Chapter 19

NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS

The two women clasped hands again and looked at each other as Harley disappeared amid the smoke.

"He has left us," said Mrs. Markham.

"Yes, but he has gone to his country's need," said his sister proudly.

Then they were silent again. Night, smoky, cloudy and dark, thick with vapours and mists, and ashes and odours that repelled, was coming down upon the Wilderness. Afar in the east the fire in the forest still burned, sending up tongues of scarlet and crimson over which sparks flew in myriads. Nearer by, the combat went on, its fury undimmed by the darkness, its thunder as steady, as persistent and terrible as before.

Helen was struck with horror. The battle, weird enough in the day, was yet more so in the darkness, and she could not understand why it did not close with the light. It partook of an inhuman quality, and that scene out there was more than ever to her an inferno because the flaming pit was now enclosed by outer blackness, completely cut off from all else--a world to itself in which all the passions strove, and none could tell to which would fall the mastery.

She felt for the moment horror of both sides, North and South alike, and she wished only that the unnatural combat would cease; she did not care then--a brief emotion, though--which should prove the victor.

It was a dark and solemn night that came down over the Wilderness and the two hundred thousand who had fought all day and still fought amid its thickets. Never before had that thin, red soil--redder now--borne such a crop, and many were glad that the darkness hid the sight from their enemies. The two Generals, the master minds who had propelled their mighty human machines against each other, were trying to reckon their losses--with the battle still in progress--and say to themselves whether they had won or lost. But this battlefield was no smooth and easy chessboard where the pawns might be moved as one wills and be counted as they fell, but a wilderness of thickets and forests and hills and swamps and valleys where the vast lines bent or twisted or interlaced and were lost in the shades and the darkness. Count and reckon as they would, the two Generals, equal in battle, face to face for the first time--could not give the total of the day. It was still an unadded sum, and the guns, despite the night, were steadily contributing new figures. This was the flaw in their arithmetic; nothing was complete, and they saw that they would have to begin again to-morrow. So, with this day's work yet unfinished, they began to prepare, sending for new regiments and brigades, massing more cannon, and planning afresh.

But all these things were unknown to Helen as she sat there at the window with Mrs. Markham. Her thoughts wandered again to Wood, that splendid figure on horseback, and she sought to identify him there among the black marionettes that gyrated