis own uncle, Colonel George Kenton, C. S. A., his gold braided cap onthe window sill, and his sword in its scabbard lying across his knees.
But Dick changed his mind. His uncle was a colonel on one side, and hewas a lieutenant on the other, and from one point of view it was almosthigh treason for them to meet there and talk quietly together, but fromanother it was the most natural thing in the world, commanded alike byduty and affection.
He pushed open the door a little further and stepped inside.
"Uncle George," he said.
Colonel Kenton sprang to his feet, and his sword clattered upon thefloor.
"Good God!" he cried. "You, Dick! Here! To-night!"
"Yes, Uncle George, it's no other."
"And I suppose you have Yankees without to take me."
"Those are hard words, sir, and you don't mean them. I'm all alone, justas you were. I galloped south, sir, to see my mother, whom I found gone,where, I don't know, and then I couldn't resist the temptation to comeby here and see your house and Harry's, which, as you know, sir, hasbeen almost a home to me, too."
"Thank God you came, Dick," said the colonel putting his arms aroundDick's shoulders, and giving him an affectionate hug. "You were right. Idid not mean what I said. There is only one other in the world whom I'drather see than you. Dick, I didn't know whether you were dead or alive,until I saw your face there in the doorway."
"I thank God again that the notion took you to come by the house," hesaid. "It's pleasant and cool here at the window, isn't it, Dick, boy?"
Dick knew that he was thinking nothing about the window and the pleasantcoolness of the night. He knew equally well the question that wastrembling on his lips but which he could not muster the courage to ask.But he had one of his own to ask first.
"My mother?" he asked. "Do you know where she has gone?"
"Yes, Dick, I came here in secret, but I've seen two men, Judge Kendrickand Dr. Russell. The armies are passing so close to this place, and theguerillas from the mountains have become so troublesome, that she hasgone to Danville to stay a while with her relatives. Nearly everybodyelse has gone, too. That's why the town is so silent. There were notmany left anyway, except old people and children. But, Dick, I haveridden as far as you have to-night, and I came to ask a question whichI thought Judge Kendrick or Dr. Russell might answer--news of those wholeave a town often comes back to it--but neither of them could tellme what I wanted to hear. Dick, I have not heard a word of Harry sincespring. His army has fought since then two great battles and manysmaller ones! It was for this, to get some word of him, that I riskedeverything in leaving our army to come to Pendleton!"
He turned upon Dick a face distorted with pain and anxiety, and the boyquickly said:
"Uncle George, I have every reason to believe that Harry is alive andwell."
"What do you know? What have you heard about him?"
"I have not merely heard. I have seen him and talked with him. It wasafter the Second Manassas, when we were both with burial parties, andmet on the field. I was at Antietam, and he, of course, was there, too,as he is with Stonewall Jackson. I did not see him in that battle, but Ilearned from a prisoner who knew him that he had escaped unwounded, andhad gone with Lee's army into Virginia."
"I thank God once more, Dick, that you were moved to come by my house.To know that both Harry and you are alive and well is joy enough for oneman."
"But it is likely, sir, that we'll soon meet in battle," said Dick.
"So it would seem."
And that was all that either said about his army. There was no attemptto obtain information by direct or indirect methods. This was a familymeeting.
"You have a horse, of course," said Colonel Kenton.
"Yes, sir. He is on the lawn, tied to your fence. His hoofs may now bein a flower bed."
"It doesn't matter, Dick. People are not thinking much of flower bedsnowadays. My own horse is further down the lawn between the pines, andas he is an impatient beast it is probable that he has already dug up asquare yard or two of turf with his hoofs. How did you get in, Dick?"
"You forgot about the front door, sir, and left it open six or seveninches. I thought some plunderer was within and entered, to find you."
"I must have been watched over to-night when forgetfulness was rewardedso well. Dick, we've found out what we came for and neither shouldlinger here. Do you need anything?"
"Nothing at all, sir."
"Then we'll go."
Colonel Kenton carefully closed and fastened the window and door againand the two mounted their horses, which they led into the road.
"Dick," said the colonel, "you and I are on opposing sides, but we cannever be enemies."
Then, after a strong handclasp, they rode away by different roads, eachriding with a lighter heart.