Crittenden E-Book

John, Jr. Fox

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In "Crittenden," John Jr. Fox presents a profound exploration of the complexities of human relationships against the backdrop of the American Civil War. The novel intricately weaves historical facts with fictional narratives, employing a lyrical prose style that captures the era's tumultuous spirit. Fox masterfully delves into themes of loyalty, sacrifice, and the moral ambiguities faced by individuals during a time of profound national division. The characters, richly developed and deeply relatable, navigate their paths with a sense of urgency, reflecting the societal conflicts of their time and the personal dilemmas that resonate with contemporary readers. John Jr. Fox, a dedicated historian and novelist, draws upon his extensive research and personal connections to the historical events of the 19th century. His background in both literature and history informs his narrative choices, allowing him to create a nuanced portrayal of life during a pivotal era. Fox's passion for highlighting often overlooked perspectives adds depth to the narratives, inviting readers to engage with the human experience behind the historical account. "Crittenden" is a must-read for those who appreciate historical fiction rich in emotional depth and authenticity. Its thought-provoking themes and evocative language make it a compelling addition to the genre. Readers seeking to understand the interplay between personal and historical narratives will find in Fox's work a remarkable journey that both informs and captivates.

Leseprobe

John Jr. Fox

Crittenden

A Kentucky Story of Love and War

Published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4064066212100

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

I

Table of Contents

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

Table of Contents

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

Table of Contents

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 mediævalism 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.