A FAITHFUL SLAVE AND A HOSPITAL WARD
Not long after this I had to give up my room to Governor Bailey of
Florida and his family. They had come on in search of their son,
whom they had for months believed to be dead, and who, they had
only recently learned, was alive and in the mountains near Culpeper
Court-house.
It seems that young Bailey had been shot at the battle of Cedar
Mountain and left on the field for dead. An old negro, his
body-servant, had carried him off by stealth to a hut in the woods, and
there, with such simple resources as he had, had dressed and bandaged
the wound. The hut was a mere shell of a house, a habitation for bats
and owls; it had been unused so long that no paths led to it, and Uncle
Reuben’s chief object in carrying his master there was to hide him
from the Yankees. He had no medicine, no doctor, no help, the master
was ill for a long time from his wounds and with a slow fever, and
through it all Uncle Reuben never left him except at night to forage
for both. Food in the Confederacy was far from plentiful, and under
the circumstances almost impossible to get. The hardships they endured
seem inconceivable to-day. Afraid to show himself lest in doing so he
should turn his master over into the hands of the dreaded Yankees,
the faithful old servant saw no way of communicating with the family.
He was in a strange country; he could not leave his charge, alone
and desperately ill, long enough to seek advice and assistance, and,
besides, how was he to know the friend who would help him from the man
who might betray him? He knew but one token--the Confederate uniform,
and that was not always to be trusted, for spies wore it.
Confederate troops must have passed near his hiding-place several
times, but in his anxiety to save his master from the Federals, the
negro hid him from the Confederates as well.
It happened at last that a party of skirmishers who had frequently
deployed along the obscure roads intersecting the country, noticed,
rising from the depths of the forest, a thin streak of smoke suggesting
deserters or spies, and began to investigate. So, it happened that they
came upon the hut, and a poor, old, half-starved negro watching what
seemed to be little more than a human skeleton. When convinced that his
discoverers were really Confederates, his joy and eagerness knew no
bounds.
“Ef any uv you gentlemen will jes send a ’spatch to Ole Marster,” he
said tremulously, “Ole Marster’ll be hyer toreckly. He’ll be hyer jes
ez quick ez de kyars kin git him hyer. We ain’t got no money. But Ole
Marster’ll pay fur de ’spatch jes ez soon ez he comes. Ole Marster’s
rich. He’ll pay fur anything anybody do fur Mars Hugh, an’ be thankful
ter do it. Ole Marster’ll come arter Mars Hugh jes ez quick ez I kin
git him word. He’ll pay anybody fur evvything.”
The soldiers hardly knew what to do; perhaps they never considered that
they could do anything but what they did: ride away and leave behind
them the pair in the hut. Perhaps, poor fellows, there was nothing
else they could do. Comfortable hospitals for Southern soldiers were
scarce, and the Confederate soldier had little to give to any one, even
to his sick comrade.
The negro, the guardian in this instance, was not anxious to have his
charge moved. His whole concern was “to git word to Ole Marster.”
“I kin take kyeer uv him,” he insisted, “jes lak I bin doin’ ’twell
Ole Marster come. Den he’ll know what to do. Mars Hugh ain’t fitten to
move now. Ef twarn’t done jes right, he couldn’t stan’ it, case he’s
too weakly. ’Twon’t do fur no strange folks to tech him nor ’sturb him,
lessen dey knows how. Mars Hugh jes same ez er baby.”
They gave the negro the rations they had with them, and the whisky
in their canteens--it was all they had to give except their scant
clothes--and rode on to Culpeper Court-house, where one of them sent
the despatch to “Ole Marster,” according to the directions Uncle Reuben
had given. And our Florida party was “Ole Marster” and his wife, and
poor Hugh Bailey’s young wife and her uncle.
It was well into the night after their arrival when four soldiers
carried up to my room a stretcher holding a skeleton of a man. A gaunt,
ragged old negro followed.
The next day the party started for home, but they never got poor Hugh
as far as Florida. They stopped in Richmond at the Exchange, and there
Hugh Bailey died the next day.
And now began for me the nursing in hospital wards that made up so
large a part of our lives during the war.
“Jeter shot, perhaps fatally. Go to the hospital and see what
you can do for him. I have telegraphed to his wife and mother.
“DAN.”
The orderly who brought me this message from my husband said that
Captain Jeter’s command had been in a skirmish that day, and that the
captain had fallen, mortally wounded, it was thought.
I went to him at once. He was lying unconscious across the bed as if
he had fallen or been dropped there, dressed in full uniform with his
coat buttoned up to his throat, breathing stertorously, and moaning.
There was a small black hole in his temple. I thought he must be
uncomfortable with his clothes on, and proposed to the nurse that we
should try to undress him, but she said he was dying and it would
only disturb him. All that day and until late that night I stayed
with him, changing the towels on his head, wiping the ooze from his
lips, listening to that agonizing moaning, and thinking of the wife
and mother who could not reach him. About ten o’clock he seemed to be
strangling.
“It’s phlegm in his throat,” the nurse said. She ran her finger down
his throat, pulling out a quid of tobacco that had been in his mouth
when he was shot and that had lain there ever since.
He died at midnight, and his mother came the next day at noon. I don’t
know which was the hardest to stand, her first burst of agony or her
endless questions when she could talk.
“Did he suffer much, Nell?”
“Not much, I think. He was unconscious from the time he was shot.”
“Nell, did he send me any message? Did he call for me?”
“He was unconscious,” I repeated gently, “and we must be thankful that
he was. If he had been conscious he would have suffered more.”
“Yes, yes; I reckon I am thankful. I don’t know how I am now. But I’m
trying to submit myself to the will of the Lord. Nellie, you don’t know
what a sweet baby he was! the prettiest little fellow! as soon as he
could walk, he was always toddling after me and pulling at my skirts.”
I turned my head away.
“Last night I dozed for a minute and I dreamed about him. He was my
baby again, and I had him safe in my arms, and there never had been
any war. But I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t come as soon as I got the
telegram. I had to wait for a train. And I was up nearly all night
cooking things to bring him.”
She opened her basket and satchel and showed me. They were full of
little cakes and crackers, wine jellies and blanc-mange, and other
delicacies for the sick.
“Do you think if I had gotten here in time he could have eaten them?”
she asked wistfully.
“He could not eat anything,” I said, choking back my tears.
“You don’t think he was hungry at all, Nell? The soldiers have so
little to eat sometimes--and I have heard it said that people are
sometimes hungry when they are dying.”
“Dear Mrs. Jeter, he looked well and strong except for the wound. You
know the troops had just returned from the valley, where they had
plenty to eat.”
“I am glad of that. I was just getting a box ready to send him full of
everything I thought he would like. And I had some clothes for him. I
began making the clothes as soon as I heard the troops had come back to
Culpeper. You say he was wounded in the head?”
Neither of us closed our eyes that night. She walked the floor asking
the same questions over and over again, and I got so I answered yes or
no just as I saw she wanted yes or no and without regard to the truth.
Several months after this I saw Captain Jeter’s widow. She was
surrounded by his little children--none of them old enough to realize
their loss.
“Nell,” she said, “you remember the day in Petersburg when we stood
together and watched the troops start off for Norfolk--and everybody
was cheering?”
“Yes.”
“Well, war does not look to me now as it did then. God grant it may
spare your husband to you, Nell!”
I shivered.
I called on another widowed friend. Her husband--a captain, too--had
been sent home, his face mutilated past recognition by the shell
that killed him. Her little ones were around her, and the captain’s
sword was hanging on the wall. When I spoke to her of it as a proud
possession, her eyes filled. His little boy said with flashing eyes:
“It’s my papa’s s’ode. I wants to be a man. An’ I’ll take it down and
kill all the Yankees!”
“H-sh!” his mother put her hand over his mouth. “God grant there may be
no war when you are a man!” she said fervently.
“Amen!” I responded.
“Oh, Nell,” she said, “when it’s all over, what good will it do? It
will just show that one side could fight better than the other, or had
more money and men than the other. It won’t show that anybody’s right.
You can’t know how it is until it hits you, Nell. I’m proud of him, and
proud of his sword; I wouldn’t have had him out of it all. I wouldn’t
have had him a coward. But oh, Nell, I feel that war is wrong! I’m
sorry for every Northern woman who has a circle like this around her,
and a sword like that hanging on her wall.”
The little boy put his arm around her neck. “Mamma,” he said, “are
_you_ sorry for the _Yankees_?”
“My dear,” she said, “I am sorry for all little boys who haven’t got a
papa, and I’m sorry for their mammas. And I don’t want you ever to kill
anybody.”