There is in Virginia a grim and sterile region the name of which no American ever hears without a shudder. When you speak to him of the Wilderness, the phantom armies rise before him and he hears the thunder of the guns as the vast struggle sweeps through its shades. He sees, too, the legions of the dead strewn in the forest, a mighty host, and he sighs to think so many of his countrymen should have fallen in mutual strife.

It is a land that deserves its name. Nature there is cold and stern. The rock crops up and the thin red soil bears only scrub forest and weary bushes. All is dark, somber and lonely, as if the ghosts of the fallen had claimed it for their playground.

The woodchopper seeks his hut early at night, and builds high the fire for the comfort of the blaze. He does not like to wander in the dark over the ground where vanished armies fought and bled so long. He sees and hears too much. He knows that his time—the present—has passed with the day, and that when the night comes it belongs again to the armies; then they fight once more, though the battle is soundless now, amid the shades and over the hills and valleys.

Now and then he turns from the fire and its comradeship and looks through the window into the darkness. He, too, shudders as he thinks of the past and remembers the long roll, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and the others. Even the poor woodchopper knows that this melancholy tract of ground has borne more dead men's bones than any other of which history tells, and now and then he asks why, but no one can give him the answer he wishes. They say only that the battles were fought, that here the armies met for the death struggle which both knew was coming and which came as they knew.

The Wilderness has changed but little in the generation since Grant and Lee met there. The sullen soil is sullen and unyielding still. As of old it crops up here in stone and there turns a thin red tint to the sun. The sassafras bushes and the scrub oaks moan sadly in the wind, and few human beings wander over the desolate hills and valleys.

At Gettysburg there is a city, and the battlefield is covered with monuments in scores and scores, and all the world goes to see them. The white marble and granite shafts and pillars and columns, the green hills and fields around, the sunshine and the sound of many voices are cheerful and tell of life; you are not with the dead—you are simply with the glories of the past.

But it is different when you come to the Wilderness. Here you really walk with ghosts. There are no monuments, no sunshine, no green grass, no voices; all is silent, somber and lonely, telling of desolation and decay. To many it is a more real monument than the clustering shafts of Gettysburg. All this silence, all this abandonment tell in solemn and majestic tones that here not one great battle was fought, but many; that here in one year shone the most brilliant triumph of the South; and here, in another year, she fought her death struggle.

When you walk among the bushes and the scrub oaks and listen to the desolate wind you need no inscription to tell you that you are in the Wilderness.

CHAPTER XVIII
DAY IN THE WILDERNESS

Helen Harley saw the sun rise in a shower of red and gold on a May morning, and then begin a slow and quiet sail up a sky of silky blue. It even touched the gloomy shades of the Wilderness with golden gleams, and shy little flowers of purple, nestling in the scant grass, held up their heads to the glow. From the window in the log house in which she had nursed her brother she looked out at the sunrise and saw only peace, and the leaves of the new spring foliage moving gently in the wind.

The girl's mind was not at rest. In the night she had heard the rumbling of wheels, the tread of feet, and many strange, muffled sounds. Now the morning was here and the usual court about her was missing. Gone were the epaulets, the plumes and the swords in sheath. The generals, Raymond and Winthrop, who had come only the day before. Talbot, Prescott and Wood, were all missing.

The old house seemed desolate, abandoned, and she was lonely. She looked through the window and saw nothing that lived among the bushes and the scrub oaks only the scant grass and the new spring foliage waving in the gentle wind. Here smouldered the remains of a fire and there another, and yonder was where the tent of the Commander had stood; but it was gone now, and not a sound came to her ears save those of the forest. She was oppressed by the silence and the portent.

Her brother lay upon the bed asleep in full uniform, his coat covering his bandages, and Mrs. Markham was in the next room, having refused to return to Richmond. She would remain near her husband, she said, but Helen felt absolutely alone, deserted by all the world.

No, not alone! There, coming out of the forest, was a single horseman, the grandest figure that she had ever seen—a man above six feet in height, as strong and agile as a panther, his head crowned with magnificent bushy black hair, and his face covered with a black beard, through which gleamed eyes as black as night. He rode, a very king, she thought.

The man came straight toward the window of the log house, the feet of his horse making no sound upon the turf. Here was one who had come to bid her good-by.

She put her hand through the open window, and General Wood, the mountaineer, bending low over his horse's neck, kissed it with all the grace and gallantry of an ancient knight.

"I hope that you will come back," she said softly.

"I will, I must, if you are here," he said.

He kissed her hand again.

"Your brother?" he added.

"He is still asleep."

"What a pity his wounds are so bad! We'll need him to-day."

"Is it coming? Is it really coming to-day, under these skies so peaceful and beautiful?" she asked in sudden terror, though long she had been prepared for the worst.

"Grant is in the Wilderness."

She knew what that meant and asked no more.

Wood's next words were those of caution.

"There is a cellar under this house," he said. "If the battle comes near you, seek shelter in it. You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

"And now good-by."

"Good-by," she said.

He kissed her hand again and, without another word, turned and rode through the forest and away. She watched him until he was quite out of sight, and then her eyes wandered off toward the east, where the new sun was still piling up glowing bands of alternate red and gold.

Her brother stirred on the bed and awoke. He was fretful that morning.

"Why is the place so silent?" he asked, with the feeling of a vain man who does not wish to be left alone.

"I do not know," she replied, though well she knew.

There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Markham entered, dressed as if for the street—fresh, blonde and smiling.

"You two are up early, Helen," she said. "What do you see there at the window?"

"Nothing," replied Helen. She did not tell any one of the parting with Wood. That belonged to her alone.

A coloured woman came with the breakfast, which was served on a little table beside Harley's bed. He propped himself up with a pillow and sat at the table with evident enjoyment. The golden glory of the new sun shone there through the window and fell upon them.

"How quiet the camp is!" said Mrs. Markham after awhile. "Surely the army sleeps late. I don't hear any voices or anything moving."

"No," said Helen.

"No, not a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

"Eh?" cried Harley.

His military instinct leaped up. Silence where noise has been is ominous.

"Helen," he said, "go to the window, will you?"

"No. I'll go," said Mrs. Markham, and she ran to the window, where she uttered a cry of surprise.

"Why, there is nothing here!" she exclaimed. "There are no tents, no guns, no soldiers! Everything is gone! What does it mean?"

The answer was ready.

From afar in the forest, low down under the horizon's rim, came the sullen note of a great gun—a dull, sinister sound that seemed to roll across the Wilderness and hang over the log house and those within it.

Harley threw himself on the bed with a groan of grief and rage.

"Oh, God," he cried, "that I should be tied here on such a day!"

Helen ran to the window but saw nothing—only the waving grass, the somber forest and the blue skies and golden sunshine above. The echo of the cannon shot died and again there was silence, but only for a moment. The sinister note swelled up again from the point under the horizon's rim far off there to the left, and it was followed by another, and more and more, until they blended into one deep and sullen roar.

Unconsciously Constance Markham, the cynical, the worldly and the self-possessed, seized Helen Harley's hand in hers.

"The battle!" she cried. "It is the battle!"

"Yes," said Helen; "I knew that it was coming."

"Ah, our poor soldiers!"

"I pity those of both sides."

"And so do I. I did not mean it that way."

The servant was cowering in a corner of the room. Harley sprang to his feet and stood, staggering.

"I must be at the window!" he said.

Helen darted to his support.

"But your wounds," she said. "You must think of them!"

"I tell you I shall stay at the window!" he exclaimed with energy. "If I cannot fight, I must see!"

She knew the tone that would endure no denial, and they helped him to the window, where they propped him in a chair with his eyes to the eastern forest. The glow of battle came upon his face and rested there.

"Listen!" he cried. "Don't you hear that music? It's the big guns, not less than twenty. You cannot hear the rifles from here. Ah if I were only there!"

The three looked continually toward the east, where a somber black line was beginning to form against the red-and-gold glow of the sunrise. Louder and louder sounded the cannon. More guns were coming into action, and the deep, blended and violent note seemed to roll up against the house until every log, solid as it was, trembled with the concussion. Afar over the forest the veil of smoke began to grow wider and thicker and to blot out the red-and-gold glory of the sunrise.

Harley bent his head. He was listening—not for the thunder of the great guns, but for the other sounds that he knew went with it—the crash of the rifles, the buzz and hiss of the bullets flying in clouds through the air, the gallop of charging horsemen, the crash of falling trees cut through by cannon shot, and the shouts and cries. But he heard only the thunder of the great guns now, so steady, so persistent and so penetrating that he felt the floor tremble beneath him.

He searched the forest with eyes trained for the work, but saw no human being—only the waving grass, the somber woods, and a scared lizard rattling the bark of a tree as he fled up it.

In the east the dull, heavy cloud of smoke was growing, spreading along the rim of the horizon, climbing the concave arch and blotting out all the glory of the sunrise. The heavy roar was like the sullen, steady grumbling of distant thunder, and the fertile fancy of Harley, though his eyes saw not, painted all the scene that was going on within the solemn shades of the Wilderness—the charge, the defense, the shivered regiments and brigades; the tread of horses, cannon shattered by cannon, the long stream of wounded to the rear, and the dead, forgotten amid the rocks and bushes. He had beheld many such scenes and he had been a part of them. But who was winning now? If he could only lift that veil of the forest!

Every emotion showed on the face of Harley. Vain, egotistic, and often selfish, he was a true soldier; his was the military inspiration, and he longed to be there in the field, riding at the head of his horsemen as he had ridden so often, and to victory. He thought of Wood, a cavalry leader greater than himself, doing a double part, and for a moment his heart was filled with envy. Then he flushed with rage because of the wounds that tied him there like a baby. What a position for him, Vincent Harley, the brilliant horseman and leader! He even looked with wrath upon his sister and Mrs. Markham, two women whom he admired so much. Their place was not here, nor was his place here with them. He was eaten with doubt and anxiety. Who was losing, who was winning out there beyond the veil of the forest where the pall of smoke rose? He struck the window-sill angrily with his fist.

"I hate this silence and desolation here around us," he exclaimed, "with all that noise and battle off there where we cannot see! It chills me!"

But the two women said nothing, still sitting with their hands in each other's and unconscious of it; forgetting now in this meeting of the two hundred thousand the petty personal feelings that had divided them.

Louder swelled the tumult. It seemed to Helen, oblivious to all else, that she heard amid the thunder of the cannon other and varying notes. There was a faint but shrill incessant sound like the hum of millions of bees flying swiftly, and another, a regular but heavier noise, was surely the tread of charging horsemen. The battle was rolling a step nearer to them, and she began to see, low down under the pall of smoke, flashes of fire like swift strokes of lightning. Then it rolled another step nearer and its tumult beat heavily and cruelly on the drums of her ears. Yet the deathly stillness in the scrub oaks around the house continued. They waved as peacefully as ever in the gentle wind from the west. It was still a battle heard but not seen.

She would have left the window to cower in the corner with the coloured woman who served them, but this struggle, of which she could see only the covering veil, held her appalled. It was misty, intangible, unlike anything of which she had read or heard, and yet she knew it to be real. They were in conflict, the North and the South, there in the forest, and she sat as one in a seat in a theatre who looked toward a curtained stage.

When she put her free hand once on the window-sill she felt beneath her fingers the faint, steady trembling of the wood as the vast, insistent volume of sound beat upon it. The cloud of smoke now spread in a huge, somber curve across all the east, and the swift flashes of fire were piercing through it faster and faster. The volume of sound grew more and more varied, embracing many notes.

"It comes our way," murmured Harley, to himself rather than to the women.

Helen felt a quiver run through the hand of Mrs. Markham and she looked at her face. The elder woman was pale, but she was not afraid. She, too, would not leave the window, held by the same spell.

"Surely it is a good omen!" murmured Harley; "the field of Chancellorsville, where we struck Hooker down, is in this same Wilderness."

"But we lost there our right arm—Jackson," said Mrs. Markham.

"True, alas!" said Harley.

The aspect of the day that had begun so bright and clear was changing. The great pall of smoke in the east gave its character to all the sky. From the west clouds were rolling up to meet it. The air was growing close, sultry and hot. The wind ceased to blow. The grass and the new leaves hung motionless. All around them the forest was still heavy and somber. The coloured woman in the corner began to cry softly, but from her chest. They could hear her low note under the roar of the guns, but no one rebuked her.

"It comes nearer and nearer," murmured Harley.

There was relief, even pleasure in his tone. He had forgotten his sister and the woman to whom his eyes so often turned. That which concerned him most in life was passing behind the veil of trees and bushes, and its sound filled his ears. He had no thought of anything else. It was widening its sweep, coming nearer to the house where he was tied so wretchedly by wounds; and he would see it—see who was winning—his own South he fiercely hoped.

The thoughts of brother and sister at that moment were alike. All the spirit and fire of the old South flushed in every vein of both. They were of an old aristocracy, with but two ambitions, the military and the political, and while they prayed for complete success in the end, they wanted another great triumph on the field of battle. Gettysburg, that insuperable bar, was behind them, casting its gloomy memory over the year between; but this might take its place, atoning for it, wiping it out. But there was doubt and fear in the heart of each; this was a new general that the North had, of a different kind from the old—one who did not turn back at a defeat, but came on again and hammered and hammered. They repeated to themselves softly the name "Grant." It had to them a short, harsh, abrupt sound, and it did not grow pleasant with repetition.

An odour, the mingled reek of smoke, burnt gunpowder, trampled dust and sweating men, reached them and was offensive to their nostrils. Helen coughed and then wiped her face with her handkerchief. She was surprised to find her cheeks damp and cold. Her lips felt harsh and dry as they touched each other.

The trembling of the house increased, and the dishes from the breakfast which they had left on the table kept up an incessant soft, jarring sound. The battle was still spreading; at first a bent bow, then a semi-circle, the horns of the crescent were now extending as if they meant to meet about the house, and yet they saw not a man, not a horse, not a gun; only afar off the swelling canopy of smoke, and the flashes of light through it, and nearer by the grass and the leaves, now hanging dull and lifeless.

Harley groaned again and smote the unoffending window-sill with his hand.

"Why am I here—why am I here," he repeated, "when the greatest battle of all the world is being fought?"

The clouds of smoke from the cannon and the clouds from the heated and heavy air continued to gather in both heavens and were now meeting at the zenith. The skies were dark, obscure and somber. Most trying of all was the continuous, heavy jarring sound made by the thunder of the guns. It got upon the nerves, it smote the brain cruelly, and once Helen clasped her hands over her ears to shut it out, but she could not; the sullen mutter was still there, no less ominous because its note was lower.

A sudden tongue of flame shot up in the east above the forest, but unlike the others did not go out again; it hung there a red spire, blood-red against the sky, and grew taller and broader.

"The forest burns!" murmured Harley.

"In May?" said Helen.

"What a cannonade it must be to set green trees on fire!" continued Harley.

The varying and shriller notes heard through the steady roar of the great guns now grew more numerous and louder; and most persistent among them was a nasty buzz, inconceivably wicked in its cry.

"The rifles! A hundred thousand of them at least!" murmured Harley, to whose ear all these sounds were familiar.

New tongues of fire leaped above the trees and remained there, blood-red against the sky; sparks at first fugitive and detached, then in showers and millions, began to fly. Columns of vapour and smoke breaking off from the main cloud floated toward the house and assailed those at the window until eyes and nostrils tingled. The strange, nauseous odour, the mingled reek of blood and dust, powder and human sweat grew heavier and more sickening.

Helen shuddered again and again, but she could not turn away. The whole look of the forest had now changed to her. She saw it through a red mist: all the green, the late green of the new spring, was gone. All things, the trees, the leaves, the grass and the bushes, seemed burnt, dull and dead.

"Listen!" cried Harley. "Don't you hear that—the beat of horses' feet! A thousand, five thousand of them! The cavalry are charging! But whose cavalry?"

His soul was with them. He felt the rush of air past him, the strain of his leaping horse under him, and then the impact, the wild swirl of blood and fire and death when foe met foe. Once more he groaned and struck the window-sill with an angry hand.

Nearer and nearer rolled the battle and louder and shriller grew its note. The crackle of the rifles became a crash as steady as the thunder of the great guns, and Helen began to hear, above all the sound of human voices, cries and shouts of command. Dark figures, perfectly black like tracery, began to appear against a background of pallid smoke, or ruddy flame, distorted, shapeless even, and without any method in their motions. They seemed to Helen to fly back and forth and to leap about as if shot from springs like jumping-jacks and with as little of life in them—mere marionettes. The great pit of fire and smoke in which they fought enclosed them, and to Helen it was only a pit of the damned. For the moment she had no feeling for either side; they were not fellow beings to her—they who struggled there amid the flame and the smoke and the falling trees and the wild screams of the wounded horses.

The coloured woman cowering in the corner continued to cry softly, but with deep sobs drawn from her chest, and Helen wished that she would stop, but she could not leave the window to rebuke her even had she the heart to do so.

The smoke, of a close, heavy, lifeless quality, entered the window and gathered in the rooms, penetrating everything. The floor and the walls and the furniture grew sticky and damp, but the three at the window did not notice it. They had neither eyes nor heart now save for the tremendous scene passing before them. No thought of personal danger entered the mind of either woman. No, this was a somber but magnificent panorama set for them, and they, the spectators, were in their proper seats. They were detached, apart from the drama which was of another age and another land, and had no concern with them save as a picture.

Helen could not banish from her mind this panoramic quality of the battle. She was ashamed of herself; she ought to draw from her heart sympathy for those who were falling out there, but they were yet to her beings of another order, and she remained cold—a spectator held by the appalling character of the drama and not realizing that those who played the part were human like herself.

"The battle is doubtful," said Harley.

"How do you know?"

"See how it veers to and fro—back and forth and back and forth it goes again. If either side were winning it would all go one way. Do you know how long we have been here watching?"

"I have no idea whatever."

He looked at his watch and then pointed upward at the heavens where in the zenith a film of light appeared through the blur of cloud and smoke.

"There's the sun," he said; "it's noon. We've been sitting here for hours. The time seems long and again it seems short. Ah, if I only knew which way fortune inclined! Look how that fire in the forest is growing!"

Over in the east the red spires and pillars and columns united into one great sheet of flame that moved and leaped from tree to tree and shot forth millions of sparks.

"That fire will not reach us," said Harley. "It will pass a half-mile to the right."

But they felt its breath, far though hot, and again Helen drew her handkerchief across her burning face. The deadly, sickening odour increased. A light wind arose, and a fine dust of ashes, borne on its breath, began to enter the window and sweep in at every possible crevice and cranny of the old house. It powdered the three at the window and hung a thin, gray and pallid veil over the floor and the scanty furniture. The faint jarring of the wood, so monotonous and so persistent, never ceased. And distinctly through the sounds they heard the voice of the coloured woman, crying softly from her chest, always the same, weird, unreal and chilling.

The struggle seemed to the three silent watchers to swing away a little, the sounds of human voices died, the cries, the commands were heard no more; but the volume of the battle grew, nevertheless. Harley knew that new regiments, new brigades, new batteries were coming into action; that the area of conflict was spreading, covering new fields and holding the old. He knew by the rising din, ever swelling and beating upon the ear, by the vast increase in the clouds of smoke, the leaping flashes of flame and the dust of ashes, now thick and drifting, that two hundred thousand men were eye to eye in battle amid the gloomy thickets and shades of the Wilderness, but God alone knew which would win.

Some of the awe that oppressed the two women began to creep over Harley and to chill the blood in his veins. He had gone through many battles; he had been with Pickett in that fiery rush up Cemetery Hill in the face of sixty thousand men and batteries heaped against each other; but there he was a part of things and all was before him to see and to hear: here he only sat in the dusk of the smoke and the ashes and the clouds, while the invisible battle swung to and fro afar. He heard only the beat of its footsteps as it reeled back and forth, and saw only the mingled black and fiery mists and vapours of its own making that enclosed it.

The dun clouds were still rolling up from both heavens toward the zenith, shot now and then with yellow streaks and scarlet gleams. Sometimes they threw back in a red glare the reflection of the burning forest, and then again the drifting clouds of smoke and ashes and dust turned the whole to a solid and dirty brown. It was now more than a battle to Harley. Within that cloud of smoke and flashing flame the fate of a nation hung—the South was a nation to him—and before the sun set the decree might be given. He was filled with woe to be sitting there looking on at so vast an event. Vain, selfish and superficial, depths in his nature were touched at last. This was no longer a scene set as at a theatre, upon which one might fight for the sake of ambition or a personal glory. Suddenly he sank into insignificance. The fortunes or the feelings of one man were lost in mightier issues.

"It's coming back!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

The battle again approached the old house, the clouds swept up denser and darker, the tumult of the rifles and the great guns grew louder; the voices, the cries and the commands were heard again, and the human figures, distorted and unreal, reappeared against the black or fiery background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first did not depart.

"It is all around us," said Mrs. Markham.

Helen looked up and saw that her words were true. The battle now made a complete circuit of the house, though yet distant, and from every point came the thunder of the cannon and the rifles, the low and almost rhythmic tread of great armies in mortal struggle, and the rising clouds of dust, ashes and smoke shot with the rapid flame of the guns, like incessant sheet-lightning.

The clouds had become so dense that the battle, though nearer, grew dimmer in many of its aspects; but the distorted and unreal human figures moved like shadows on a screen and were yet visible, springing about and crossing and recrossing in an infinite black tracery that the eye could not follow. But to neither of the three did the thought of fear yet come. They were still watchers of the arena, from high seats, and the battle was not to take them in its coils.

The flame, the red light from the guns, grew more vivid, and was so rapid and incessant that it became a steady glare, illuminating the vast scene on which the battle was outspread; the black stems of the oaks and pines, the guns—some wheelless and broken now, the charging lines, fallen horses scattered in the scrub, all the medley and strain of a titanic battle.

The sparks flew in vast showers. Bits of charred wood from the burning forest, caught up by the wind, began to fall on the thin roof of the old house, and kept up a steady, droning patter. The veil of gray ashes upon the floor and on the scanty furniture grew thicker. The coloured woman never ceased for a moment to cry drearily.

"It is still doubtful!" murmured Harley.

His keen, discerning eye began to see a method, an order in all this huge tumult—signs of a design, and of another design to defeat it—the human mind seeking to achieve an end. One side was the North and another the South—but which was his own he could not tell. For the present he knew not where to place his sympathies, and the fortunes of the battle were all unknown to him.

He looked again at his watch. Mid-afternoon. Hours and hours had passed and still the doubtful battle hung on the turning of a hair; but his study of it, his effort to trace its fortune through all the intricate maze of smoke and flame, did not cease. He sought to read the purposes of the two master minds which marshaled their forces against each other, to evolve order from chaos and to read what was written already.

Suddenly he uttered a low cry. He could detect now the colour of the uniforms. There on the right was the gray, his own side, and Harley's soul dropped like lead in water. The gray were yielding slowly, almost imperceptibly, but nevertheless were yielding. The blue masses were pouring upon them continually, heavier and heavier, always coming to the attack.

Harley glanced at the women. They, too, saw as he saw. He read it in the deathly pallor of their faces, their lips parted and trembling, the fallen look of their eyes. It was not a mere spectacle now—something to gaze at appalled, not because of the actors in it, but because of the spectacle itself. It was beginning now to have a human interest, vital and terrible—the interest of themselves, their friends and the South to which they belonged.

Helen suddenly remembered a splendid figure that had ridden away from her window that morning—the figure of the man who alone had come to bid her good-by, he who had seemed to her a very god of war himself; and she knew he must be there in that flaming pit with the other marionettes who reeled back and forth as the master minds hurled fresh legions anew to the attack. If not there, one thing alone had happened, and she refused to think of that, though she shuddered; but she would not picture him thus. No; he rode triumphant at the head of his famous brigade, sword in hand, bare and shining, and there was none who could stand before its edge. It was with pride that she thought of him, and a faint blush crept over her face, then passed quickly like a mist before sunshine.