I MEET BELLE BOYD AND SEE DICK IN A NEW LIGHT
The tallow candles were lighted on each side of my bureau--the time
came when I remembered those _two_ tallow candles as a piece of
reckless and foolish extravagance--when there was a rap at my door and
Mrs. Rixey entered to ask if I would share my room with a lady who had
come unexpectedly. A heavy snow was falling, and the wind was blowing
it into drifts. The idea of sending anybody out in such weather was not
to be thought of for a moment, so saying yes I hurried through with my
dressing and went down to the parlor. Mrs. Rixey’s house was filled
with Confederates who were there either because it was near the army
or because they were awaiting an opportunity to run the blockade. Our
evenings were always gay, and when I entered the parlor this evening
there was as usual a merry party, and, also as usual, there were
several officers of rank in the room. I was so busy-sending messages to
mother and Milicent by a little lady who meant to run the blockade to
Baltimore as soon as possible, that I did not catch my roommate’s name
when Mrs. Rixey introduced her.
She seemed to be nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty--rather young, I
thought, to be traveling alone. True, I was not older, but then I was
married, which made all the difference in the world. What made her an
object of special interest to every woman present, was that she was
exceedingly well dressed. It had been a long, long time since we had
seen a new dress! She was a brilliant talker, and soon everybody in
the room was attracted to her, especially the men. She talked chiefly
to the men--indeed, I am afraid she did not care particularly for the
women--and at first we were a little piqued; but when we found that she
was devoted to The Cause we were ready to forgive her anything. She
soon let us know that she had come directly from Washington, where she
had been a prisoner of the United States. She showed us her watch and
told us how the prisoners in Washington had made the money up among
themselves and presented it to her just before she left. I wish I had
listened better to her account of her prison life and her adventures;
but I was on the outer rim of the charmed circles, my head was full of
Milicent and mother, Dan was at camp, and I couldn’t see him. I got
sleepy, slipped quietly out of the room, and went upstairs and to bed.
My roommate undressed and got to bed so quickly that night that I did
not wake. The next morning when the maid came in to make the fire, we
woke up face to face in the same bed, and then she told me that her
name was Belle Boyd, and I knew for the first time that my bedfellow
was the South’s famous female spy. When we got up she took a large
bottle of cologne and poured it into the basin in which she was going
to bathe. It was the first cologne I had seen for more than a year, and
it was the last I saw until I ran the blockade.
That day, while we were at dinner, a servant, behind my chair,
whispered:
“Somebody out dar wan’ ter see you right erway, mistis--er solger.”
When I went out into the hallway, there stood the most abject,
pitiable-looking creature--a soldier, ragged and footsore! He was at
the end of the hall farthest from the dining-room, and looked as if he
didn’t wish to attract attention.
He wore gray trousers patched with blue--or were they blue patched
with gray?--and a jacket which had as much Federal blue as Confederate
gray in it. From the color of his uniform, he belonged equally to both
armies. His trousers were much too short for him, and altogether too
small. His shoes were heavy brogans twice too large for him, and tied
on with strings. He was without socks and his ankles showed naked
and sore between trousers and shoes. He had on a bedticking shirt,
a tobacco-bag of bedticking hung by a string from a button of his
shirt--a button which, by the way, was doing more than double duty--and
an old slouch hat was pulled over his face.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” I asked, stopping at a short distance from
him.
He looked up quickly.
“How do you do, Nell?” he said. “I got leave to come from camp to see
you to-day. My company got in from Maryland yesterday.”
“Dick!” I cried in amazement; and then I burst into tears. Dick, our
dandy, to look like this! Laughter mingled with weeping.
“Good gracious, Nell! what is the matter?” he said.
“Dick, Dick, how you look!”
“Hush, Nell! Good gracious! You’ll have everybody in the dining-room
out here to look at me.”
Then I began to beg incoherently that he would go in and dine with me.
I think Dick was hungry, but he was not _that_ hungry. In his present
garb starvation would not have driven him into a dining-room where
ladies were. He looked toward the door with abject terror, and tried
to hide himself behind the hat-rack. I was puzzled to know what I
should do with him. As a young lady was my roommate it was out of the
question to take him to my room, and he positively refused to go into
the parlor. While we debated, the dining-room door opened and the
ladies filed out into the hall. Unkempt, unshorn, patched, ragged, and
dirty, a very travesty of his former foppish self, Dick went through
the introductions with what grace he might.
Fortunately my friends who surrounded him were in sympathy with the
threadbare Confederate soldier, and ready to help him to the extent
of their power. One friend, whose husband had a shirt to spare, gave
that to him; another lady found him a pair of socks; some one else
contributed a pair of homespun drawers. I was drawn aside and consulted
as to the best and most graceful way of conveying these presents to
him. They feared that he might be wounded and insulted if the matter
were not delicately managed. But Dick was past all that. He accepted
the goods the gods provided in the spirit in which they were bestowed,
and was radiant with his good luck, and with gratitude to the fair
donors. While we held council he had been in Mrs. Rixey’s and Miss
Boyd’s hands, and had had a good dinner.
As he stood in the hall ready to go back to camp, Belle Boyd came down
the staircase, carrying a large new blanket shawl.
“You must let me wrap you up, lieutenant,” she said, putting the shawl
around Dick’s shoulders and pinning it together.
Dick blushed and demurred. A shawl like that was too much--it was a
princely gift, a fortune.
“I can’t let you go back to camp in this thin jacket,” she said, “while
I have this shawl. It is serving our country, lieutenant, while it
protects her soldier from the cold. I may need it? No, no, I can get
others where this one came from.”
There was nothing for him to do but to accept it. He looked at me with
something of his old humor in his eyes as he started off.
“I’ll be sure to come to see you again, Nell,” he said.
After he left the house we saw him stoop, take off his shoes, and walk
off with them in his hands. His feet left marks of blood in the snow.
Shoes had been dealt out to the army only that morning, and his feet
were so sore that his heavy, ill-fitting brogans were unendurable.
I have heard of many generous deeds like this done by Belle Boyd.
Once, when riding out to review some troops near Winchester, she met
a soldier, a mere boy, trudging along painfully on his bare feet. She
took off her own shoes and made him put them on; they were fine cloth
gaiters laced at the side, and trimmed with patent leather. Some one
remonstrated; the shoes would not last the boy long enough to pay for
her sacrifice.
“Oh,” she said, “if it rests his poor young feet only a little while, I
am repaid. He is not old enough to be away from his mother.”
She did not spend another night with us. She seemed to feel that she
had the weight of the Confederacy on her shoulders, and took the
afternoon train for Richmond.