Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [151]
For more than four hours, every church bell in the city slowly tolled in mourning. Then the train finally pulled into the station, and we joined the crowd that followed the hearse to the governor’s mansion on Capitol Square. The mantle of grief that had fallen over the city weighed heavily on Charles, and I didn’t know how to help him lift it.
Afterward, we rode to his parents’ home in nearby Court End. I longed to have Charles all to myself for these two short days, but his extended family had gathered to welcome him home and I knew we must attend the dinner they gave in his honor. Throughout the long evening he talked about his experiences and the battles he’d fought; about Stonewall Jackson and General Longstreet, and the awe in which the men held General “Bobby” Lee; about the state of the Confederacy and what still had to be done to win independence. By the time he drove me home, Charles seemed to have run out of words. The dark sadness that had hung over him all day now enveloped him. I didn’t beg him to talk to me but simply held him in my arms in the back of the carriage, his cheek resting against my hair.
We pulled up in front of my house, but before he kissed me good night, Charles took both of my hands in his and made me look at him, face-to-face. When he spoke, his tone was somber, resolute. “Caroline. You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die.”
“No . . . no—”
“Listen now. I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.” I shut my eyes, as if I could also shut out his words, but Charles squeezed my hands, forcing me to look at him again. “When it happens, I’ll need you to be strong, for my parents’ sake.”
He helped me from the carriage and walked me to the door, kissing me gently before he left. “Good night, Caroline,” he said. But it felt, for all the world, like good-bye.
The next morning I clung to Charles’ arm as we attended General Jackson’s funeral. I couldn’t get Charles’ words from last night out of my mind or stop imagining this funeral as a rehearsal of his own. That was exactly what he had intended. He’d wanted me to imagine his death, to rehearse it, so the shock of it would be less severe—so that I could survive if he didn’t.
But he wasn’t dead. Charles was alive, beside me. I gripped his arm so tightly that it must have been numb by the end of the day.
General Longstreet served as one of the pallbearers as they carried Stonewall’s coffin, draped with the Confederate flag, out of the governor’s mansion. The band began to play the “Dead March,” and I thought surely the musicians must have it memorized by now, they had played it so many, many times in the past two years. Two regiments of Pickett’s division led the mile-long procession through the streets, followed by soldiers from the Home Guard and Wren’s battalion, along with six artillery pieces. Four white horses drew the hearse; eight generals escorted it. But I couldn’t help weeping at the sight of General Jackson’s riderless horse, plodding down the street with his empty cavalry boots strapped to the vacant saddle. Convalescents from the Stonewall Brigade who were well enough to leave the hospital marched bravely behind it. President Davis, Governor Letcher, and other officials brought up the rear.
When the grim procession finally returned to the capitol, the coffin was placed in the House chamber. Charles and I were among the twenty thousand mourners who filed past to pay our final respects. I saw Charles fighting his tears as he gazed at the pale, spiritless body, the vacant uniform sleeve.
“He’s going to be buried in Lexington,” Charles murmured as if to himself. “He taught there, at the Virginia Military Institute.” When we finally stepped outside into the late afternoon sunshine again, Charles exhaled as if he’d been forced to hold his breath for a very long time.