married in June, Bayard was twenty, and the younger girl seventeen; and so Aunt Jenny for all her widowhood was one of the chillen too, to Joby. Then he replaced the musket-barrel in its niche and fired a long pine sliver at the hearth in order to light the candles. But Aunt Jenny stayed him, and he was gone—a shambling figure in an old formal coat too large for him, stooped and gray with age; and Aunt Jenny, speaking always of Jeb Stuart as Mister Stuart, told her story.
It had to do with an April evening, and coffee. Or the lack of it, rather; and Stuart’s military family sat in scented darkness beneath a new moon, talking of ladies and dead pleasures and thinking of home. Away in the darkness horses moved invisibly with restful sounds, and bivouac fires fell to glowing points like spent fireflies, and somewhere neither near nor far the General’s body servant touched a guitar in lingering random chords. Thus they sat in the poignance of spring and youth’s immemorial sadness, forgetting travail and glory, remembering instead other Virginian evenings with fiddles above the myriad candles and slender grave measures picked out with light laughter and lighter feet; thinking
This talk of coffee began to end a short time later with a ride along midnight roads and then through woods black as pitch, where horses went at a walk and riders rode with sabre or musket at arm’s lengthbefore them lest they be swept from their saddles by invisible boughs, and continued until the forest thinned with dawn- ghosts and the party of twenty was well within the Federal lines. Then dawn accomplished itself yet more and all efforts toward concealment were discarded and the horsemen dashed on and crashed through astonished picket- parties returning placidly to camp, and fatigue parties setting forth with picks and shovels and axes in the golden sunrise, and swept yelling up the knoll on which General Pope and his staff sat at breakfast al fresco.
Two men captured a fat staff-major, others pursued the fleeing officers for a short distance into the sanctuary of the woods, but most of them rushed on to Pope’s private commissary tent and emerged presently from the cyclonic demolition of it, bearing sundry parcels. Stuart and the three officers with him halted their dancing mounts at the table and one of them swept up a huge blackened coffee pot and tendered it to the General, and while the enemy shouted and let off muskets among the trees, they toasted each other in sugarless and creamless scalding coffee, as with a loving cup.
“General Pope, Sir,” Stuart said, bowing in his saddle to the captured officer. He drank and extended the pot.
“I’ll drink it, Sir,” the major replied, “and thank God he is not here to respond in person.”
“I had remarked that he appeared to leave hurriedly,” Stuart said. “A prior engagement, perhaps?”
“Yes, Sir. With General Halleck,” the major agreed drily. “I am sorry we have him for an opponent instead of Lee.”
“So am I, Sir,” Stuart replied. “I like General Pope in a war.” Bugles were shrilling among the trees farand near, sending the alarm in flying echoes from brigade to brigade lying about the forest, and drums were beating wildly to arms and erratic bursts of musketry surged and trickled along the scattered outposts like the dry clatter of an opening fan, for the name ‘Stuart’ speeding from picket to picket had peopled the blossoming peaceful woods with grey phantoms.
Stuart turned in his saddle and his men came up and sat their horses and watched him alertly, their spare eager faces like mirrors reflecting their leader’s constant consuming flame. Then from the right there came something like a concerted volley, striking the coffee pot from Bayard Sartoris’ hand and clipping and snapping viciously among the dappled branches above their heads.
“Be pleased to mount, Sir,” Stuart said to the captured officer, and though his tone was exquisitely courteous all levity was. gone from it. “Captain Wyatt, you have the heaviest mount: will you—?” The captain freed his stirrup and hauled the prisoner up behind him. “Forward!” the General said and whirled roweling his bay, and with the thunderous coordination of a single centaur they swept down the knoll and crashed into the forest at the point from which the volley had come before it could be repeated Blue-clad pigmy shapes plunged scattering before and beneath them, and they rushed on among trees vicious with minies like myriad bees. Stuart now carried his plumed hat in his hand and his long tawny locks, tossing to the rhythm of Iris speed; appeared as gallant flames smoking with the wild and self-consuming splendor of his daring.
Behind them and on one flank muskets still banged and popped at the flashing phantoms of their passing, and from brigade to brigade lying spaced about thejocund forest bugles shrilled their importunate alarms. Stuart bore gradually to the left, bringing all the uproar into his rear. The country became more open and they swung into column at the gallop. The captured major bounced and jolted behind Captain Wyatt, and the General reined his horse back beside the gallant black thundering along beneath its double burden.
“I am distressed to inconvenience you thus, Sir,” he began with his exquisite courtesy. “If you will indicate the general location of your nearest horse picket I shall be most happy to capture a mount for you.”
“Thank you, General,” the major replied, “but majors can be replaced much easier than horses. I shall not trouble you.”
“Just as you wish, Sir,” Stuart agreed stiffly. He spurred on to the head of the column again. They now galloped along a faint trace that was once a road. It wound on between vernal palisades of undergrowth and they followed it at a rapid controlled gait and debouched suddenly upon a glade, and a squadron of Yankee cavalry reined back with shocked amazement, then hurled forward again.
Without a break in their speed Stuart whirled his party and plunged back into the forest. Pistol-balls were thinly about their heads and the flat tossing reports were trivial as snapping twigs above the converging thunder of hooves. Stuart swerved from the road and they crashed headlong through undergrowth. The Federal horsemen came yelling behind them and Stuart led his party in a tight circle and halted it panting in a dense copse and they heard the pursuit sweep past.
They pushed on and regained the road and retraced their former course, silently and utterly alert.
To the left the sound of the immediate pursuit crashed and died away. Then they cantered again. Presently the woods thickened and they were forced to slow to a trot, then to a walk, Although there was no more firing and the bugles too had ceased, into the silence, above the strong and rapid breathing of the horses and the sound of their own hearts in their ears, was a nameless something—a tenseness seeping like an invisible mist from tree to tree, filling the dewy morning woods with portent though birds flashed swooping from tree to tree, unaware or disregarded of it.
A gleam of white through the trees ahead; Stuart raised his hand and they halted and sat their horses, watching him quietly and holding their breaths with listening. Then the General advanced again and broke through the undergrowth into another glade and they followed, and before them rose the knoll with the deserted breakfast table and the rifled commissary tent. They trotted across the glade and halted at the table while the General scribbled hastily upon a scrap of paper. The glade dreamed quiet and empty of threat beneath the mounting golden
