“No one seems to know,” Julian said, and Cinda added:
“And except Tilda, I don’t suppose anyone cares.”
When Vesta and Rollin returned, Rollin’s quiet sadness was gone. These two wore happiness so openly that the others caught the infection, and they were all ridiculously jolly, laughing easily at nothing. Cinda thought how young they were, and how fine it was to be young and to be able to turn to laughter for a while. They could even laugh at the stories that began to be told about Butcher Grant, who seemed ready to give the lives of five of his soldiers to kill one Southerner.
“In the fight at the Wilderness,” Julian told them, “they say he just sat under a tree smoking a cigar, and whenever the couriers told him a lot of his men were being killed he’d just say: ‘Put in another regiment!’ ”
They laughed at that, and Burr had a tale to match it. “After he crossed the Rapidan we captured his pontoons, but he said: ‘That’s all right. If I beat General Lee I won’t need them, and if he beats me, I can take all the men I’ll have left by that time back across the river on a log!’”
Cinda could not share their relish for these jests at death. There was something inexorable and frightening about General Grant; and besides, she had seen the wounded. But let these youngsters laugh! If Julian could laugh, maimed as he was, and if Burr could laugh and forget his mutilated hands, why, so much the better! Her thoughts turned to Brett. Somewhere in the north he and his fellows still faced Butcher Grant day by day. “Send in another regiment.” Brett must meet those fresh regiments, coming on in an endless procession, new ones to take the place of those destroyed. General Grant could afford to pay five lives for one; but Lee dared not accept the bargain. Lee—thank God for it!—Lee must be frugal of his men. Of men like Brett.
Burr, his hands well healed, went off to Raleigh to join Barbara; and for Cinda the days ran together. Talk touched her, but she heard without attention. Mr. Memminger had shipped the women clerks who signed the new currency as fast as it was printed off to Columbia to do their work there. Perhaps he expected Richmond’s fall. Flour was five hundred dollars the barrel. A wounded man with a bullet through his shoulder and a bayonet wound in his chest swore to her that a Yankee had given him that bayonet thrust while he lay helpless from the bullet wound. Pyaemia struck the officers’ hospital in the Baptist Female College and so many died that the wounded there had to be removed to the Almshouse; but Chimborazo Hospital was not affected. Butler’s troops on the Peninsula and at Bermuda Hundred made it impossible for fishermen to bring their catch to Richmond, and Sheridan’s cavalry cut off the flow of provisions from the farms, so food was increasingly expensive and hard to find at any price. Of the drugs needed at the hospital there was never enough, so the agony of hurt men could not always be eased. General Lee was ill. General Grant’s hosts, checked again and again, nevertheless forever sought new avenues of approach and drew steadily nearer.
One day she was watching an ambulance being unloaded at the door of her ward when, among the wounded laid upon the ground where the grass was long since matted with dried brown blood, Cinda saw Rollin Lyle. His eyes were closed, and he was white as marble; but when she knelt and spoke to him he answered. She called the driver of the ambulance and bade him take Rollin to Fifth Street.
“Tell my daughter I’ll find a doctor as soon as I can,” she directed. “Where did you get him?”
“Freight cars brought a load of them from the Chickahominy.”
She nodded. “He’s a friend of ours. Take him to our house,” she repeated. The pain of being moved again drove Rollin senseless. Cinda, ruthlessly releasing herself from her work here, found Dr. McCaw and insisted that he come home with her.
When they arrived, Vesta and June had laid Rollin on the bed in the room that had been Mrs. Currain’s, and had bathed him and pressed a pad of lint upon the small empurpled wound. Vesta stood by, unflinching while the surgeon’s probe slipped into Rollin’s body so far that even Cinda thought it must come out through his back. The probe touched the bullet, but could not move it. Dr. McCaw, when he had done what he could, drew Cinda from the room.
“I’m afraid bladder and kidney are pierced,” he confessed. “I see little chance for him. There’s nothing to do but let the wound suppurate and heal if it will.”
“What was that smoky-smelling stuff you washed the wound with?”
“Creosote.”
“Of course. That sooty smell. But for goodness’ sake, why?” It was a relief to fasten one’s thoughts on things that didn’t matter.
“Why, Dr. Dunn of Petersburg suggested it. Dr. Spencer always used it when he operated for stone in the bladder. He’s dead now, but he was marvelously successful, probably operated for stone as often as any man in the United States. He was a great believer in soap and water first, and then creosote dissolved in alcohol. I’m sure there’s no harm in it. The boy really has very little chance anyway.”
Cinda nodded. “I will stay with him,” she said.
“Of course, Mrs. Dewain. Of course. And I will come when I can, if only to ease him a little.”
Vesta, with a decision Cinda could not shake, kept uninterrupted watch by Rollin’s side, never leaving him for more than a moment, day or night. When Cinda pleaded with her to rest, to spare herself, Vesta smiled and shook her head.
“No, Mama,” she said. “No. I’m going to get him well. I’m not going to let him die.”
So she kept her post. Dr. McCaw returned late that first night and again in the morning, and the next day and the next. On that third day he was ready to smile.
“It’s amazing what a healthy young warrior’s body will endure,” he said. “There’s no suppuration. The wound has healed as neatly as a cut with a sharp knife. I’ll keep drawing off blood and water every day, but I’ll be much surprised if a week from now this young man isn’t walking around.”
At that incredible deliverance from dread, Cinda herself, to her own disgust, took to her bed. Her thankfulness was more than she could bear. Friday at dawn they heard for an hour or two the roar of massed guns not far away; and that night came word of Grant’s bloody repulse at Cold Harbor. Saturday and again on Sunday, while rain swept the city, Cinda slept the day away. Julian came after church to say that on the field of Cold Harbor there was a truce to bury the Union dead. “The wounded had all died since the battle,” he reported. “The slopes in front of our entrenchments were crawling with them, but Butcher Grant wouldn’t ask for a truce till yesterday. One of their deserters said Grant had threatened to let the wounded die and rot to stink us out of our lines.”
Rollin was strong enough that day to talk a little. He had been wounded in a fight with Custer’s cavalry, a few companies of South Carolinians throwing themselves against overwhelming force to hold open Lee’s road to Cold Harbor. “After I was hurt, my horse didn’t want to carry me,” he told Julian. “He threw me off; but they caught him and twisted his ear and that quieted him enough so they could make him carry me to Deep Bottom Bridge. There were a lot of us there. I think we were there all night before they loaded us on the train to bring us to Richmond. After that I don’t remember much.”
Vesta said in a low tone: “You were lucky, Rollin. One bullet nicked your cheek, and one smashed itself on your sword, and there were two or three bullet holes in your clothes, besides the one that hit you.”
“It was pretty hot,” he admitted. “I guess there’s not much left of our squadron.”
Cinda saw his lip begin to pale with fatigue, and she led Julian away; but Vesta stayed. In the hall Julian said in affectionate amusement: “Mama, those two don’t know there’s anyone else in the room, do they?” She smiled contentedly.
The day when Rollin for the first time put on his uniform, he and Vesta came to Cinda together. “I guess you’ll be pretty surprised at what I’m going to say, Mrs. Dewain,” he began, and Cinda laughed and kissed him.
“Do you think I’m blind?”
So they all laughed
together; and Vesta said happily: “Well then, that’s all right! But, Mama, I want us to be married before Rollin goes back to duty.”
Cinda remembered Tommy Cloyd, who so soon after he and Vesta were married had ridden away never to return. Must Vesta face that bitter sorrow again? But her courage returned. No, Vesta’s love had saved this boy and it would shield him now. Vesta deserved a bountiful happiness. If there were justice in the world, and there must be, then she should have it.
“That won’t be soon,” she suggested. “It will be a long time before he’s well; weeks perhaps. Will you wait a while? With the armies so near Richmond, Papa’s sure to come soon. He’d want to be here.”
They would wait, but that waiting was not to be long. After Cold Harbor, Grant, like McClellan two years ago, moved toward the river and crossed to face Petersburg; and in mid-June Brett came home for two or three days.
Cinda was at the hospital when he arrived. Vesta sent Diamond to fetch her, and she came in flushed haste. Brett was in the hall to meet her; and she clung to him, pressing in his arms, smelling the strong man smell of garments long unchanged, of grime and sweat and powder smoke, of stress and weariness and strain. Her arms encircling him told her he was thin; but they told her too that he was all bone and sinew with no waste flesh at all. She made inarticulate sounds of joy and love, and wept her tears and swallowed her sobs and looked up into his loved and smiling eyes, touching his lined cheeks, touching his temples where the hair had thinned and was turning gray, pressing her lips to his. Even his beard now was gray. Oh, he was changed, changed, changed; but he was whole, and strong with health, and above all, he was alive.
She swept him away upstairs. “Let me get him clean, Vesta! He’s not fit to be seen! I won’t have such a tramp of a man in my drawing room.” But when they were alone she held fast to him again, whispering his loved name. “Brett Dewain! Oh Brett Dewain!”
While he bathed, she gave his garments to June, who sniffed and said of rights they should go into the fire; but Brett called a warning: nothing must be destroyed. “There’s no way to replace anything,” he told Cinda. “Except off a dead Yankee.”
They had had time before Cinda came to tell him of Burr’s hurt, and now he spoke of it. “Vesta says he thinks he can fight again.”
“I don’t know. I suppose he can if he’s bound to. Even Julian has tried to help in the home defense. Rollin will be as well as ever, in time. Did he and Vesta tell you about themselves?”
“Yes. I’m mighty glad, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I love Rollin. And Vesta deserves so much. Oh, did she tell you Dolly’s married?”
“Yes.” He said: “Honey, Vesta and Rollin want to be married at once; and he wants to take her to Fallow Fields to see his mother. You might go with them, go to the Plains, have a visit with Jenny.”
“No, I’ll stay in Richmond. Unless Grant is going to drive us out?”
Brett shook his head. “We’ve beaten Grant to a standstill. He’s lost seventy-five thousand men since he crossed the Rapidan, more men than General Lee has ever had to fight against him.” His tone was not exultant; rather it was sober with a sort of wonder. “The Northern papers printed Grant’s dispatch where he said he’d fight it out on that line if it took all summer; but he’s had to eat his words. He didn’t fight it out on that line. Every time we beat him, he tried a new line.” He was dressed now, in old familiar garments. “It’s been one long slaughter, Cinda. At Pole Green Church they came up within twenty yards of our gun in a solid column before we let loose at them with double charges of canister. The flames from the muzzle burned the men at the head of that column, they were so close. We fired seventeen rounds of canister into them, eleven rounds in one minute, at point-blank range. The ground where they’d been looked as though a giant had swung a scythe through the column.”
“I’d rather not hear about it,” she confessed. “I see enough men in the hospital, see what happens to them.”
But when they went downstairs, Julian and Anne were there, and Julian and Rollin asked many questions which Brett must answer. He said the fighting in the tangle of the Wilderness gave little chance for artillery, but at Spottsylvania they had a hard and bitter day. “We opened fire about nine in the morning, and they worked on us with muskets and then with artillery till along in the afternoon.” Cinda’s eyes closed as though to banish a vision of the perils he had survived. “Then they charged us. A lot of our infantry ran over to their lines and surrendered, so there was nothing left in front of us to stop them; and they broke in on our right and rear and took three of our guns and scattered the whole company. We ran like good ones, I can tell you!” He laughed. “I tripped, getting over our breastworks, and came down so hard it knocked the breath out of me. I thought I’d been hit, but I tried to run and found I could—so I did!”
He was smiling, and so were they. “I found a soldier hiding behind a tree. It was a question whether I’d take his tree or his gun, but he was hugging that tree as though it were his sweetheart, so I took his gun. Then General Ewell came along. That one-legged man has just one idea in a fight, and that is to charge; so five companies of us charged five thousand Yankees. We got as far as the caissons they’d taken; but by that time there weren’t many of us left, so we scuttled back; but we met our brigades coming up, and Ewell sent us in again.” He chuckled. “There was a boy with him, not over twelve years old, riding a pony, and the pony was rearing and pawing, and the boy was shooting a little pistol at the Yankees. It was a sight, I tell you!”
Their breathless laughter, half mirth and half tears, made him pause a moment. “Well, we got the guns, finally,” he said. “We’d taken all the implements from each gun, so the Yankees hadn’t been able to use them; and we worked them till we hadn’t enough men left to keep them going. But that was long enough. By dark, things quieted down, and next morning we pulled back.”
He paused, and Julian said quickly: “Go on, Papa.”
“Well,” Brett continued, “Thursday was the bloody day. God knows how many men Grant threw at us, and how many we killed. I saw one tree almost two feet thick that had been cut down by musket balls. I walked down afterward to where the Yankees had been, and there must have been hundreds of dead men. It was artillery that stopped them. I don’t suppose there was a man left all in one piece. That discouraged Grant. He moved off, and we didn’t have much to do till the fight at Pole Green Church.” He looked at Cinda. “I told you about that.”
“Don’t tell it again, please.”
He nodded. “Well, that’s about all. We were in reserve for a while; and now Grant’s stopped in front of Petersburg, fought to a standstill, bled white; so we’ll have some rest.” He said in sober satisfaction: “If he’d come around by water, Grant could have put his army where it is now without losing a man. It’s cost him close to a hundred thousand men to come the way he did.”
Cinda spoke quietly. “Figures don’t mean anything. At the hospital we see men die one at a time. I wonder if generals would go on fighting if they saw men die one at a time, instead of by the thousands.”
“The generals are as helpless as any of us, Cinda. We’re all just—grains of wheat in the hopper. The stones keep on grinding till there’s no more wheat for them to grind.”
She shook her head as though to shake away her own thoughts. “For Heaven’s sake let’s talk about something else for a while.” Then suddenly she smiled. “Vesta, can’t you and Rollin think of something we might be discussing?”
That made them all laugh together, and they turned to wedding plans. Brett could only stay till Monday. “And I won’t be married unless Papa’s here,” Vesta declared. “So we must hurry.” Cinda protested that this left only tomorrow to get ready, but Vesta said it need not take long. “I shall wear the dress I wore to The Rivals,” she decided. “Nothing we could possibly manage would be any prettier!”
But the dress was not all; for Rollin and Vesta would leave at once to spend his wound-leave at hom
e. The Yankee cavalry, now at Petersburg, threatened every day to cut the Weldon Railroad, so travel to Wilmington might be interrupted; but the Piedmont from Danville to Greensboro had at last been completed, giving Richmond another direct communication with the lower South; so they could go that way. This meant taking the half-past-seven train for Danville, and couples planning to depart by that early train sometimes elected to be married at six in the morning.
But Vesta brushed aside this suggestion. “That’s no time of day to be married! Goodness knows I’m homely enough anyway, but at the crack of dawn—br-r-r!”
She chose to have an evening wedding and an all-night party afterward; so they would be married Sunday evening. “It must be after supper,” Cinda decided. “With everything that’s fit to eat so scarce, we couldn’t feed a crowd, so we’ll have to make it a ‘starvation party,’ Vesta; but perhaps we can have a waffle-worry for early breakfast.”
Vesta protested that they could surely manage supper for Julian and Anne and Judge Tudor, for Aunt Enid and the children, for Aunt Tilda and Mr. Streean. “And we can invite the others for afterward.” So they settled on this compromise. In spite of the fact that there was little to do by way of preparation, Saturday and Sunday were so crowded with activity that when supper-time came, Cinda was glad to sit a passive listener for a while. They made that supper hour briefly gay, and then Vesta and Anne and Lucy fled away upstairs, and Rollin and Julian too. The others waited in the drawing room, and Enid complained because Trav stayed in Lynchburg, where General Longstreet had been taken after he was wounded, when he might quite as well be here with her. Streean remarked that some wives found they had more freedom when their husbands were not at home; and to Cinda’s surprise that silenced Enid. Then Streean turned to Brett, saying that many believed Lee had failed at the Wilderness; that when Longstreet had Grant whipped, Lee let the enemy escape.
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