The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign by Altsheler (reader novel .txt) 📖

fancy. He looked more than once at the cheerful faces and the rosy glow of the fire, before he could convince himself that he was in truth here in Winchester, with all this comfort, even luxury, around him.

Sitting next to him was a lady of middle age, Mrs. Howard, of prominence in the town and a great friend of the Grahams. Harry realized suddenly that while the others were talking he had said nothing, and he felt guilty of discourtesy. He began an apology, but Mrs. Howard, who had known him very well since he had been in Winchester, learning to call him by his first name, merely smiled and the smile was at once maternal and somewhat sad.

“No apologies are needed, Harry,” she said in a low tone that the others might not hear. “I read your thoughts. They were away in the mountains with a marching army. All this around us speaks of home and peace, but it cannot last. All of you will be going soon.”

“That's true, Mrs. Howard, I was thinking of march and battle, and I believe you're right in saying that we'll all go soon. That is what we're for.”

She smiled again a little sadly.

“You're a good boy, Harry,” she said, “and I hope that you and all your comrades will come back in safety to Winchester. But that is enough croaking from an old woman and I'm ashamed of myself. Did you ever see a happier crowd than the one gathered here?”

“Not since I was in my father's house when the relatives would come to help us celebrate Christmas.”

“When did you hear from your father?” asked Mrs. Howard, whose warm sympathies had caused Harry to tell her of his life and of his people whom he had left behind in Kentucky.

“Just after the terrible disaster at Donelson. He was in the fort, but he escaped with Forrest's cavalry, and he went into Mississippi to join the army under Albert Sidney Johnston. He sent a letter for me to my home, Pendleton, under cover to my old teacher, Dr. Russell, who forwarded it to me. It came only this morning.”

“How does he talk?”

“Hopefully, though he made no direct statement. I suppose he was afraid to do so lest the letter fall into the hands of the Yankees, but I imagine that General Johnston's army is going to attack General Grant's.”

“If General Johnston can win a victory it will help us tremendously, but I fear that man, Grant. They say that he had no more men at Donelson than we, but he took the fort and its garrison.”

“It's true. Our affairs have not been going well in the West.”

Harry was downcast for a few moments. Much of their Western news had come through the filter of Richmond, but despite the brighter color that the Government tried to put on it, it remained black. Forts and armies had been taken. Nothing had been able to stop Grant. But youth again came to Harry. He could not resist the bright light and the happy talk about him. Bitter thoughts fled.

General Jackson was in fine humor. He and Dr. Graham had started to discuss a problem in Presbyterian theology in which both were deeply interested, but they quickly changed it in deference to the younger and lighter spirits about them. Harry had never before seen his general in so mellow a vein. Perhaps it was the last blaze of the home-loving spirit, before entering into that storm of battle which henceforth was to be his without a break.

The general, under urging, told of his life as an orphan boy in his uncle's rough home in the Virginia wilderness, how he had been seized once by the wanderlust, then so strong in nearly all Americans, and how he and his brother had gone all the way down the Ohio to the Mississippi, where they had camped on a little swampy island, earning their living by cutting wood for the steamers on the two rivers.

“How old were you two then, General?” asked Dr. Graham.

“The older of us was only twelve. But in those rough days boys matured fast and became self-reliant at a very early age. We did not run away. There wasn't much opposition to our going. Our uncle was sure that we'd come back alive, and though we arrived again in Virginia, five or six hundred miles from our island in the river, all rags and filled with fever, we were not regarded as prodigal sons. It was what hundreds, yes, thousands of other boys did. In our pleasant uplands we soon got rid of both rags and fever.”

“And you did not wish to return to the wilderness?”

“The temptation was strong at times, but it was defeated by other ambitions. There was school and I liked sports. These soon filled up my life.”

Harry knew much more about the life of Jackson, which the modesty of his hero kept him from telling. Looking at the strong, active figure of the man so near him he knew that he had once been delicate, doomed in childhood, as many thought, to consumption, inherited from his mother. But a vigorous life in the open air had killed all such germs. He was a leader in athletic sports. He was a great horseman, and often rode as a jockey for his uncle in the horse races which the open-air Virginians loved so well, and in which they indulged so much. He could cut down a tree or run a saw-mill, or drive four horses to a wagon, or seek deer through the mountains with the sturdiest hunter of them all. And upon top of this vigorous boyhood had come the long and severe training at West Point, the most thorough and effective military school the world has ever known.

Harry did not wonder, as he looked at his general, that he could dare and do so much. He might be awkward in appearance, he might wear his clothes badly, but the boy at ten years had been a man, doing a man's work and with a man's soul. He had come into the field, no parade soldier, but with a body and mind as tough and enduring as steel, the whole surcharged and heated with a spirit of fire.

Both Harry and Mrs. Howard had become silent and were watching the general. For some reason Jackson was more moved than usual. His manner did not depart from its habitual gravity. He made no gestures, but the blue eyes under the heavy brows were irradiated by a peculiar flashing light.

The long dinner went on. It was more of a festival than a banquet, and Harry at last gave himself up entirely to its luxurious warmth. The foreboding that their mellow days in the pleasant little city were over, was gone, but it was destined to come again. Now, after the dinner was finished, and the great table was cleared away, they sat and talked, some in the dining room and some in the library.

It was still raining, that cold rain which at times turns for a moment or two to snow, and it dashed in gusts against the window panes. Harry was with some of the younger people in the library, where they were playing at games. The sport lagged presently and he went to a window, where he stood between the curtain and the glass.

He saw the outside