The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide, Joseph A. Altsheler [best value ebook reader txt] 📗

very raw and chill, and not less so now that morning was approaching. The mists and fogs, which as usual rose from the Rappahannock, made Harry shiver at their touch. In the hollows of the ridges, which the wintry sun seldom reached, great masses of ice were packed, and the plain below, cut up the day before by wheels and hoofs and footsteps, was now like a frozen field of ploughed land.

The staff heard enough through the fogs and mists to know that the Army of the Potomac was awake and stirring. The Southern army also arose, lighted its fires, cooked and ate its food and waited for the enemy. Before it was yet light Harry, on a message to Stuart, rode to the top of Prospect Hill with him, and, as they sat there on their horses, the sun cleared away the fog and mist, and they saw the Army of the Potomac drawn up in line of battle, defiant and challenging, ready to attack or to be attacked.

Harry felt a thrill of admiration that he did not wish to check. After all, the Yankees were their own people, bone of their bone, and their courage must be admired. The Army of the Potomac, too, was learning to fight without able chiefs. The young colonels and majors and captains could lead them, and there they were, after their most terrible defeat, grim and ready.

"The lion's wounded, but he isn't dead, by any means," said Harry to Stuart.

"Not by a great deal," said Stuart.

There was much hot firing by skirmishers that day and artillery duels at long range, but the Northern army, which had fortified on the plain, would not come out of its intrenchments, and the Southern soldiers also stuck to theirs. Burnside, who had crossed the river to join his men, had been persuaded at last that a second attack was bound to end like the first.

The next day Burnside sent in a flag of truce, and they buried the dead. The following night Harry, wrapped to the eyes in his great cloak, stood upon Prospect Hill and watched one of the fiercest storms that he had ever seen rage up and down the valley of the Rappahannock. Many of the Southern pickets were driven to shelter. While the whole Southern army sought protection from the deluge, the Army of the Potomac, still a hundred thousand strong, and carrying all its guns, marched in perfect order over the six bridges it had built, breaking the bridges down behind it, and camping in safety on the other side. The river was rising fast under the tremendous rain, and the Southern army could find no fords, even though it marched far up the stream.

Fredericksburg was won, but the two armies, resolute and defiant, gathered themselves anew for other battles as great or greater.

CHAPTER VI A CHRISTMAS DINNER

After the great battle at Fredericksburg both armies seemed to suffer somewhat from reaction. Besides, the winter deepened. There was more snow, more icy rain, and more hovering of the temperature near the zero mark. The vast sea of mud increased, and the swollen Rappahannock, deep at any time, flowed between the two armies. Pickets often faced one another across the stream, sometimes firing, but oftener exchanging the news, when the river was not too wide for the shouted voice to reach.

Harry, despite his belief that the North would hold out, heard now that the hostile section had sunk into deep depression. The troops had not been paid for six months. Desertion into the interior went on on a great scale. One commander-in-chief after another had failed. After Antietam it had seemed that success could be won, but the South had come back stronger than ever and had won Fredericksburg, inflicting appalling loss upon the North. Yet he heard that Lincoln never flinched. The tall, gaunt, ugly man, telling his homely jokes, had more courage than anybody who had yet led the Union cause.

Harry often went down to Fredericksburg, where some houses still stood among the icy ruins. A few families had returned, but as the town was still practically under the guns of the Northern army, it was left chiefly to the troops.

The Invincibles were stationed here, and Harry and Dalton got leave to spend Christmas day with its officers. Nothing could bring more fully home to him the appalling waste and ruin of war than the sight of Fredericksburg. Mud, ice and snow were deeper than ever in the streets. Many of the houses had been demolished by cannon balls and fire, and only fragments of them lay about the ground. Others had been wrecked but partially, with holes in the roofs and the windows shot out. The white pillars in front of colonnaded mansions had been shattered and the fallen columns lay in the icy slough. Long icicles hung from the burned portions of upper floors that still stood.

Used to war's ruin as he had become, Harry's eyes filled with tears at the sight. It seemed a city dead, but not yet buried. But on Christmas day his friends and he resolutely dismissed gloom, and, first making a brave pretence, finally succeeded in having real cheerfulness in a fine old brick house which had been pretty well shot up, but which had some sound rooms remaining. Its owner had sent word that, while he could not yet come back to it with his family, he would be glad if the Southern army would make use of it in his absence.

It was in this house that the little colony of friends gathered, everyone bringing to the dinner what he could. Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire occupied the great sitting room on the ground floor, and here the dinner would be spread, as a part of the dining-room had been shot away and was still wet from snow and rain.

But the sitting room gladdened the eye. A heavy imported carpet covered the central portion of the polished oaken floor. Old family portraits lined its walls and those of the parlor adjoining it. Curtains hung at the windows. They were more or less discolored by smoke and other agencies, but they were curtains. All about the chamber were signs of wealth and cultivation, and a great fire of wood was burning in a huge chimney under a beautifully carved oaken mantelpiece.

The room seemed to remain almost as it had been left by the owner, save that two one-hundred-pound cannon balls, fired by the Union guns into Fredericksburg, were lying by either side of the door.

"Tickets, sir," said Langdon, as Harry appeared at the door.

Harry drew from under his cloak two boxes of sardines which he had taken from a deserted sutler's wagon on the field of Fredericksburg. He handed them to Langdon, who said:

"Pass in, most welcome guest."

Harry was the first arrival, but Dalton was next.

"Tickets double price to all Virginia Presbyterians," said Langdon.

"Instead of a double ticket here are two singles," said Dalton, as he drew from under his cloak two fine dressed chickens. "Don't these take me in?"

"They certainly do. Go in on the jump, Dalton."

The next arrival was Sherburne, who brought a five-pound bag of coffee. Then came the two colonels together, one with the half of a side of bacon, and the other with a twenty-pound bag of flour. More followed, bringing like tickets that were perfectly good, and it seemed that all the invited ticket holders were in, when a big black man on a big black horse rode up and saluted Langdon respectfully. He held out a pass.

"This pass am from Gen'ral Jackson," he said.

"Am it?" said Langdon, looking at the pass, "Yes, it am."

"Is you the orf'cer in command of this yere house?" asked the colored man, his wide mouth parting in an enormous grin that showed his magnificent white teeth.

"For the present I am, Sir Knight of the Dark but Kind Countenance. What wouldst thou?"

The man scratched his head and looked doubtfully at Langdon.

"Guess you're asking me some kind of a question, sah?"

"I am. Who art thou? Whence comest thou, Sir Knight of Nubia? Bearest thou upon thy person some written token, or, as you would say in your common parlance, what's your business?"

"Oh, I see, sah. Yes, sah, I done got a lettah from Mr. Theophilus Moncrieffe. That's the owner of this house, and I belong to him. I'se Caesar Moncrieffe. Here's the lettah, sah."

He handed a folded paper to Harry, who opened and read it. It was addressed to the chief of whatever officers might be occupying his house, and it ran thus, somewhat in the old-fashioned way:

SIRS AND GENTLEMEN:

The bearer of this is Caesar Moncrieffe. He and his ancestors have been servants of my family and my ancestors in the State of Virginia for more than two hundred years. He is a good man, as were his father and grandfather before him. He will not steal unless he should think it for his benefit or yours. He will not lie unless convinced of its necessity. He will work if you make him.

All of his impulses are good, and though he will strenuously deny it at first, he is about the best cook in the world. Knowing the scarcity of nutritious food in the army, I have therefore sent him to you with what I could gather together, in order that he might cook you a dinner worthy of Christmas. Put him to work, and if he disobeys, shuffles or evades in any manner, hit him over the head with anything that you can find hard enough or heavy enough to make an impression.

Wishing the Army of Northern Virginia the continued and brilliant success that has attended it heretofore,

I remain,
         Your most obedient servant,
                 THEOPHILUS MONCRIEFFE.

"Ah, Sir Knight of the Dark but not Rueful Countenance, thou art doubly welcome!" said Happy Tom, now thrice-happy Tom. "It is a stout and goodly horse from which thou hast dismounted, and I see that he yet carries on his back something besides the saddle. But let me first speak to my Lord Talbot, our real commander, who is within."

Caesar did not wholly understand, but he saw that Langdon meant well, and he grinned. Happy Tom rushed toward Colonel Talbot, who stood before the fire with Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire.

"Colonel Talbot! Colonel Talbot, sir!" he exclaimed.

"What is it, Thomas, my lad? You appear to be excited, and that is not seemly in a soldier of your experience."

"But, Colonel, this isn't a battle. Of course, I wouldn't let myself be stirred up by the Yankees, but it's a dinner, Colonel! It's a Christmas dinner, and it bears all the signs of being as fine as any we ever ate in the old times of peace!"

"Thomas, my lad, I regret it, but I must say that you are talking in a much more light-headed way than usual. All that we had we brought with us, and your young brother officers, who I must say excel you in industry, are now assembling it."

"But, Colonel, there's a big black fellow outside. He's just come in with a loaded horse, belonging to the owner of this house, and he's brought a letter with him. Read it, sir."

Colonel Talbot gravely read the letter and passed it to Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, who read it with equal gravity.

"Sounds well, eh, Hector?" Colonel Talbot said.

"Most excellent, Leonidas."

They went to the door with Happy Tom, and again Caesar saluted respectfully.

"You are welcome, Caesar," said Colonel Talbot. "I am commander here. What has your kind master sent us?"

Caesar bowed low before the two colonels and then proceeded to unload his horse. The young officers had come crowding to the door, but Happy Tom received the first package, which was wrapped in sacking.

"An old Virginia ham, nut-fed and sugar-cured!" he exclaimed. "Yes, it's real! By all the stars and the sun and the moon, too, it's real, because I'm pinching it! I thought I'd