XXXV
THE BIRTH OF WAR
I T was the seventeenth of April, 1861. It was the fateful day on which the greatest, the most terrible, the most disastrous of modern wars was born.
On that day the long struggle of devoted patriots to keep Virginia in the Union and to throw all her influence into the scale of peace, had ended in failure.
A few days before, Fort Sumter had been bombarded and had fallen. Still the Virginia convention had resisted all attempts to drag or force the Mother State into secession. Then had come Mr. Lincoln’s call upon Virginia for her quota of troops with which to make war upon the seceding sister states of the South and the alternative of secession or dishonor presented itself to this body of Union men. They decided at once, and on that seventeenth day of April they made a great war possible and indeed inevitable, by adopting an ordinance of secession and casting Virginia’s fate, Virginia’s strength, and Virginia’s matchless influence, into the scale of disunion and war.
Richmond was in delirium – a delirium which moved men to ecstatic joy or profound grief, or deeply rooted apprehension, according to their several temperaments. The thoughtless went parading excitedly up and down the streets singing songs, and making a gala time of it, wearing cockades by day and carrying torches by night, precisely as if some long hoped for and supremely desired good fortune had come upon the land of their birth. The more thoughtful looked on and kept silent. But mostly the spirit manifested was one of grim determination to meet fate – be it good or bad – with stout hearts and calmly resolute minds.
In that purpose all men were as one now. The vituperation with which the people’s representatives in the convention had been daily assailed for their hesitation to secede, was absolutely hushed. The sentiment of affection for the Union which had been growing for seventy years and more, gave way instantly to a determination to win a new independence or sacrifice all in the attempt.
Jubal A. Early, who had from the beginning opposed secession with all his might, reckoning it not only insensate folly but a political crime as well, voted against it to the last, and then, instantly sent to Gov. Letcher a tender of his services in the war, in whatever capacity his state might see fit to employ him. In the same way William C. Wickham, an equally determined opponent of secession, quitted his seat in the convention only to make hurried preparation for his part as a military leader on the Southern side.
No longer did men discuss the merits and demerits of one policy or another; there could be but one policy now, one course of action, one sentiment of devotion to Virginia, and an undying determination to maintain her honor at all hazards and at all costs.
The state of mind that was universal among Virginians at that time, has never been quite understood in other parts of the Union. These men’s traditions extended back to a time before ever the Union was thought of, before ever Virginia had invited her sister states to unite with her, in a convention at Annapolis, called for the purpose of forming that “more perfect Union,” from which, in 1861, Virginia decided to withdraw. Devotion to the Union had been, through long succeeding decades, as earnest and as passionate in Virginia as the like devotion had been in any other part of the country. Through three great wars the Virginians had faltered not nor failed when called upon to contribute of their substance or their manhood to the national defence.
The Virginians loved the Union of which their state had been so largely the instigator, and they were self-sacrificingly loyal to it. But they held their allegiance to it to be solely the result of their state’s allegiance, and when their state withdrew from it, they held themselves absolved from all their obligations respecting it. Their very loyalty to it had been a prompting of their state, and when their state elected to transfer its allegiance to another Confederacy, they regarded themselves as bound by every obligation of law, of honor, of tradition, of history and of manhood itself, to obey the mandate.
Return we now to Richmond, on that fateful seventeenth day of April, 1861. There had been extreme secessionists, and moderate ones, uncompromising Union men, and Union men under conditions of qualification. There were none such when that day was ended. Waitman T. Willey and a few others from the Panhandle region, who had served in the convention, departed quickly for their homes, to take part with the North in the impending struggle, in obedience to their convictions of right. The rest accepted the issue as determinative of Virginia’s course, and ordered their own courses accordingly. They were, before all and above all Virginians, and Virginia had decided to cast in her lot with the seceding Southern States. There was an end of controversy. There was an end of all division of sentiment. The supreme moment had come, and all men stood shoulder to shoulder to meet the consequences.
XXXVI
THE OLD DOROTHY AND THE NEW
J UST as Arthur Brent was quitting his seat in the convention on that day so pregnant of historic happenings, a page put a note into his hands. It was from Edmonia, and it read:
“We have just arrived and are at the Exchange Hotel and Ballard House. We are all perfectly well, though positively dazed by what you statesmen in the convention have done today. I can hardly think of the thing seriously – of Virginia withdrawing from the Union which her legislature first proposed to the other states, which her statesmen – Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, Mason, and the rest so largely contributed to form, and over which her Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison and Tyler have presided in war and peace. And yet nothing could be more serious. It seems to me a bad dream from which we shall presently wake to find ourselves rejoicing in its untruth.
“You will come to the hotel to a six o’clock dinner, of course. I want to show you what a woman Dorothy has grown to be. Poor dear girl! She has been greatly disturbed by the hearing of her mother’s story, and she is a trifle morbid over it. However, you’ll see her for yourself this evening. We were charmingly considerate, I think in not telegraphing to announce our coming. We shall expect you to thank us properly for thus refraining from disturbing you. Come to the hotel the moment your public duties will let you.”
Arthur hastily left the convention hall and hurried across Capitol Square and on to the big, duplex hostelry. He entered on the Exchange Hotel side and learned by inquiry at the office that Edmonia’s rooms were in the Ballard House on the other side of the street. It had begun to rain and he had neither umbrella nor overcoat, having forgotten and left both in the cloak room of the convention. So he mounted the stairway, and set out to cross by the covered crystal bridge that spanned the street connecting the two great caravansaries. The bridge was full of people, gathered there to look at the pageant in the streets below, where companies of volunteer cavalry from every quarter of eastern Virginia were marching past, on their way to the newly-established camp of instruction on the Ashland race track. For Governor Letcher had so far anticipated the inevitable result of the long debate as to establish two instruction camps and to accept the tenders of service which were daily sent to him by the volunteer companies in every county.
As Arthur was making his way through the throng of sight-seers on the glass bridge some movement in the crowd brought him into contact with a gentlewoman, to whom he hastily turned with apologetic intent.
It was Dorothy! Not the Dorothy who had bidden him good-by a year ago, but a new, a statelier Dorothy, a Dorothy with the stamp of travel and society upon her, a Dorothy who had learned ease and self-possession and dignity by habit in the grandest drawing rooms in all the world. Yet the old Dorothy was there too – the Dorothy of straight-looking eyes and perfect truthfulness, and for the moment the new Dorothy forgot herself, giving place to the old.
“Oh, Master!” she cried, impulsively seizing both his hands, and, completely forgetful of the crowd about her, letting the glad tears slip out between her eyelashes. “I was not looking at the soldiers; I was looking for you, and wondering when you would come. Oh, I am so happy, and so glad!”
An instant later the new Dorothy reasserted herself, and Arthur did not at all like the change. The girl became so far self-conscious as to grow dignified, and in very shame over her impulsive outbreak, she exaggerated her dignity and her propriety of demeanor into something like coldness and stately hauteur.
“How you have grown!” Arthur exclaimed when he had led her to one of the parlors almost deserted now for the sight-seeing vantage ground of the bridge.
“No,” she answered as she might have done in a New York or a Paris drawing room, addressing some casual acquaintance. “I have not grown a particle. I was quite grown up before I left Virginia. It is a Paris gown, perhaps. The Parisian dressmakers know all the art of bringing out a woman’s ‘points,’ and they hold my height and my slenderness to be my best claims upon attention.”
Arthur felt as if she had struck him. He was about to remonstrate, when Edmonia broke in upon the conversation with her greeting. But Dorothy had seen his face and read all that it expressed. The old Dorothy was tempted to ask his forgiveness; the new Dorothy dismissed the thought as quite impossible. She had already sufficiently “compromised” herself by her impulsiveness, and to make amends she put stays upon her dignity and throughout the evening they showed no sign of bending.
Arthur was tortured by all this. Edmonia was delighted over it. So differently do a man and a woman sometimes interpret another woman’s attitude and conduct.
Arthur was compelled to leave them at nine to meet Governor Letcher, who had summoned him for consultation with respect to the organization of a surgical staff, of which he purposed to make Arthur Brent one of the chiefs. Before leaving he asked as to Edmonia’s and Dorothy’s home-going plans. Learning that they intended to go by the eight o’clock train the next morning, he said:
“Very well, I’ll send Dick up by the midnight train to have the Wyanoke carriage at the station to meet you.”
“Is Dick with you?” Dorothy asked with more of enthusiasm than she had shown since her outbreak on the bridge. “How I do want to see Dick! Can’t you send him here before train time, please?”
Already grieved and resentful, Arthur was stung by the manner of this request. For the moment he was disposed to interpret it as an intended affront. He quickly dismissed that thought and answered with a laugh:
“Yes, Dorothy, he shall come to you at once. Perhaps he has a ‘song ballad’ ready for your greeting. At any rate he at least will pleasantly remind you of the old life.”
“I wonder why he put it in that way – why he said ‘he at least,’ ” said Dorothy when Arthur had gone and the two women were left alone.
“I think I know,” Edmonia answered. But she did not offer the explanation. Neither did Dorothy ask for it.
XXXVII
AT WYANOKE
I T was three days later before Arthur Brent was able to leave the duties that detained him in Richmond. When at last he found himself free, one of the infrequent trains of that time had just gone, and there would be no other for many hours to come. His impatience to be at Wyanoke was uncontrollable. For three days he had brooded over Dorothy’s manner to him at the hotel, and wondered, with much longing, whether she might not meet him differently at home. He recalled the frankly impulsive eagerness with which she had greeted him in the first moment of their meeting, and he argued with himself that her later reserve might have been simply a reaction from that first outburst of joy, a maidenly impulse to atone to her pride for the lapse into old, childlike manners. This explanation seemed a very probable one, and yet – he reflected that there were no strangers standing by when she had relapsed into a reserve that bordered upon hauteur – nobody before whom she need have hesitated to be cordial. He had asked her about her mother, thinking thus to awaken some warmth of feeling in her and reëstablish a footing of sympathy. But her reply had been a business-like statement that Madame Le Sud would remain in New York for a few days, to secure the clothing she would need for her field ministrations to the wounded, after which she would take some very quiet lodging in Richmond until duty should call her.
Altogether Arthur Brent’s impatience to know the worst or best – whichever it might be – grew greater with every hour, and when he learned that he must idly wait for several hours for the next train, he mounted Gimlet and set out upon the long horseback journey, for which Gimlet, weary of the stable, manifested an eagerness quite equal to his own.
When the young man dismounted at Wyanoke, Dorothy was the first to meet him, and there was something in her greeting that puzzled him even more than her manner on the former occasion had done. For Dorothy too had been thinking of the hotel episode, and repenting herself of her coldness on that occasion. She understood it even less than Arthur did. She had not intended to be reserved with him, and several times during that evening she had made an earnest effort to be natural and cordial instead, but always without success, for some reason that she could not understand. So she had carefully planned to greet him on his home-coming, with all the old affection and without reserve. To that end she had framed in her own mind the things she would say to him and the manner of their saying. Now that he had come, she said the things she had planned to say, but she could not adopt the manner she had intended.
The result was something that would have been ludicrous had it been less painful to both the parties concerned. It left Arthur worse puzzled than ever and obviously pained. It sent Dorothy to her chamber for that “good cry,” which feminine human nature holds to be a panacea.
At dinner Dorothy “rattled” rather than conversed, as young women are apt to do when they are embarrassed and are determined not to show their embarrassment. She seemed bent upon alternately amusing and astonishing Aunt Polly, with her grotesquely distorted descriptions of things seen and people encountered during her travels. Arthur took only so much part in the conversation as a man thinking deeply, but disposed to be polite, might.
When the cloth was removed he lighted a cigar and went to the stables and barns, avowedly to inquire about matters on the plantation.
When he returned, full of a carefully formed purpose to “have it out” with Dorothy, he found guests in the house who had driven to Wyanoke for supper and a late moonlight drive homeward. From that moment until the time of the guests’ departure, he was eagerly beset with questions concerning the political situation and the prospects of war.
“The war is already on,” he answered, “and we are not half prepared for it. Fortunately the North is in no better case, and still more fortunately, we are to have with us the ablest soldier in America.”
“Who? Beauregard?”
“No, Robert E. Lee, to whom the Federal administration a little while ago offered the command of all the United States armies. He has resigned and is now in Richmond to organize our forces.”
Arthur talked much, too, of the seriousness of the war, of the certainty in his mind, that it would last for years, taxing the resources of the South to the point of exhaustion. For this some of his guests called him a pessimist, and applauded the prediction of young Jeff Peyton, that “within twenty days we shall have twenty thousand men on the Potomac, and after perhaps one battle of some consequence we shall dictate terms of peace in Washington.” He added: “You must make haste to get into the service, Doctor, if you expect to see the fun.”
“I do not expect to see the fun,” Arthur answered quietly. “I do not see the humorous side of slaughter. But in my judgment you, sir, will have ample time in which to wear out many uniforms as gorgeous as the one you now have on, before peace is concluded at Washington or anywhere else. An army of twenty thousand men will be looked upon as a mere detachment before this struggle is over. We shall hear the tramp of armies numbering hundreds of thousands, and their tramping will desolate Virginia fields that are now as fair as any on earth. We shall see historic mansions vanish in smoke, and thousands of happy homes made prey by the demon War. War was never yet a pastime for any but the most brutish men. It is altogether horrible; it is utterly hellish, if the ladies will pardon the term, and only fools can welcome it as a holiday pursuit. Unhappily there are many such on both sides of the Potomac.”
As he paused there was a complete hush among the company for thirty seconds or so. Then Dorothy advanced to Arthur, took his hand, and said:
“Thank you, Master!”
Arthur answered only by a look. But it was a look that told her all that she wanted to know.
When the guests were gone, Dorothy prepared for a hasty retreat to her room, but Arthur called to her as she reached the landing of the stairs, and asked:
“Shall we have one of our old time horseback rides ‘soon’ in the morning, Dorothy?”
“Yes. It delights me to hear our Virginia phrase ‘soon in the morning.’ Thank you, I’ll be ready. Good night.”
XXXVIII
SOON IN THE MORNING
I T was Dick who brought the horses on that next morning – Dick grown into a tall and comely fellow, and no longer dressed in the careless fashion of a year ago. For had not Dick spent two months in Richmond as his master’s body servant? And had he not there developed his native dandy instincts? And had not the sight of the well-nigh universal uniforms of that time bred in him a great longing to wear some sort of “soldier clothes”?
His master had indulged the fancy. He meant to keep Dick as his body servant throughout the coming war, and, at any rate while he sat as a member of that august body the constitutional convention, he wanted his “boy” to present the appearance of a gentleman’s servitor. So, when he took Dick to a tailor to be dressed in suitable fashion, he readily acquiesced in the young negro’s preference for a suit of velveteen and corduroys with brass buttons shining all over it like the stars in Ursa Major. The tailor, recognizing the shapeliness of the young negro’s person as something that afforded him an opportunity to display his skill in the matter of “fit” had brought all his art to bear upon the task of perfecting Dick’s livery.
Dick in his turn had employed strategy in securing an opportunity to show himself in his new glory to his “Mis’ Dorothy.” Ben, the hostler who usually brought the horses had recently “got religion” – a bilious process which at that time was apt to render a negro specially indifferent to the obligations of morality with respect to “chickens fryin’ size,” and gloomily unfit for the performance of his ordinary duties. Dick had labored over night with “Bro’ Ben,” persuading him that he was really ill, and inducing him to swallow two blue mass pills – the which Dick had adroitly filched from the medicine chest in the laboratory. And as Dick, since his service “endurin’ of de feveh,” had enjoyed the reputation of knowing “ ‘mos as much as a sho’ ’nuff doctah,” Ben readily acquiesced in Dick’s suggestion that he, Ben, should lie abed in the morning, Dick kindly volunteering to feed and curry his mules for him and “bring de hosses.”
Dick’s strategy accomplished its purpose, and so it was Dick, resplendent in a livery that might have done credit to a field marshal on dress parade, who presented himself at the gate that morning in charge of his master’s and Dorothy’s mounts.
Arthur looked at him and asked:
“Why are you in full-dress uniform today, General Dick?”
“It’s my respec’ful compliments to Mis’ Dorothy, sah,” answered the boy.
“Thank you, Dick!” said the girl. “I appreciate the attention. But where is Ben?”
“Bro’ Ben he dun got religion, Mis’ Dorothy, an’ he dun taken two blue pills las’ night, an’ – ”
“Give him a dose of Epsom salts at once, Dick,” broke in Arthur, “or he’ll be salivated. And don’t give him oxalic acid by mistake. I’ll trouble you to keep your fingers out of the medicine chest hereafter. Come, Dorothy!”
But as Dorothy was about to put her foot into Arthur’s hand and spring from it into the saddle, Dick drew forth a white handkerchief, heavily perfumed with a cooking extract of lemon, and offered it to Dorothy, saying:
“You haint rubbed de hosses, Mis’ Dorothy, to see ef dey’s clean ’nuff fer dis suspicious occasion.”
Dick probably meant “auspicious,” but he was accustomed, both in prose and in verse, to require complaisant submission to his will on the part of the English language.
“Did you clean them, Dick?” asked Dorothy with a little laugh.
“I’se proud to say I did,” answered the boy.
“Then there is no need for me to rub them,” she replied. “You always do your work well. Your master tells me so. And now I want you to take this handkerchief of mine, and keep it for your own. I bought it in Paris, Dick. You can carry it in your breast pocket, with a corner of the lace protruding – sticking out, you know. And if you will come to me when we get back from our ride, I’ll give you a bottle of something better than a cooking extract to perfume it with.”
With that the girl handed him a dainty, lace-edged mouchoir, for which she had paid half a hundred francs in Paris, and which she had carried at the Tuileries.
“It is just in celebration of my home-coming,” she said to Arthur in explanation, “and because we are going to have one of our old ‘soon in the morning’ rides together.”
As she mounted, Dorothy turned to Dick and commanded:
“Turn the hounds loose, Dick, and put them on our track.” Then to Arthur:
“It is a glorious morning, and I want the dogs to enjoy it.”
The horses were full of the enthusiasm of the morning. They broke at once into a gallop, which neither of the riders was disposed to restrain. Five minutes later the hounds, bellowing as they followed the trail, overtook the riders. Dorothy brought her mare upon her haunches, and greeted the dogs as they leaped to caress her hands. Then she cracked her whip and blew her whistle, and sent the excited animals to heel, with moans and complainings on their part that they were thus banished from the immediate presence of their beloved mistress.
“Your dogs still love and obey you, Dorothy,” said Arthur as they resumed their ride more soberly than before.
“Yes,” she answered. “They are better in that respect than women are.”
Arthur thought he understood. At any rate he accepted the remark as one implying an apology, and he saw no occasion for apology.
“Never mind that,” he said. “A woman is entitled to her perfect freedom. Every human being born into this world has an absolute right to do precisely as he pleases, so long as in doing as he pleases he does not trespass upon or abridge the equal right of any other human being to do as he pleases. It is this equality of right that furnishes the foundation of all moral codes which are worthy of respect. And this equality of right belongs to women as fully as to men.”
“In a way, yes,” answered Dorothy. “Yet in another way, no. I control my hounds, chiefly for their own good. My right to control them rests upon my superior knowledge of what their conduct ought to be. It is the same way with women. They do not know as much as men do, concerning what their conduct ought to be. Take my dear mother’s case for example. If she had frankly told my father that she could not be happy in the life into which he had brought her, that in fact it tortured her, he would have taken her away out of it. Her mistake was in taking the matter into her own hands. She needed a master. She ought to have made my father her master. She ought to have told him what she suffered, and why she suffered. She ought to have trusted him to find the remedy. Instead of that – well, you know the story. My father loved my mother with all his soul. She loved him in return. He could have been her master, if he had so willed. For when any woman loves any man that man has only to assume that he is her master in order to be so, and in order to make her supremely happy in his being so. If my father had understood that, there would have been no stain upon me now.”
“What on earth do you mean, Dorothy?” asked Arthur, intensely, as the girl broke into tears. “There is no stain upon you. I will horsewhip anybody that shall so much as suggest such a thing.”
“Yes, I know. You are good and true always. But think of it, Cousin Arthur. My mother is in hiding in Richmond, because of her shame. And my father has posthumously insulted her – pure, clean woman that she is – and insulted me, too, in my helplessness. Let me tell you all about it, please. Oh, Cousin Arthur, you do not know how I have longed for an opportunity to tell you! You alone of all people in this world are broad enough to sympathize with me in my wretchedness. You alone are true to Truth and Justice and Right. Let me tell you!”
“Tell me, Dorothy,” he answered tenderly. “I beg of you tell me absolutely all that is in your mind. Tell me as freely as you told me once why you marked a watermelon with my initials. But please, Dorothy, do not tell me anything at all, unless you can put aside the strange reserve that you have lately set up as a barrier between us, and talk to me in the old, free, unconstrained way. It was in hope of that that I asked you to take this ride.”
She replied, “I beg your pardon for that. I could not help the constraint, and it pained me as greatly as it distressed you. We are free now, on our horses. We can talk without restraint, and when we have talked the matter out, perhaps you will understand. Listen, then!”
She waited a full minute, the horses walking meanwhile, before she resumed. Finally Arthur said: “I am listening, Dorothy.”
Then she answered.
“My mother was never a bad woman, Arthur Brent. I want you to understand that clearly before we go on. She abandoned my father because she could not endure the life he provided for her. But she was always a pure woman, in spite of all her surroundings and conditions. She offered freedom to my father, but she asked no freedom for herself. She made no complaint of him, and his memory is still to her the dearest thing on earth. It is convention alone that censures her; convention alone that forbids her to come to Pocahontas; convention alone that refuses to me permission to love her openly as my mother and to honor her as such. If I had my way, I should bring her to Pocahontas, and set up housekeeping there; and I should send out a proclamation to everybody, saying in effect: ‘My mother, Mrs. South, is with me. You who shall come promptly to pay your respects to her, I will count my friends. All the rest shall be my enemies.’ But that may not be. My mother forbids, and I bow to my mother’s command. Then comes my father’s command, and to that I will never bow.”
“What is it, Dorothy?”
“Aunt Polly has shown me his letter. He tells me that because of my mother’s misbehavior, he has great fear on my account. He explains that he forbids me to learn music because he thought it was music that led my mother into wrong ways. He tells me that in order to preserve my ‘respectability’ he has arranged that I shall marry into a Virginia family as good as my own, and as if to make the matter of my inconsequence as detestably humiliating as possible he tells me as I learned before and wrote to you from Paris, that he has betrothed me to Jeff Peyton. If there had been any chance that I would submit to be thus disposed of like a hogshead of tobacco or a carload of wheat, Jeff Peyton’s conduct would have destroyed it. The last time I met him in Europe you remember, he threatened me with this command of my father, and I instantly ordered him out of my presence. He had the impudence to come to Wyanoke last night – knowing that I was there, and that I was acting as hostess. It was nearly as bad as if I had been entertaining at Pocahontas. He made it worse by asking me if I had read my father’s letter, and if I did not now realize the necessity of marrying him in order that I might ally myself with a good Virginia family. He had just finished that insolence when you made your little speech, not only calling him a fool by plain implication, but proving him to be one. That’s why I thanked you, as I did.”
“Yes, I quite understood that,” answered Arthur. “Let us run our horses for a bit. I have a fancy to do that.”
Dorothy understood. She joined him in a quarter mile stretch, and then he suddenly reined in his horse and faced her.
“It was right here, Dorothy, after a run like that,” he said, “that you told me I might call you Dorothy. Now I ask you to let me call you Wife.”
The girl hesitated. Presently she said:
“I have made up my mind to be perfectly true with you. I don’t know whether I had thought of this or not, at any rate I have tried not to think of it.”
“But now that I have forced the thought upon you, Dorothy? Is it yes, or no?”
Again the girl paused in thought before answering. Her dogs, seeing that she was paying no attention to them, broke away in pursuit of a hare. She suddenly recovered her self-possession. She whistled through her fingers to recall the hounds, and when they returned, crouching to receive the punishment they knew they deserved, she bade them go to heel, adding: “You’re naughty fellows, but you haven’t been kept under control, and so I forgive you.” Then, turning to Arthur she said,
“Yes, Master.”
* * * * * * * *
On their return to the house Arthur was mindful of his duty to Aunt Polly, guardian of the person of Dorothy South, and, as such endowed with authority to approve or forbid any marriage to which that eighteen year old young person might be inclined, before attaining her twenty first year.