The Girl at the Halfway House | Page 3

sufferings had
begun.

CHAPTER II
THE PLAYERS OF THE GAME
When the band major was twenty miles away in front of Louisburg his
trumpets sounded always the advance. The general played the game
calmly. The line of the march was to be along the main road leading
into the town. With this course determined, the general massed his
reserves, sent on the column of assault, halted at the edge of the wood,
deployed his skirmishers, advanced them, withdrew them, retreated but
advanced again, ever irresistibly sweeping the board in toward the base
of Louisburg, knight meeting knight, pawn meeting pawn, each side
giving and taking pieces on the red board of war.
The main intrenchments erected in the defences of Louisburg lay at
right angles to the road along which came the Northern advance, and
upon the side of the wood nearest to the town. Back of the trenches lay
broken fields, cut up by many fences and dotted with occasional trees.
In the fields both the wheat and the flowers were now trampled down,
and a thousand industrious and complaining bees buzzed protest at the
losing of their commerce. The defences themselves were but
earthworks, though skilfully laid out. Along their front, well hidden by
the forest growth, ran a line of entangling abattis of stakes and
sharpened interwoven boughs.
In the centre of the line of defence lay the reserves, the boys of
Louisburg, flanked on either side by regiments of veterans, the lean and
black-haired Georgians and Carolinians, whose steadiness and
unconcern gave comfort to more than one bursting boyish heart. The
veterans had long played the game of war. They had long since said
good-bye to their women. They had seen how small a thing is life, how
easily and swiftly to be ended. Yellow-pale, their knees standing high
in front of them as they squatted about on the ground, their long black
hair hanging down uncared for, they chewed, smoked, swore, and
cooked as though there was no jarring in the earth, no wide foreboding
on the air. One man, sitting over his little fire, alternately removed and
touched his lips to the sooty rim of his tin cup, swearing because it was

too hot. He swore still more loudly and in tones more aggrieved when a
bullet, finding that line, cut off a limb from a tree above and dropped it
into his fire, upsetting the frying pan in which he had other store of
things desirable. Repairing all this damage as he might, he lit his pipe
and leaned against the tree, sitting with his knees high in front of him.
There came other bullets, singing, sighing. Another bullet found that
same line as the man sat there smoking.
Overhead were small birds, chirping, singing, twittering. A long black
line of crows passed, tumbling in the air, with much confusion of
chatter and clangour of complaint that their harvest, too, had been
disturbed. They had been busy. Why should men play this game when
there were serious things of life?
The general played calmly, and ever the points and edges and fronts of
his advance came on, pressing in toward the last row of the board,
toward the line where lay the boys of Louisburg. Many a boy was pale
and sick that day, in spite of the encouraging calm or the biting jests of
the veterans. The strange sighings in the air became more numerous
and more urgent. Now and then bits of twigs and boughs and leaves
came sifting down, cut by invisible shears, and now and then a sapling
jarred with the thud of an unseen blow. The long line in the trenches
moved and twisted restlessly.
In front of the trenches were other regiments, out ahead in the woods,
unseen, somewhere toward that place whence came the steadiest jarring
of artillery and the loudest rattling of the lesser arms. It was very hard
to lie and listen, to imagine, to suspect, to dread. For hours the game
went on, the reserves at the trenches hearing now distinctly and now
faintly the tumult of the lines, now receding, now coming on. But the
volume of the tumult, and its separation into a thousand distinct and
terrifying sounds, became in the average ever an increasing and not a
lessening thing. The cracker-popping of the musketry became less and
less a thing of sport, of reminiscences. The whinings that passed
overhead bore more and more a personal message. These young men,
who but lately had said good-bye to the women of their kin, began to
learn what war might mean. It had been heretofore a distant,

unmeasured, undreaded thing, conquerable, not to be feared. It seemed
so sweet and fit to go forth, even though it had been hard to say
good-bye!
Now there began