Kitabı oku: «A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865», sayfa 2

CHAPTER III
THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY

Soon after my marriage my brother-in-law moved to Baltimore, and my mother decided to go with Milicent and her little boy. I had never really been separated from them before; I was only seventeen, a spoiled child, but though I loved them dearly, after the first I scarcely missed them. I had my husband, and ah! how happy we were – how glad we both were that I had met Dan Grey!

We did not go to housekeeping at once. In the first place, I did not know anything about housekeeping and I didn’t want Dan to find it out; in the second place, we wanted to look around before we settled upon a house; and in the third, and what was to me the smallest place, the country was in a very unsettled condition.

The question of State’s rights and secession was being pressed home to Virginia. The correspondence between the commission at Washington and Mr. Seward was despatched to Richmond, and Richmond is but twenty miles from Petersburg. There were mutterings that each day grew louder, signs and portents that we refused to believe. Local militia were organizing and drilling – getting ready to answer the call should it come. Not that the people seriously thought that it would come. They believed, as they hoped, that something would be done to prevent war; that statesmen, North and South, would combine to save the Union; that, at any rate, we should be saved from bloodshed. As for those others who prophesied and prayed for it, who wanted the vials of God’s wrath uncorked, they got what they wanted. Their prayers were answered; the land was drenched in blood. But for the most of us – the Virginians whom I knew – we did not, we would not believe that brothers could war with brothers.

Then something happened that drove the truth home to our hearts. The guns of Sumter spoke – war was upon us. But not for long; the differences would be adjusted. Sumter fell, Virginia seceded. Still we befooled ourselves. There would be a brief campaign, victory, and peace. North and South, we looked for anything but what came – those four long years of bloody agony; North and South were each sure of victory. In Virginia, where the courage and endurance of starving men were to stand the test of weary months and years, we scoffed at the idea that there would be any real fighting. If there should be, for Virginia who had never known the shadow of defeat, defeat was impossible.

One day my brother-in-law, Dick, walked in.

“I’ve come to tell you good-by, Nell – I’m off to-morrow.”

“Where?”

“Norfolk.”

“What for?”

“Infantry ordered there. The Rifles go down to-night, the Grays to-morrow.”

I looked serious, and Dick laughed.

“Don’t bother, Nell, we’ll be back in a few days. There won’t be any fighting.”

Dick was a good-looking fellow, and I liked him much better than I had once said I did. He was the dandy of the family, and on the present occasion was glorious in a new uniform.

“Dick,” I said, “please don’t get in a fight and get shot.”

“Not if I can help it, Nell! There won’t be any fighting. We’re going to protect Norfolk, you know. Just going there to be on the spot if we’re needed, I suppose.”

He went away laughing, but I wasn’t convinced. When Dan came, I was almost too weak with fear to ask the question that was on my tongue.

“Is Norfolk to be bombarded?”

“No, I think not,” he spoke cheerily. “The boys will be back in a few days.”

Oh, I hoped they would! Many of my friends were among “the boys.”

“Do – do you think your company will have to go?”

I was only seventeen; mother and Milicent were away; my young husband was my life.

“The cavalry have not been ordered out,” he said. “I don’t think we will be sent for. Cheer up, Nell! The boys will be back in a few days, and won’t we have a high old time welcoming them home!”

The Rifles went down one day. The Grays went down the next. The day after my husband came in, looking very pale and quiet.

“Dan,” I said, “I know what it is.”

“The cavalry are ordered to Norfolk,” he said in a low voice. “It’s only a few days’ parting, little wife. I don’t think there will be any fighting. Be brave, my darling.”

I had thrown myself into his arms with a great cry.

“I can’t, Dan! I can’t let you go!”

He did not speak. He only held me close to his breast.

“Mother and Milicent are gone,” I cried, “and I can’t let you leave me to go and be killed! I couldn’t let you go if they were here.”

There was silence for a little while, then he said:

“I belong to you, little wife – I leave it to you what I shall do. Shall I stay behind, a traitor and a coward? Or shall I go with my company and do my duty?”

I couldn’t speak for tears. I felt how hard his heart beat against mine.

“Poor wife!” he said, “poor little child!”

When I spoke, I felt as if I were tearing my heart out by the roots.

“I – I – must – let – you – go!”

“That is my own brave girl. Never mind, Nell, I will make you proud of your soldier!”

“Oh, Dan! Dan!” I sobbed, “I don’t want to be proud of you! I just don’t want you to get hurt! I don’t want you to go if I could help it – but I can’t! I don’t want fame or glory! I want you!”

He smoothed my hair with slow touches, and was silent. Then he spoke again, trying to comfort me with those false hopes all fed on.

“I still doubt if there will be any fighting. But if there is, I must be in it. I can’t be a coward. There! there! Nellie, don’t cry! I hope for peace. The North and the South both want peace. You will laugh at all of this, Nell, when we come back from Norfolk without striking a blow!”

“Dan, let me go with you.”

“Dear, I can’t. How could you travel around, with only a knapsack, like a soldier?”

“Try me. I am to be a soldier’s wife.”

I was swallowing my sobs, sniffling, blowing my nose, and trying to look brave all at once. Instead of looking brave, I must have looked very comical, for Dan burst out laughing. The next moment we were silent again. The chimes of St. Paul’s rang out upon the air. It was neither Sabbath nor saint’s day. We knew what the bells were ringing for. Not only St. Paul’s chimes, but the bells of all the churches had become familiar signals calling us to labor as sacred as worship. Sewing machines had been carried into the churches, and the sacred buildings had become depots for bolts of cloth, linen, and flannel. Nothing could be heard in them for days but the click of machines, the tearing of cloth, the ceaseless murmur of voices questioning, and voices directing the work. Old and young were busy. Some were tearing flannel into lengths for shirts and cutting out havelocks and knapsacks. And some were tearing linen into strips and rolling it for bandages ready to the surgeon’s hand. Others were picking linen into balls of lint.

“I must go make you some clothes,” I said, getting up from Dan’s knee.

“But I have plenty,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. I must make you some more – like the others.”

Before the war was over I had learned to make clothes out of next to nothing, but that morning, except for fancy work, I had never sewed a stitch in my life. I could embroider anything from an altar cloth to an initial in the corner of a handkerchief, but to make a flannel shirt was beyond my comprehension. Make it, however, I could and would. I never hinted to Dan that I didn’t know how, for I was determined that nobody but me should make his army shirts – I must sew them with my own fingers. I went down town and bought the finest, softest flannel I could find. Then I was at my wits’ ends. I looked at the flannel and I looked at the scissors. Time was flying. I picked up my flannel and ran to consult my neighbor, Mrs. Cuthbert. She showed me how to cut and fashion my shirts, and I made them beautifully, feather-stitching all the seams.

Next day came and Dan made me buckle on his sword.

“If you stay long in Norfolk may I come?” I sobbed.

Poor Dan didn’t know what to say.

“I’m a soldier’s wife,” I said with a mighty effort to look it. “I can travel with a knapsack – and,” with a sob, “I can – keep – from crying.”

“I’m going to have you with me if possible. There! little wife, don’t cry, or you’ll make a fool of me. Be brave, Nell. That’s it! I’m proud of you.”

But there was a tremor in his voice all the same. He put me gently away from him and went out, and I lay down on the sofa and cried as if my heart would break. But not for long. Captain Jeter’s wife came for me; her eyes were red with weeping, but she was trying to smile. We were to go to the public leave-taking – there would be time enough for tears afterward. Everybody was on the streets to see the troops go off, and I took my stand with the others and watched as the cavalry rode past us. We kept our handkerchiefs waving all the time our friends were riding by, and when we saw our husbands and brothers we tried to cheer, but our voices were husky. The last thing I saw of my husband he was wringing the hand of an old friend who was not going, tears were streaming down his cheeks and he was saying, “For God’s sake, take care of my wife.”

They were gone, all gone, infantry and cavalry, the flower of the city. But they would be back in a few days, of that we were sure – and some of them never came back again.

I was in a city of mourning and dread, but my own suspense measured by days was not long, though it seemed an age to me then. A week had not passed when I got a telegram from Dan:

“Come to Norfolk. We are camped near there.”

It was near train time when I got it. I snatched up my satchel, put in a comb and brush and tooth-brush – not even an extra handkerchief – and almost ran to the depot. I could not have carried all my clothes, I know, for part of them were with the laundress, and packing a trunk would have taken time; but why on earth I did not put a few more articles into my satchel I can not tell. It is a matter of history, however, that I only took those I have named. The first thing Dan did was to get me some handkerchiefs.

“Why, Nell,” he said, “you are taking this thing of being a soldier’s wife too seriously.”

It was delightful to be in my old home once more. Friends and kindred crowded around me, the river and bay and ocean sang my old cradle-songs to me again, and, above all, Dan was near and came in from camp as often as he could. Then he was ordered away to Suffolk, which is twenty miles from Norfolk, and there, of course, he could not ride in to see me. But that was not so bad as it might have been. I could hear from him regularly, he had not yet been in any actual engagement, my fears were subsiding, or I was getting accustomed to them. I had, of course, telegraphed to Petersburg for my baggage and had made myself as comfortable as possible. An old uncle had taken it into his head to become quite fond of me, and altogether I was very far from unhappy. This uncle was eccentric and had eccentric ways of comforting me when I had the blues.

“Why, Nellie, my dear,” he used to say, “you ought to be playing dolls, and here you are a wife, and if Dan gets killed you will be a widow.”

On the heels of which cheerful observation this despatch came from Suffolk:

“Come by next train. Dan slightly hurt.

“Jack.”

When I got to Suffolk four of the company met me.

“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Nell,” said the great fellows, sympathy and desire to cheer me blending in their eyes. “Dan will pull through all right.”

Then Jack Carrington took me aside and explained as gently and tenderly as if he had been my brother:

“It happened yesterday, Miss Nell, but we wouldn’t let you know because there was no way for you to get here then. We thought it wouldn’t be so hard on you if we waited and sent the telegram just before train time. Your uncle got one before you did, but we told him not to tell you till just before train time, and he wired us back to tell you ourselves, that he couldn’t tell you. Dan is getting all right now – he’ll soon get well, Miss Nell, indeed he will. But the doctor said I must warn you – Miss Nell, you must be brave, you see – or I can’t tell you at all. The doctor said I mustn’t let you go in there unless you were perfectly calm. The wound is nothing at all, Miss Nell.”

Poor Jack was almost as unnerved as I was. He mopped my face with a wet handkerchief, and made somebody bring me some brandy.

But the words ringing in my head, “A soldier’s wife,” pulled me together more than the brandy, and I made Jack go on.

“It’s nothing but his arm. We were out on vidette duty yesterday and we got shot into. You see, Miss Nell, you must be brave or I can’t tell you!”

I pulled myself together again and insisted that I was brave.

“You don’t look like it, Miss Nell. I declare you don’t.”

“But I am. See now.”

Jack didn’t seem to see, but he went on, looking scared himself all the time.

“The real trouble was Dare Devil. You see, after Dan’s arm got hurt – I wish it had been me or George who had caught that shot, but, hang the luck! it was Dan. You know Dare Devil’s old trick – catching the bit in his teeth. Well, he did that and ran away. Dan held on with his good arm until that d – d horse (excuse me, Miss Nell!) wheeled suddenly and dashed into the woods. The limbs of the trees dragged Dan out of his saddle, and his foot caught in the stirrup and Dare Devil dragged him (take some brandy, Miss Nell) until the strap broke. We picked Dan up insensible; he was delirious all night, and we thought for a time that he was done for, but, thank God! he’s all right now. I hate to tell you, Miss Nell, but – you’ll see how his head is – and the doctor said we mustn’t let you go in if you couldn’t be calm.”

“I understand,” I said, “I will be very careful – ”

And to prove how careful I could be, I broke down crying.

They didn’t know what to do with me, poor fellows. They begged me not to cry, and then they said crying would do me good, and I had four pairs of broad shoulders to cry on. They were all as gentle and pitiful with me as a mother is with a baby. One of them got out his nice fresh handkerchief and wiped my eyes with it. I had come off the second time without a change of handkerchiefs, and this time without even a tooth-brush. When I had cried my trouble out and was quite calm, I told them I was ready to go to my husband. They took me to the door and I went in quietly, and seeing that he was awake, bent over him.

“I am here, Dan,” I said smiling.

He tried to smile back.

“Take my head in your hands, Nell,” he whispered, “and turn it so I can kiss you.”

I laid my hands softly and firmly on each side of his head and turned it on the pillow. As I did so, a quantity of sand fell away.

I don’t know whether his head had been properly dressed or not, but I know that for a number of days the sand fell away from it whenever I took it into my hands to turn it.

“After I fell,” he told me, when he was allowed to talk, “my head was in the dirt, of course, and it was beat first against one tree and then against another. When I felt my senses leaving me, I clasped my arms tight around my head. I don’t know how I managed it, but I got hold of my crippled arm with my good one, and when I was picked up my arms were locked in some way about my head. That is all that saved me.”

I took the law into my own hands. Before Dan got well Dare Devil had been shot.

CHAPTER IV
THE REALITIES OF WAR

When Dan recovered I returned to Norfolk, and there I stayed for some time, getting letters from him, taking care of uncle and developing a genius for housekeeping. One day I was out shopping when I saw everybody running toward the quay. I turned and went with the crowd. We saw the Merrimac swing out of the harbor – or did she crawl? A curious looking craft she was, that first of our ironclads, ugly and ominous.

She had not been gone many hours when the sound of guns came over the water followed by silence, terrible silence, that lasted until after the lamps were lit. Suddenly there was tumultuous cheering from the quay. The Merrimac had come home after destroying the Cumberland and the Congress.

“Well for the Congress!” we said. Her commander had eaten and drunk of Norfolk’s hospitality, and then had turned his guns upon her – upon a city full of his friends. Bravely done, O Merrimac! But that night I cried myself to sleep. Under the sullen waters of Hampton Roads slept brave men and true, to whom Stars and Stripes and Southern Cross alike meant nothing now. The commander of the Congress was among the dead, and he had been my friend – I had danced with him in my father’s house. Next day, the Monitor met the Merrimac and turned the tide of victory against us. Her commander was John L. Worden, who had been our guest beloved.

During all this time I had been separated from my husband. He had been detailed to make a survey of Pig Point and the surrounding country, and it was not until he reached Smithfield that he sent for me. We were beginning now to realize that war was upon us in earnest. There was the retreat from Yorktown; Norfolk was evacuated. Troops were moving. Everything was bustle and confusion. My husband went off with his command, the order for departure so sudden that he had not time to plan for me.

As Northern troops began to occupy the country, fearing that I would be left in the enemy’s lines and so cut off from getting to him, I took the matter into my own hands and went in a covered wagon to Zuni, twenty miles distant, where I had heard that his command was encamped for a few days. After a rough ride I got there only to find that my husband had started off to Smithfield for me. We had passed each other on the road, each in a covered wagon. There was nothing to do except to wait his return that night.

As my husband’s command had been ordered to join the troops at Seven Pines, I took the train for Richmond the next day, stopped a few hours, and then went to Petersburg. When I got there the Battle of Seven Pines was on. For two days it raged – for two days the booming of the cannon sounded in our ears and thundered at our hearts. Friends gathered at each other’s houses and looked into each other’s faces and held each other’s hands, and listened for news from the field. And the sullen boom of the cannon broke in upon us, and we would start and shiver as if it had shot us, and sometimes the tears would come. But the bravest of us got so we could not weep. We only sat in silence or spoke in low voices to each other and rolled bandages and picked linen into lint. And in those two days it seemed as if we forgot how to smile.

Telegrams began to come; a woman would drop limp and white into the arms of a friend – her husband was shot. Another would sit with her hand on her heart in pallid silence until her friends, crowding around her, spoke to her, tried to arouse her, and then she would break into a cry:

“O my son! my son!”

There were some who could never be roused any more; grief had stunned and stupefied them forever, and a few there were who died of grief. One young wife, who had just lost her baby and whose husband perished in the fight, never lifted her head from her pillow. When the funeral train brought him home we laid her in old Blandford beside him, the little baby between.

Now and then when mothers and sisters were bewailing their loss and we were pressing comfort upon them, there would be a whisper, and one of us would turn to where some poor girl sat, dumb and stricken, the secret of her love for the slain wrenched from her by the hand of war. Sometimes a bereaved one would laugh!

The third day, the day after the battle, I heard that Dan was safe. Every day I had searched the columns of “Killed and Wounded” in the Richmond Despatch for his name, and had thanked God when I didn’t find it. But direct news I had none until that third day. The strain had been too great; I fell ill. Owing to the general’s illness at this time his staff was ordered to Petersburg, and Dan, who was engineer upon the staff, got leave to come on for a day or two in advance of the other members of it; but while I was still at death’s door he was ordered off. When I at last got up, I had to be taught to walk as a child is taught, step by step; and before I was able to join my husband many battles had been fought in which he took part. I was at the breakfast-table, when, after months of weary waiting, he telegraphed me to come to Culpeper Court-house.

This time I packed a small trunk with necessary articles, putting in heavy dresses and winter flannels. The winter does not come early in Petersburg; the weather was warm when I started, and I decided to travel in a rather light dress for the season. I did not trouble myself with hand-baggage – not even a shawl. The afternoon train would put me in Richmond before night; I would stop over until morning, and that day’s train would leave me in Culpeper. Just before I started, Mr. Sampson, at whose house I was staying, came in and said that an old friend of his was going to Richmond on my train and would be glad to look after me. I assented with alacrity. Before the war it was not the custom for ladies to travel alone, and, besides this, in the days of which I write traveling was attended with much confusion and many delays. I reached the depot a few minutes before train time, my escort was presented and immediately took charge of me. He was a nice-looking elderly gentleman, quite agreeable, and with just a slight odor of brandy about him. He saw me comfortably seated, and went to see after our baggage, he said. He did not return at once, but I took it for granted that he was in the smoking-car. Traveling was slower then than now. Half-way to Richmond I began to wonder what had become of my escort. But my head was too full of other things to bother very much about it. The outlook from the car window along that route is always beautiful; and then, the next day I was to see Dan. Darkness, and across the river the lights of Richmond flashed upon the view. Where was my escort? I had noticed on the train that morning a gentleman who wore the uniform of a Confederate captain and whom I knew by sight. He came up to me now.

“Excuse me, madam, but can I be of any assistance to you? I know your husband quite well.”

“Do you know where my escort is?” I asked.

He looked embarrassed and tried not to smile.

“We left him at Chester, Mrs. Grey.”

“At Chester? He was going to Richmond.”

“Well – you see, Mrs. Grey, it was – an accident. The old gentleman got off to get a drink and the train left him.”

I could not help laughing.

“If you will allow me, madam,” said my new friend, “I will see you to your hotel. How about your baggage?”

“Oh!” I cried in dismay, “Mr. C – has my trunk-check in his pocket.”

My new friend considered. “If he comes on the next train, perhaps that will be in time to get your trunk off with you to Culpeper. If not, your trunk will follow you immediately. I’ll see the conductor and do what I can. I’m going out of town to-morrow, but Captain Jeter is here and I’ll tell him about your trunk-check. He’ll be sure to see Mr. C – .”

I was to see Dan the next day, and nothing else mattered. I made my mind easy about that trunk, and my new friend took me to the American, where I spent the evening very pleasantly in receiving old acquaintances and making new ones.

But with bedtime another difficulty arose: I had never slept in a room at a hotel by myself in my life. Fortunately, Mrs. Hopson, of Norfolk, happened to be spending the night there. I sent up a note asking if I might sleep with her, and went up to her room half an hour later prepared for a delightful talk about Norfolk. When we were ready for bed, she took up one of her numerous satchels and put it down on the side where I afterward lay down to sleep.

“I put that close by the bed because it contains valuables,” she said with an impressive solemnity I afterward understood.

Of course I asked no questions, though she referred to the valuables several times. We were in bed and the lights had been out some time when I had occasion to ask her where she had come from there.

“Oh, Nell!” she said, “didn’t you know? I’ve been to Charlottesville and I’ve come from there to-day. Didn’t you know about it? John” (her son) “was wounded. Didn’t you know about it? Of course I had to go to him. They had to perform an operation on him. I was right there when they did it.” Here followed a graphic account of the operation. “It was dreadful. You see that satchel over there?” pointing to the one just beneath my head on the floor.

“Yes, I see it.”

“Well, John’s bones are right in there!”

“Good gracious!” I cried, and jumped over her to the other side of the bed.

“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked. “You look like you were scared, Nell. Why, Nell, the whole of John wouldn’t hurt you, much less those few bones. I’m carrying them home to put them in the family burying-ground. That’s the reason I think so much of that satchel and keep it so close to me. I don’t want John to be buried all about in different places, you see. But I don’t see anything for you to be afraid of in a few bones. John’s as well as ever – it isn’t like he was dead, now.”

I lay down quietly, ashamed of my sudden fright, but there were cold chills running down my spine.

After a little more talk she turned over, and I presently heard a comfortable snore, but I lay awake a long time, my eyes riveted on the satchel containing fragments of John. Then I began to think of seeing Dan in the morning, and fell asleep feeling how good it was that he was safe and sound, all his bones together and not scattered around like poor John’s.

I reached Culpeper Court-house the next afternoon about four o’clock. Dan met me looking tired and shabby, and as soon as he had me settled went back to camp.

“I’ll come to see you as often as I can get leave,” he said when he told me good-by. “We may be quartered here for some time – long enough for us to get ourselves and our horses rested up, I hope; but I’m afraid I can’t see much of you. Hardly worth the trouble of your coming, is it, little woman?”

“Oh, Dan, yes,” I said cheerfully; “just so you are not shot up! It would be worth the coming if I only got to see you through a car window as the train went by.”

A few days after my arrival a heavy snow-storm set in. As my trunk had not yet come, I was still in the same dress in which I had left Petersburg, and, though we were all willing enough to lend, clothes were so scarce that borrowing from your neighbor was a last resort. I suffered in silence for a week before my trunk arrived, and then it was exchanging one discomfort for another, for my flannels were so tight from shrinkage and so worn that I felt as if something would break every time I moved.

During this snow-storm the roads were lined with Confederate troops marching home footsore and weary from Maryland. Long, hard marches and bloody battles had been their portion. In August they had come, after their work at Seven Pines, Cold Harbor, and Malvern Hill, to drive Pope out of Culpeper, where he was plundering. They had driven him out and pressed after, fighting incessantly. Near Culpeper there had been the battle of Cedar Mountain, where Jackson had defeated Pope and chased him to Culpeper Court-house. Somewhat farther from Culpeper had been fought the second battle of Manassas, and, crowding upon these, the battles of Germantown, Centreville, Antietam – more than I can remember to name. Lee’s army was back in Culpeper now with Federal troops at their heels, and McClellan, not Pope, in command. Civilians, women, children, and slaves feared Pope; soldiers feared McClellan – that is, as much as Lee’s soldiers could fear anybody.

I found our tired army in Culpeper trying to rest and fatten a little before meeting McClellan’s legions. Then – I am not historian enough to know just how it happened – McClellan’s head fell and Burnside reigned in his stead. Better and worse for our army, and no worse for our women and children, for Burnside was a gentleman even as McClellan was and as Pope was not, and made no war upon women and children until the shelling of Fredericksburg.