Crittenden
J >> John Fox, Jr. >> Crittenden[Illustration: John Fox, Jr.]
CRITTENDEN
A KENTUCKY STORY OF
LOVE AND WAR
BY
JOHN FOX, JR.
ILLUSTRATED BY
F. GRAHAM COOTES
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NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1911
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COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
* * * * *
To
THE MASTER OF
BALLYHOO
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
John Fox, Jr. (from a photograph) Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"Go on!" said Judith 76
"Nothin', Ole Cap'n--jes doin' nothin'--jes lookin' for you" 132
* * * * *
CRITTENDEN
I
Day breaking on the edge of the Bluegrass and birds singing the dawn in.
Ten minutes swiftly along the sunrise and the world is changed: from
nervous exaltation of atmosphere to an air of balm and peace; from grim
hills to the rolling sweep of green slopes; from a high mist of thin
verdure to low wind-shaken banners of young leaves; from giant poplar to
white ash and sugar-tree; from log-cabin to homesteads of brick and
stone; from wood-thrush to meadow-lark; rhododendron to bluegrass; from
mountain to lowland, Crittenden was passing home.
He had been in the backwoods for more than a month, ostensibly to fish
and look at coal lands, but, really, to get away for a while, as his
custom was, from his worse self to the better self that he was when he
was in the mountains--alone. As usual, he had gone in with bitterness
and, as usual, he had set his face homeward with but half a heart for
the old fight against fate and himself that seemed destined always to
end in defeat. At dusk, he heard the word of the outer world from the
lips of an old mountaineer at the foot of the Cumberland--the first
heard, except from his mother, for full thirty days--and the word
was--war. He smiled incredulously at the old fellow, but, unconsciously,
he pushed his horse on a little faster up the mountain, pushed him, as
the moon rose, aslant the breast of a mighty hill and, winding at a
gallop about the last downward turn of the snaky path, went at full
speed alongside the big gray wall that, above him, rose sheer a thousand
feet and, straight ahead, broke wildly and crumbled into historic
Cumberland Gap. From a little knoll he saw the railway station in the
shadow of the wall, and, on one prong of a switch, his train panting
lazily; and, with a laugh, he pulled his horse down to a walk and then
to a dead stop--his face grave again and uplifted. Where his eyes rested
and plain in the moonlight was a rocky path winding upward--the old
Wilderness Trail that the Kentucky pioneers had worn with moccasined
feet more than a century before. He had seen it a hundred times
before--moved always; but it thrilled him now, and he rode on slowly,
looking up at it. His forefathers had helped blaze that trail. On one
side of that wall they had fought savage and Briton for a home and a
country, and on the other side they had done it again. Later, they had
fought the Mexican and in time they came to fight each other, for and
against the nation they had done so much to upbuild. It was even true
that a Crittenden had already given his life for the very cause that was
so tardily thrilling the nation now. Thus it had always been with his
people straight down the bloody national highway from Yorktown to
Appomattox, and if there was war, he thought proudly, as he swung from
his horse--thus it would now be with him.
If there was war? He had lain awake in his berth a long while, looking
out the window and wondering. He had been born among the bleeding
memories of one war. The tales of his nursery had been tales of war. And
though there had been talk of war through the land for weeks before he
left home, it had no more seemed possible that in his lifetime could
come another war than that he should live to see any other myth of his
childhood come true.
Now, it was daybreak on the edge of the Bluegrass, and, like a dark
truth from a white light, three tall letters leaped from the paper in
his hand--War! There was a token in the very dawn, a sword-like flame
flashing upward. The man in the White House had called for willing
hands by the thousands to wield it, and the Kentucky Legion, that had
fought in Mexico, had split in twain to fight for the North and for the
South, and had come shoulder to shoulder when the breach was closed--the
Legion of his own loved State--was the first body of volunteers to reach
for the hilt. Regulars were gathering from the four winds to an old
Southern battlefield. Already the Legion was on its way to camp in the
Bluegrass. His town was making ready to welcome it, and among the names
of the speakers who were to voice the welcome, he saw his own--Clay
Crittenden.
II
The train slackened speed and stopped. There was his
horse--Raincrow--and his buggy waiting for him when he stepped from the
platform; and, as he went forward with his fishing tackle, a
livery-stable boy sprang out of the buggy and went to the horse's head.
"Bob lef' yo' hoss in town las' night, Mistuh Crittenden," he said.
"Miss Rachel said yestiddy she jes knowed you was comin' home this
mornin'."
Crittenden smiled--it was one of his mother's premonitions; she seemed
always to know when he was coming home.
"Come get these things," he said, and went on with his paper.
"Yessuh!"
Things had gone swiftly while he was in the hills. Old ex-Confederates
were answering the call from the Capitol. One of his father's old
comrades--little Jerry Carter--was to be made a major-general. Among the
regulars mobilizing at Chickamauga was the regiment to which Rivers, a
friend of his boyhood, belonged. There, three days later, his State was
going to dedicate two monuments to her sons who had fallen on the old
battlefield, where his father, fighting with one wing of the Legion for
the Lost Cause, and his father's young brother, fighting with the other
against it, had fought face to face; where his uncle met death on the
field and his father got the wound that brought death to him years after
the war. And then he saw something that for a moment quite blotted the
war from his brain and made him close the paper quickly. Judith had come
home--Judith was to unveil those statues--Judith Page.
The town was asleep, except for the rattle of milk-carts, the banging of
shutters, and the hum of a street-car, and Crittenden moved through
empty streets to the broad smooth turnpike on the south, where Raincrow
shook his head, settled his haunches, and broke into the swinging trot
peculiar to his breed--for home.
Spring in the Bluegrass! The earth spiritual as it never is except under
new-fallen snow--in the first shy green. The leaves, a floating mist of
green, so buoyant that, if loosed, they must, it seemed, have floated
upward--never to know the blight of frost or the droop of age. The air,
rich with the smell of new earth and sprouting grass, the long, low
skies newly washed and, through radiant distances, clouds light as
thistledown and white as snow. And the birds! Wrens in the hedges,
sparrows by the wayside and on fence-rails, starlings poised over
meadows brilliant with glistening dew, larks in the pastures--all
singing as they sang at the first dawn, and the mood of nature that
perfect blending of earth and heaven that is given her children but
rarely to know. It was good to be alive at the breaking of such a
day--good to be young and strong, and eager and unafraid, when the
nation called for its young men and red Mars was the morning star. The
blood of dead fighters began to leap again in his veins. His nostrils
dilated and his chin was raised proudly--a racial chord touched within
him that had been dumb a long while. And that was all it was--the blood
of his fathers; for it was honor and not love that bound him to his own
flag. He was his mother's son, and the unspoken bitterness that lurked
in her heart lurked, likewise, on her account, in his.
On the top of a low hill, a wind from the dawn struck him, and the paper
in the bottom of the buggy began to snap against the dashboard. He
reached down to keep it from being whisked into the road, and he saw
again that Judith Page had come home. When he sat up again, his face was
quite changed. His head fell a little forward, his shoulders drooped
slightly and, for a moment, his buoyancy was gone. The corners of the
mouth showed a settled melancholy where before was sunny humour. The
eyes, which were dreamy, kindly, gray, looked backward in a morbid glow
of concentration; and over the rather reckless cast of his features, lay
at once the shadow of suffering and the light of a great tenderness.
Slowly, a little hardness came into his eyes and a little bitterness
about his mouth. His upper lip curved in upon his teeth with
self-scorn--for he had had little cause to be pleased with himself while
Judith was gone, and his eyes showed now how proud was the scorn--and he
shook himself sharply and sat upright. He had forgotten again. That part
of his life belonged to the past and, like the past, was gone, and was
not to come back again. The present had life and hope now, and the
purpose born that day from five blank years was like the sudden birth of
a flower in a desert.
The sun had burst from the horizon now and was shining through the tops
of the trees in the lovely woodland into which Crittenden turned, and
through which a road of brown creek-sand ran to the pasture beyond and
through that to the long avenue of locusts, up which the noble portico
of his old homestead, Canewood, was visible among cedars and firs and
old forest trees. His mother was not up yet--the shutters of her window
were still closed--but the servants were astir and busy. He could see
men and plough-horses on their way to the fields; and, that far away, he
could hear the sound of old Ephraim's axe at the woodpile, the noises
around the barn and cowpens, and old Aunt Keziah singing a hymn in the
kitchen, the old wailing cry of the mother-slave.
"Oh I wonder whur my baby's done gone,
Oh Lawd!
An' I git on my knees an' pray."
The song stopped, a negro boy sprang out the kitchen-door and ran for
the stiles--a tall, strong, and very black boy with a dancing eye, white
teeth, and a look of welcome that was little short of dumb idolatry.
"Howdy, Bob."
"Howdy, Ole Cap'n." Crittenden had been "Ole Captain" with the
servants--since the death of "Ole Master," his father--to distinguish
him from "Young Captain," who was his brother, Basil. Master and servant
shook hands and Bob's teeth flashed.
"What's the matter, Bob?"
Bob climbed into the buggy.
"You gwine to de wah."
Crittenden laughed.
"How do you know, Bob?"
"Oh, I know--I know. I seed it when you was drivin' up to de stiles, an'
lemme tell you, Ole Cap'n." The horse started for the barn suddenly and
Bob took a wide circuit in order to catch the eye of a brown milkmaid in
the cowpens, who sniffed the air scornfully, to show that she did not
see him, and buried the waves of her black hair into the silken sides of
a young Jersey.
"Yes," he said, shaking his head and making threats to himself, "an'
Bob's gwine wid him."
As Crittenden climbed the stiles, old Keziah filled the kitchen-door.
"Time you gittin' back, suh," she cried with mock severity. "I been
studyin' 'bout you. Little mo' an' I'd 'a' been comin' fer you myself.
Yes--suh."
And she gave a loud laugh that rang through the yard and ended in a
soft, queer little whoop that was musical. Crittenden smiled but,
instead of answering, raised his hand warningly and, as he approached
the portico, he stepped from the gravel-walk to the thick turf and began
to tiptoe. At the foot of the low flight of stone steps he
stopped--smiling.
The big double front door was wide open, and straight through the big,
wide hallway and at the entrance of the dining-room, a sword--a long
cavalry sabre--hung with a jaunty gray cap on the wall. Under them stood
a boy with his hands clasped behind him and his chin upraised. The lad
could see the bullet-hole through the top, and he knew that on the visor
was a faded stain of his father's blood. As a child, he had been told
never to touch the cap or sword and, until this moment, he had not
wanted to take them down since he was a child; and even now the habit of
obedience held him back for a while, as he stood looking up at them.
Outside, a light wind rustled the leaves of the rose-bush at his
mother's window, swept through the open door, and made the curtain at
his elbow swell gently. As the heavy fold fell back to its place and
swung out again, it caught the hilt of the sword and made the metal
point of the scabbard clank softly against the wall. The boy breathed
sharply, remembered that he was grown, and reverently reached upward.
There was the stain where the blood had run down from the furrowed wound
that had caused his father's death, long after the war and just before
the boy was born. The hilt was tarnished, and when he caught it and
pulled, the blade came out a little way and stuck fast. Some one stepped
on the porch outside and he turned quickly, as he might have turned had
some one caught him unsheathing the weapon when a child.
"Hold on there, little brother."
Crittenden stopped in the doorway, smiling affectionately, and the boy
thrust the blade back to the hilt.
"Why, Clay," he cried, and, as he ran forward, "Are you going?" he
asked, eagerly.
"I'm the first-born, you know," added Crittenden, still smiling, and the
lad stretched the sabre out to him, repeating eagerly, "Are you going?"
The older brother did not answer, but turned, without taking the weapon,
and walked to the door and back again.
"Are you?"
"Me? Oh, I have to go," said the boy solemnly and with great dignity, as
though the matter were quite beyond the pale of discussion.
"You do?"
"Yes; the Legion is going."
"Only the members who volunteer--nobody has to go."
"Don't they?" said the lad, indignantly. "Well, if I had a son who
belonged to a military organization in time of peace"--the lad spoke
glibly--"and refused to go with it to war--well, I'd rather see him dead
first."
"Who said that?" asked the other, and the lad coloured.
"Why, Judge Page said it; that's who. And you just ought to hear Miss
Judith!"
Again the other walked to the door and back again. Then he took the
scabbard and drew the blade to its point as easily as though it had been
oiled, thrust it back, and hung it with the cap in its place on the
wall.
"Perhaps neither of us will need it," he said. "We'll both be
privates--that is, if I go--and I tell you what we'll do. We'll let the
better man win the sword, and the better man shall have it after the
war. What do you say?"
"Say?" cried the boy, and he gave the other a hug and both started for
the porch. As they passed the door of his mother's room, the lad put one
finger on his lips; but the mother had heard and, inside, a woman in
black, who had been standing before a mirror with her hands to her
throat, let them fall suddenly until they were clasped for an instant
across her breast. But she gave no sign that she had heard, at breakfast
an hour later, even when the boy cleared his throat, and after many
futile efforts to bring the matter up, signalled across the table to his
brother for help.
"Mother, Basil there wants to go to war. He says if he had a son who
belonged to a military organization in time of peace and refused to go
with it in time of war, that he'd rather see him dead."
The mother's lip quivered when she answered, but so imperceptibly that
only the older son saw it.
"That is what his father would have said," she said, quietly, and
Crittenden knew she had already fought out the battle with
herself--alone. For a moment the boy was stunned with his good
fortune--"it was too easy"--and with a whoop he sprang from his place
and caught his mother around the neck, while Uncle Ben, the black
butler, shook his head and hurried into the kitchen for corn-bread and
to tell the news.
"Oh, I tell you it's great fun to _have_ to go to war! Mother," added
the boy, with quick mischief, "Clay wants to go, too."
Crittenden braced himself and looked up with one quick glance sidewise
at his mother's face. It had not changed a line.
"I heard all you said in the hallway. If a son of mine thinks it his
duty to go, I shall never say one word to dissuade him--if he thinks it
is his duty," she added, so solemnly that silence fell upon the three,
and with a smothered, "Good Lawd," at the door, Ben hurried again into
the kitchen.
"Both them boys was a-goin' off to git killed an' ole Miss Rachel not
sayin' one wud to keep 'em back--not a wud."
After breakfast the boy hurried out and, as Crittenden rose, the
mother, who pretended to be arranging silver at the old sideboard, spoke
with her back to him.
"Think it over, son. I can't see that you should go, but if you think
you ought, I shall have nothing to say. Have you made up your mind?"
Crittenden hesitated.
"Not quite."
"Think it over very carefully, then--please--for my sake." Her voice
trembled, and, with a pang, Crittenden thought of the suffering she had
known from one war. Basil's way was clear, and he could never ask the
boy to give up to him because he was the elder. Was it fair to his brave
mother for him to go, too--was it right?
"Yes mother," he said, soberly.
III
The Legion came next morning and pitched camp in a woodland of oak and
sugar trees, where was to be voiced a patriotic welcome by a great
editor, a great orator, and young Crittenden.
Before noon, company streets were laid out and lined with tents and,
when the first buggies and rockaways began to roll in from the country,
every boy-soldier was brushed and burnished to defy the stare of
inspection and to quite dazzle the eye of masculine envy or feminine
admiration.
In the centre of the woodland was a big auditorium, where the speaking
was to take place. After the orators were done, there was to be a
regimental review in the bluegrass pasture in front of historic Ashland.
It was at the Colonel's tent, where Crittenden went to pay his respects,
that he found Judith Page, and he stopped for a moment under an oak,
taking in the gay party of women and officers who sat and stood about
the entrance. In the centre of the group stood a lieutenant in the blue
of a regular and with the crossed sabres of the cavalryman on his
neck-band and the number of his regiment. The girl was talking to the
gallant old Colonel with her back to Crittenden, but he would have known
her had he seen but an arm, a shoulder, the poise of her head, a single
gesture--although he had not seen her for years. The figure was the
same--a little fuller, perhaps, but graceful, round, and slender, as was
the throat. The hair was a trifle darker, he thought, but brown still,
and as rich with gold as autumn sunlight. The profile was in outline
now--it was more cleanly cut than ever. The face was a little older, but
still remarkably girlish in spite of its maturer strength; and as she
turned to answer his look, he kept on unconsciously reaffirming to his
memory the broad brow and deep clear eyes, even while his hand was
reaching for the brim of his hat. She showed only gracious surprise at
seeing him and, to his wonder, he was as calm and cool as though he were
welcoming back home any good friend who had been away a long time. He
could now see that the lieutenant belonged to the Tenth United States
Cavalry; he knew that the Tenth was a colored regiment; he understood a
certain stiffness that he felt rather than saw in the courtesy that was
so carefully shown him by the Southern volunteers who were about him;
and he turned away to avoid meeting him. For the same reason, he
fancied, Judith turned, too. The mere idea of negro soldiers was not
only repugnant to him, but he did not believe in negro regiments. These
would be the men who could and would organize and drill the blacks in
the South; who, in other words, would make possible, hasten, and prolong
the race war that sometimes struck him as inevitable. As he turned, he
saw a tall, fine-looking negro, fifty yards away, in the uniform of a
sergeant of cavalry and surrounded by a crowd of gaping darkies whom he
was haranguing earnestly. Lieutenant and sergeant were evidently on an
enlisting tour.
Just then, a radiant little creature looked up into Crittenden's face,
calling him by name and holding out both hands--Phyllis, Basil's little
sweetheart. With her was a tall, keen-featured fellow, whom she
introduced as a war correspondent and a Northerner.
"A sort of war correspondent," corrected Grafton, with a swift look of
interest at Crittenden, but turning his eyes at once back to Phyllis.
She was a new and diverting type to the Northern man and her name was
fitting and pleased him. A company passed just then, and a smothered
exclamation from Phyllis turned attention to it. On the end of the line,
with his chin in, his shoulders squared and his eyes straight forward,
was Crittenden's warrior-brother, Basil. Only his face coloured to show
that he knew where he was and who was looking at him, but not so much as
a glance of his eye did he send toward the tent. Judith turned to
Crittenden quickly:
"Your little brother is going to the war?" The question was thoughtless
and significant, for it betrayed to him what was going on in her mind,
and she knew it and coloured, as he paled a little.
"My little brother is going to the war," he repeated, looking at her.
Judith smiled and went on bravely:
"And you?"
Crittenden, too, smiled.
"I may consider it my duty to stay at home."
The girl looked rather surprised--instead of showing the subdued sarcasm
that he was looking for--and, in truth, she was. His evasive and
careless answer showed an indifference to her wish and opinion in the
matter that would once have been very unusual. Straightway there was a
tug at her heart-strings that also was unusual.
The people were gathering into the open-air auditorium now and, from all
over the camp, the crowd began to move that way. All knew the word of
the orator's mouth and the word of the editor--they had heard the one
and seen the other on his printed page many times; and it was for this
reason, perhaps, that Crittenden's fresh fire thrilled and swayed the
crowd as it did.
When he rose, he saw his mother almost under him and, not far behind
her, Judith with her father, Judge Page. The lieutenant of regulars was
standing on the edge of the crowd, and to his right was Grafton, also
standing, with his hat under his arm--idly curious. But it was to his
mother that he spoke and, steadfastly, he saw her strong, gentle face
even when he was looking far over her head, and he knew that she knew
that he was arguing the point then and there between them.
It was, he said, the first war of its kind in history. It marked an
epoch in the growth of national character since the world began. As an
American, he believed that no finger of mediaevalism should so much as
touch this hemisphere. The Cubans had earned their freedom long since,
and the cries of starving women and children for the bread which fathers
and brothers asked but the right to earn must cease. To put out of mind
the Americans blown to death at Havana--if such a thing were
possible--he yet believed with all his heart in the war. He did not
think there would be much of a fight--the regular army could doubtless
take good care of the Spaniard--but if everybody acted on that
presumption, there would be no answer to the call for volunteers. He was
proud to think that the Legion of his own State, that in itself stood
for the reunion of the North and the South, had been the first to spring
to arms. And he was proud to think that not even they were the first
Kentuckians to fight for Cuban liberty. He was proud that, before the
Civil War even, a Kentuckian of his own name and blood had led a band of
one hundred and fifty brave men of his own State against Spanish tyranny
in Cuba, and a Crittenden, with fifty of his followers, were captured
and shot in platoons of six.
"A Kentuckian kneels only to woman and his God," this Crittenden had
said proudly when ordered to kneel blindfolded and with his face to the
wall, "and always dies facing his enemy." And so those Kentuckians had
died nearly half a century before, and he knew that the young
Kentuckians before him would as bravely die, if need be, in the same
cause now; and when they came face to face with the Spaniard they would
remember the shattered battle-ship in the Havana harbour, and something
more--they would remember Crittenden. And then the speaker closed with
the words of a certain proud old Confederate soldier to his son:
"No matter who was right and who was wrong in the Civil War, the matter
is settled now by the sword. The Constitution left the question open,
but it is written there now in letters of blood. We have given our word
that they shall stand; and remember it is the word of gentlemen and
binding on their sons. There have been those in the North who have
doubted that word; there have been those in the South who have given
cause for doubt; and this may be true for a long time. But if ever the
time comes to test that word, do you be the first to prove it. You will
fight for your flag--mine now as well as yours--just as sincerely as I
fought against it." And these words, said Crittenden in a trembling
voice, the brave gentleman spoke again on his death-bed; and now, as he
looked around on the fearless young faces about him, he had no need to
fear that they were spoken in vain.