Kitabı oku: «The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story», sayfa 8

XIII
A souvenir service

During the rest of the journey Agatha was excited and full of enthusiasm. She had participated in a fight under the lead of the gallantest of cavaliers, and she had borne herself under fire in a way that had won his admiration. That admiration found expression in a hundred ways, and chiefly in pressing offers of service. Before their parting he said to her:

"Now, my dear Miss Agatha, you really must let me do you some favour. I want to cherish the memory of this day's glorious ride, and I want to render you some service, the memory of which may serve as a souvenir. What shall it be?"

At that moment there came to Agatha's mind one of those inspirations that come to all of us at times, quite without consciousness of whence they come or why. She answered:

"You are already doing everything for me, General. You have sanctioned an enterprise on which I have set my heart, and you have done all you could to make it successful. You gave me for dinner to-day the very best ear of green corn that I ever tasted. You have personally and very gallantly escorted me back here to Fairfax Court-house, and on the way you have got up for me the most dramatic bit of action that I ever saw. I am convinced that you did it only for my entertainment, and I am truly grateful." Then with a sudden access of intense seriousness, she added, "And you have opened a way to me to render that service to my country which I had planned. Never, so long as you live, – and I hope that may be long for Virginia's sake, – will you know or imagine how great a service you have rendered me in this. But you insist upon doing more. You insist that I shall crave a boon at your hands. Very well; I will do so."

With that readiness of response which characterised everything that Stuart did, he seized the opportunity offered, and broke into Agatha's sentence with the answer:

"Of course I insist. What is it that I may do?"

"I want you to secure a captain's commission, then, for Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram. You know all about his family. He volunteered as a private. He was promoted to be sergeant-major by Stonewall Jackson's own request, in recognition of his good conduct. He was terribly wounded at Manassas, mentioned in general orders, and strongly recommended for promotion for gallantry on the field. My aunts write to me – " here Agatha fibbed a little, as a woman is permitted to do under circumstances that might otherwise compromise her dignity, for it was not her aunts, but a highly intelligent negro maid in their service who kept the young lady informed as to Baillie Pegram's condition – "my aunts tell me he is getting well again, and will soon be ready for duty."

"What is his arm?" asked Stuart, eagerly.

"Light artillery," Agatha answered.

"Has he influence?"

"How do you mean?"

"Could he get men to enlist?"

"Why, of course. He's the master of Warlock, you know."

Then with a little touch of embarrassment, she added, "I mean he is the head of one of the great families, and they always have influence."

"O, yes, of course," Stuart answered. "I see the situation clearly. Will you say to Mr. Pegram – Sergeant-Major Pegram, I mean – that I have authority from the War Department to raise three companies of flying artillery, with the men all mounted, to serve with the cavalry, and that if he can form such a company, – of fifty or seventy-five men, or better still a hundred men – I will secure him a captain's commission with authority to do so?"

"But, General," said the girl, quickly, and in manifest fright, "I do not correspond with Mr. Pegram. In fact we are very nearly strangers."

"O, I see," answered the cavalier, with a twinkle in his eyes. "How long has it been since you and this gallant young gentleman arranged to be 'very nearly strangers?'"

"O, you entirely mistake, General," the girl quickly answered. "Really and truly I never knew Mr. Pegram very well; but he wore a red feather of mine at the battle of Manassas, and afterward he sent it back to me and – well, anyhow he proved his gallantry and he really ought to be something more than a sergeant-major, don't you think?"

For answer Stuart made a sweeping bow, removing his hat and saying: "Concerning Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, I think whatever you think. Anyhow, as he had the good taste to wear your red feather, and as he has fought well enough to secure a wound and a mention in general orders and your personal approval, he shall be a captain if he wants to be. Give me his address, and you need not have any correspondence with him."

"I'll write it," she answered, "if you'll excuse me for a moment," and with that she retired within doors – for they had been standing in the porch – in a rage of vexation with herself. She hastily sponged off her inflamed face with cold water, dried it, and loosely twisted up her errant hair, which had run riot over her neck and shoulders ever since the little encounter with the enemy. Then she scribbled Baillie Pegram's Warlock address on a scrap of paper and returned to Stuart's presence, with the mien and bearing of a queen.

The cavalier's face was rippling all over with smiles as he bade her adieu, wished her Godspeed in her enterprise, and turned away. At the steps he faced about, and advancing said to her:

"When do you wish to return to Fauquier?"

"I shall go home to-morrow morning," she answered.

"You travel in your own carriage, of course?"

"Yes, and my maid is with me."

"Very well," he answered. "At sunrise a platoon under command of a trusty officer will report here and serve as your escort."

"But, General, surely that is not necessary."

"Not necessary, perhaps," was the answer, "but it pleases me to have it so, and you'll indulge my fancy, I am sure. I hope to have you as my prisoner before many moons have passed."

She understood, and with a rippling smile she replied:

"Thank you, and good-bye. I shall certainly enjoy my next ear of green corn if I am permitted to take it in your company, under some tree that you have honoured by making it your headquarters."

"O, my ravenous cavalrymen will have eaten up all the green corn long before that time; but I'll give you a dinner if I have to raid a Federal picket-post to get it."

With that he sprang into his saddle, waved a farewell, and rode away singing:

 
"If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cav-al-ry."
 

It was Stuart's boast at that time that he knew the face and name of every man in his old first regiment, and he afterward extended this boast to include all the men in the first brigade of Virginia Cavalry. He used to say: "I ought to remember those fellows; they made me a major-general."

But however well Stuart knew his men, with whom he fraternised in a way very unusual to most officers bred in the regular army, as he had been, nobody ever pretended to know him well enough to guess with any accuracy what he would do next under any given circumstances. On this occasion he had not brought his staff with him, but that made small difference with an officer of his temper, whose habit of mind it was to disregard forms and ceremonies, and to go straight to his purpose, whatever it might happen to be. When he left Agatha, he rode at once to the camp of a detached company and asked for its captain. To him he said:

"Send couriers to all the cavalry camps, and say that General Stuart orders the entire force to report in front at once."

He designated three roads and four bridle-paths by which the commands were to move; and three or four points of rendezvous. Then he added:

"Let the men move light – no baggage or blankets or anything else but arms and ammunition."

A moment later he met Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, who had succeeded him in command of the old first regiment, – "my Mamelukes," as Stuart loved to call them. The two grasped hands, and Stuart said: "I've ordered everybody to the front. You are to take command on the left. We must drive the Federal pickets back from all their advanced posts. They are growing impudent. They fired at a lady under my personal escort to-day. We must teach them not to repeat that."

Of course the men who had done the firing in question had no means of knowing that there was a woman among the assailed, and Stuart knew the fact very well. But he chose to regard whatever happened as something intended.

Turning from Lee, he galloped to the camp of some batteries, and said to the officer in command:

"I wish you'd lend me a couple of guns or so for the afternoon. I've some work to do. Send them out along the Falls Church road. I'll not have to go borrowing guns after a little while. I'll have some mounted batteries of my own."

The officer addressed issued the necessary orders as quietly as a gentleman in his own house might bid a servant bring a glass of water for a thirsty guest. No questions were asked on either side, and no explanations offered. It is not the military fashion to ask unnecessary questions or to give needless explanations.

By this time the cavalry regiments were streaming by on their hurried way to the front, saluting Stuart as they passed, and now and then cheering, as they were apt to do when they saw their gallant leader. He in his turn nodded and bowed in acknowledgment, and now and then called out a cheery word of greeting. He would be at the head of all these fellows presently, and they knew that "the performance would not begin," as they were in the habit of saying, till he should be there to lead. But meanwhile he had something else to attend to, for Stuart never forgot anything that he wanted to remember, however engrossingly he might be engaged with other affairs. Riding up to a tent before which Colonel Field was standing awaiting his horse, he asked:

"Is your adjutant with you, Field?"

"No – he has gone on with orders, but his orderly is here, General."

"That will do as well." Then turning to the orderly, who had appeared, he said:

"Take down a paper from dictation, please. When it is written out, bring it to me at the front for signature."

The dictation was as follows:

"General J. E. B. Stuart, commanding the cavalry, respectfully reports that in pursuance of the authorisation of the War Department, he has selected Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, of – 's battery, as one of the persons to be commissioned captain of artillery and authorised to raise a mounted battery to serve with the cavalry. General Stuart begs to report that Sergeant-Major Pegram's character and qualifications are abundantly certified, and that he has already been mentioned in general orders and recommended for promotion for conspicuous gallantry in the battle of Manassas. He is at present at his home, recovering from a severe wound received in that action. All of which is respectfully submitted."

"There!" said Stuart, when the dictation was done. "Write that out, fold and indorse it properly, and bring it to me at the front for signature. Then forward it through the regular channels."

Then Stuart put spurs to his horse, and galloped to the front. There he made hurried disposition of the various commands, and half an hour later hurled his whole force precipitately upon all the Federal outposts on the ten-mile line. The onset was sudden and resistless, and within a brief while every picket-post of the enemy was abandoned, and a new line of observation established many miles nearer to Washington City.

With that tireless energy and that sleepless vigilance in attention to details which always characterised the conduct of this typical chevalier, Stuart spent the entire night following this day's work in visiting his new outposts, from one end of the line to the other. Yet when morning came he breakfasted upon an ear of raw corn and a laugh, and rode on to Munson's Hill to learn what signals had been received from his agents in Washington during the night.

XIV
Quick work

It was a warm, soft day in autumn, joyous in its sunshine, sad in its suggestions of the year's decay. Baillie Pegram, now nearly well again, but still lacking strength, was lolling on the closely clipped sward under one of the great trees at Warlock, chatting disjointedly with Marshall Pollard, who had got away again on a few days' leave of absence, for the purpose of visiting his friend. Baillie had already written to his captain, reporting himself as nearly well again, expressing regret at his long absence from duty, and announcing his purpose of rejoining the battery within a week or ten days at furthest – "at the earliest time," he said, "when I can persuade the surgeons to release me from their clutches." This was likely, therefore, to be the last meeting between the two friends for many moons to come.

"Tell me about yourself, old fellow," said Baillie, after a pause in the conversation. "How do you like your service in that battery of ruffians?"

"Thoroughly well. They're not half-bad fellows when kept under military discipline, and I've enjoyed studying them psychologically. I'm convinced that the only reason society has failed so consummately in its attempts to deal with the criminal class is that it hasn't taken pains to understand them or find out their point of view. We really haven't taken pains enough even to classify them, or to find out the differences there are among them. We class them all together – all who violate the law – and call them criminals, and proceed to deal with them as if they were a totally different species from ourselves, whereas, in point of fact, they are 'men like unto ourselves,' with like passions and desires and impulses. The only real difference is that circumstances and education and association have taught us to curb our passions and hold our impulses in check, while they have run wild, obeying those instincts which are born in all of us.

"They are usually very generous fellows – impulsive, affectionate, and loyal to such friendships as they know. If you discovered any wrong being done to me, or heard any unjust accusation made against me, you'd resist and resent instantly. But you'd know precisely how far and in what direction to carry your resentment, while these fellows do not know anything except the instincts of a righteous wrath. There isn't a man in Skinner's Battery who wouldn't be quick to stand for me and by me. But in doing so he would calmly kill the man who injured me, and never be able to understand why he must be hanged for doing so.

"Most of them have been made hardened criminals solely by society's blundering way of dealing with them. It has sent them to jail, for small first offences, committed in ignorance perhaps. It has thus declared war upon them, and with the instincts of manhood they have taken up the gage of battle. In other words, it is my sincere belief that quite nine in ten of the criminal class are criminal only because of society's neglect at first and blundering afterward. They need education and discipline; we give them resentful punishment instead, and there is a world of difference between the two things.

"However, I did not mean to deliver a lecture on penology. And after all I am no longer one of the ruffians, you know. All the officers of the battery are gentlemen, while none of the men happens to be anything of the kind. There is, therefore, as sharp a line of demarcation drawn in our battery, between officers and enlisted men, as there is in any regular army. This makes things pleasant for the officers, and I fancy they are not unpleasant for the men. It is a case of aristocracy where the upper class enjoys itself and the lower class is content. It is quite different from service in an ordinary Confederate company of volunteers. There the enlisted men are socially quite as good as their officers and sometimes distinctly better. Under such circumstances it is difficult to maintain more of distinction and discipline than the enlisted men may voluntarily consent to. Socially, with us Southern people, it is quite as honourable to be an enlisted man in such a battery as yours as to be a commissioned officer. That's a good enough thing in its way, but it isn't military, and it is distinctly bad for the service."

"I don't know so well about that," said Baillie. "We have at least the advantage of knowing that, discipline or no discipline, every man in the ranks, equally with every officer, has a personal reputation at home to sustain by good conduct. Even your desperadoes couldn't fight better than the young fellows I had with me on the skirmish-line at Manassas, though they had never had anything resembling discipline to sustain them. Every man of them knew that if he 'flunked' he could never go home again – unless all flunked at once and so kept each other company. That very nearly happened while we were falling back across Bull Run."

"Precisely. And it happened to the whole Federal army a few hours later. Discipline, with a ready pistol-shot behind it, would have prevented that in both cases. 'Man's a queer animal,' you know, if you remember your reading, and one of the queerest things about him is that when he has once accustomed himself to accept orders unquestioningly, and to obey them blindly, as every soldier does in drilling, he becomes far more afraid of mere orders than he is of the heaviest fire. Personal courage and high spirit among the men are admirable in their way, but for the purposes of battle, discipline and the habit of blind obedience are very much more trustworthy. If you want to make soldiers of men, you must teach them, morning, noon, and night, that blind, unquestioning obedience is the only virtue they can cultivate. That isn't good for the personal characters of the men, of course, but it is necessary in the case of soldiers, and our volunteers will all of them have to learn the lesson before this war is over. More's the pity, for I can't imagine how a whole nation of men so trained to submission can ever again become a nation of – oh, confound it! I'm running off again into a psychological speculation. Fortunately, here comes a letter for you."

A servant approached, bearing upon a tray a missive from The Oaks ladies, which had been delivered at the house a few minutes earlier. The grand dames assured Mr. Baillie Pegram of their highest respect and esteem, but suggested that, to the very great satisfaction of the anxiety they had so long felt on his account, they were convinced by his assurances to that effect, that he was now so far advanced on the road to complete recovery as perhaps to excuse them from the necessity of making their thrice a week journey to Warlock to inquire concerning his welfare. If they were mistaken in this assumption, would not Mr. Baillie Pegram kindly notify them? And if the daily inquiries which they intended to make hereafter through a trusty servant, should at any moment bring to them news of a relapse, they would instantly resume their personal and most solicitous inquiries.

To this Baillie laughingly wrote a reply equally formal, in which he assured the good ladies that their tender concern for him during his illness had been a chief factor in a recovery which was now practically complete.

Meantime Sam had come with the mail-pouch from the post-office, and it held two letters for Baillie.

One of these was a formal and official communication from the War Department, informing him that upon General J. E. B. Stuart's recommendation, he had been appointed captain of artillery with authority to raise a mounted battery of from fifty to one hundred men, for service with the cavalry. His commission, dating from the day of his wound at Manassas, accompanied the document, and with it an order for him to proceed, as soon as he should be fit for service, to enlist and organise the company thus authorised, and to make the proper requisitions for arms and equipments.

Baillie's second letter was a personal one from Stuart. It was scribbled in pencil on the envelopes of some old letters and such other fragments of paper as the cavalier could command at some picket-post. It read:

"I have asked the War Department to commission you as a captain, to raise a company of mounted artillery to serve with me in front. I understand that you have a healthy liking for the front. The War Department lets me choose my own men for this service, and I have chosen you first, for several reasons. One is that you know what to do with a gun. Another is that you fought so well at Manassas. Another is that you are very strongly recommended to me by a person whose judgment is absolutely conclusive to my mind.

"Now get to work as quickly as you can. Enrol fifty or seventy-five, or better still a hundred men if you can find them. Put them in camp and instruct them, and report to me the moment you are ready. Make requisition for guns – six of them if you can secure a hundred men – and drill your men at the piece. For a hundred men in mounted artillery you will need about 170 horses – 100 for the cannoniers to ride and 70 for the guns, etc. There is likely to be your difficulty. Can't you help yourself out a bit? I am told that you have influence. Can't you persuade your neighbours to contribute some at least of the horses you need? The quicker your battery is horsed the quicker you'll get a chance to practise your men in gunnery with the enemy for a target. Please send me a personal line, telling me how soon you will be ready to join me. It will take a month or two, of course, but I hope it won't take more."

Twelve hours later Baillie Pegram sent an answer to General Stuart's letter. In it he said:

"Thank you. I'll have the men and the horses within twenty-four hours. If the guns are promptly forthcoming on my requisition, I'll be ready within two days to receive orders to join you. As for drill, I can attend to that in front of Washington as well as in camp of instruction at Richmond."

But before sending that note, which delighted Stuart's soul when it came, Baillie Pegram had done a world of earnest work.

First of all there was the problem of getting the men. The able-bodied citizens of the county had already volunteered for the most part, but some were still waiting for one reason or another, and Baillie, who knew everybody, sent hurried notes to all of these, by special negro messengers, asking each to send an immediate reply to him at the Court-house. On this service he employed all his young negroes, mounting them on all his mules. The men appealed to responded almost to a man, for the master of Warlock was a man under whose command his neighbours eagerly wanted to serve, and Baillie found more than half of them awaiting him at the county seat, when he got there in mid-afternoon.

Still better, he found a messenger there from one of the men whom he had summoned. This messenger came from a camp at a little distance, where were assembled about sixty or seventy men and boys peculiarly situated. These men and boys had belonged to a company composed mainly of college students, which had gone out with the earliest volunteers. The company had been captured at Rich Mountain, and the men composing it had been sent home on parole. Within the two days preceding Baillie Pegram's call for volunteers, official notification had come of the discharge of all these men from parole by virtue of an exchange of prisoners. Thereupon the men, thus left free to volunteer again, had met in camp to consider what should be done. Their company had been officially disbanded, and there were now not enough of them left to secure its reorganisation. When Baillie Pegram's call for volunteers came, therefore, the men were called together, and in pursuance of a resolution, unanimously adopted, a messenger was sent to the Court-house to say that sixty-two men of the disbanded company offered themselves for enrolment under Captain Pegram, and that they would report for duty on the following morning at the Court-house.

Thus before four o'clock Baillie was assured of his hundred men or more. The next problem was to secure horses. He called together such of his men as were present, and said:

"Each of you is mounted. We shall need your horses. The government will have them valued, and will pay the assessed price for any that may die in the service. It will pay monthly for their services. How many of you will enlist your horses as well as yourselves, as all our cavalrymen have done?"

The response was general, and many of the planters offered additional horses on the same terms, so that, before night fell Baillie Pegram had more than a hundred men and about a hundred and thirty horses secured. Forty or fifty more horses must be had, but Baillie knew how to secure them, and so he sent off his note to Stuart. Then he turned to Marshall Pollard, and said:

"I want you to go to Richmond by the midnight train, old fellow, and return by the noonday train to-morrow. I've a mind to complete this business at a stroke. I've a few thousand dollars in bank and a few thousand more in the hands of my commission merchant. The money is worth its face now. Heaven only knows what it will be worth a year hence. I'm going to spend it now for the rest of the horses I need, and I want you to go to Richmond and bring it to me. In the meanwhile I'll bargain with a drover who is not very far away, for the horses."

Then, weak as he was, Baillie planned to ride the dozen miles that lay between the Court-house and the point where the drover was camping with his horses, but one of his friends, who had just enlisted with him, bade him to go to the tavern and to bed, saying:

"I'll have the drover and his horses here before noon to-morrow, and I shall know something about the horses by that time, too, for I'll come back in company with them, and I'll keep my eyes open."

No sooner was Baillie comfortably stretched upon a lounge in his hotel room, than Sam presented himself.

"Mas' Baillie," the negro boy broke in, without waiting for his master to ask how he came to be there, "Mas' Baillie, you's a-gwine to be one o' de officers now, jes' as you ought to ha' been fust off. Now you'll need Sam wid you, won't you?"

"I'll need somebody, I suppose," the young man answered, with a laugh at Sam's enthusiasm, "but if I take you along where I am going, you'll stand a mighty good chance of getting a bullet-hole through you, or having your black head knocked off your shoulders by a shell. Have you thought of that?"

"Co'se I'se thought o' dat, an' I ain't de leas' bit afeard nuther. I'se a Pegram nigga from Warlock, I is, an' a Pegram nigga from Warlock ain't got no more business to be afeared o' bullets when his duty brings 'em in his way, dan a white folks Pegram hisself is. Ef ye'll jes' take Sam along of you, you sha'n't never have no 'casion to be shamed o' yer servant."

"Very well, Sam," answered the master; "now go back to Warlock, and tell your mammy you're going to the war. By the way, you may have that old velveteen and corduroy hunting suit of mine to wear. Get it from the closet in the chamber, and tell your mammy to shorten the trousers legs by seven or eight inches."

Sam was fairly dancing for joy, and as he mounted his mule for the homeward journey, he began to sing a dismal ditty which he had composed as an expression of his feelings at the time of his master's first departure from Warlock to serve as a soldier. Unhappily only a fragment of the song remains to us. It began:

 
"Dey ain't no sun in de mawning,
Dey ain't no moon shine in de night,
'Case the war's done come an' de mahstah's done gone,
Fer to git hisse'f killed in de fight.
 
 
"Oh, Moses!
Holy Moses!
Can't you come back 'cross de ribber?
Can't you let Gabrel blow his horn?"
 

What lines were to follow, and what words rhymed with "ribber" and "horn," we are not permitted to know. For at this point, Sam, whose self-education included a considerable proficiency in profanity, broke off his singing, reined in his mule, and said:

"Dat's too dam dismal fer de 'casion!" Then addressing the mule, he reproachfully asked:

"What for you done let me sing dat? Don' you know Sam's a-gwine to de wah wid Mas' Baillie?"

As the mule made no reply, the conversation ceased at this point, and the remainder of the homeward journey was made in complete silence.