TRAVELING THROUGH DIXIE IN WAR TIMES
Our troops had to get out of winter quarters before they were well
settled in them. I am not historian enough to explain how it was, but
the old familiar trip “On to Richmond” had been started again, Burnside
directing it. Every new Federal commander-in-chief started for Richmond
as soon as he was in command. There was a popular song called “Richmond
is a Hard Road to Travel.” They always found it so, though they got
there eventually.
The cavalry, as usual, were on the wing first. General Rooney (W. H.
F.) Lee’s division was sent to Fredericksburg in November, I think.
My husband, of course, went with it. I was to go to Richmond and wait
until I heard whether it would be safe for me to join him.
From Richmond I ran over to Petersburg, saw many old friends and ran
back to Richmond again, fearful lest a message should come from Dan and
I should miss it. I looked for a telegram every day, and kept my trunk
packed. It was well that I did.
One morning my door was burst open unceremoniously and Dan rushed in.
“Ready to go, Nell?”
“Yes.”
“Come. Now.”
I put on my bonnet, caught up my satchel, stuffed brush, tooth-brush,
and comb into it and was ready. Dan had stepped into the hall to call
a porter to take the trunk down. We followed it, jumped into the
omnibus, and it rolled off--all this in about five minutes from the
time he burst my door open. On the omnibus, among other passengers,
was a gentleman who had a brother in Dan’s command. This gentleman had
so many questions to ask about the army, and so many messages to send
his brother that Dan and I hardly exchanged a dozen sentences before
we were at the depot. He established me in my seat, got my baggage
checked, sat down, and then exclaiming:
“Good gracious! I forgot that bundle for General Lee. It’s on top of
the omnibus, Nell. I’ll be back in a minute,” and darted off.
At the next station, when the conductor came for my ticket, I said:
“See my husband, please. He must be in the smoking-car.”
A gentleman across the aisle remarked:
“Excuse me, madam, but I think the gentleman who came in with you got
left. I saw him get off the omnibus with a bundle in his hand and run
after the car, but he missed it.”
“Then I don’t know what to do,” I said in despair to the conductor. “I
haven’t a ticket, and I haven’t any money.”
“Where are you going?” he asked kindly.
“I don’t know!” I gasped.
The conductor looked blank. I explained the manner of my starting to
him.
“Do you know where your husband’s command is stationed?”
“No, I don’t know that either. You see,” I explained, “as he belongs to
the cavalry it is much harder to keep up with his whereabouts than if
he were in the infantry.”
“What division is he in?”
“General Rooney Lee’s.”
“Do you know what brigade?”
“Chambliss’s.”
“All right. I know what to do with you, then. You stop at Milford. Your
husband will come on the freight this afternoon--at least, that’s what
I expect him to do. Your best plan is to wait at Milford for him.”
When we reached Milford the conductor took me out and introduced me to
the landlord of the tavern, and I was shown into what I suppose might
be called by grace the reception-room. It was literally on the ground
floor, being built on native brown earth. The ceiling was low, the room
was full of smoke, and rough-looking men sat about with pipes in their
mouths. I asked for a private room, and was shown into one upstairs,
but this was so cold that I went out into the porch which overhung
the street and walked up and down in the sun to keep myself warm.
Very soon the gong sounded for dinner. I went down, sat with a rough
crowd around a long table, swallowed what I could, and went back to my
promenade on the porch. After a time an ambulance drove up and stopped
under the porch, and an orderly sang out:
“Adjutant of the Thirteenth here?”
I leaned over the railing.
“I am his wife,” I said.
He saluted. “Can you tell me where the adjutant is, ma’am?”
“He will be here on the next train.”
“That might be midnight, ma’am, or it might be to-morrow. My orders
were to meet the adjutant here about this time.”
“The adjutant got left by the regular passenger. But a freight was to
leave Richmond soon after the passenger, and the adjutant will come on
that.”
“The freight?” the orderly looked doubtful. “Maybe so.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, ma’am, all trains are uncertain, and freight trains more so.
And sometimes freight trains are mighty pertickular about what kind of
freight they carry.”
I laughed, but the orderly did not see the point. Dan’s body-servant
was to drive the ambulance back, so the orderly, turning it over to a
man whom he picked up in the tavern, went back to camp according to
instructions. As soon as he was out of sight I began to repent. If Dan
_shouldn’t_ come on that freight, what would I do with myself and that
strange man and the ambulance and the mules? It was getting late when
the welcome sound of a whistle broke upon my ear and the freight came
creeping in. On the engine beside the engineer stood my husband, with
that abominable little bundle of General Lee’s in his hand.
“Josh got left somewhere,” Dan said of his servant, “the man will have
to drive.”
At last we were off, Dan and I sitting comfortably back in the
ambulance. I was very cold when I first got in, but he wrapped me up
well in the blanket and I snuggled up against him, and began to tell
him how nice and warm he was, and how thankful I was that there was no
possibility of his getting left from me between here and camp.
“I had a time of it to come on that freight,” he said.
“The orderly said you would.” I repeated the orderly’s remark, and Dan
laughed.
“He told the truth. I had to do more swearing to the square inch than I
have been called upon to do for some time. I knew you didn’t even know
where you were going, and that I _must_ get here to-night. As soon as
I heard about the freight, I went to the conductor. He said passengers
couldn’t be taken on the freight, it was against orders. ‘I belong to
the army as you see,’ I urged, ‘I am an officer and it is important for
me to rejoin my command.’ He insisted still that I couldn’t go, that
it was against orders. I told him that it was a bundle for General Lee
that had got me left, and I pictured your predicament in moving colors.
He was obdurate. ‘If the freights begin to take passengers,’ he said,
‘there would soon be no room for any other sort of freight on them.’
I felt like kicking him. It was then that I told him that orders were
not made for fools to carry out, and the swearing began. I threatened
to report him. He looked uneasy and was ready to make concessions which
politeness had not been able to win, but I walked off. Evidently,
like a mule, he respected me more for cursing him. I had my plan laid.
Just as the train moved out of the station I swung on to the engine,
and politely introduced myself to the engineer. He had overheard my
conversation with the conductor--the first part of it, not the part
where the swearing came in--and he invited me to get off the engine.
While we were debating the engine was traveling. I saw that he was
about to stop it.
“Quick as a flash I had my pistol at his head.
“‘Now,’ I said, ‘drive on with this engine, or I’ll kill you and run
it myself!’ I am not telling you _all_ the words I used, Nell, you’ll
forgive me this time, I had to get to you, and honest English is wasted
on fools and mules. ‘Hold off!’ he said, ‘and don’t put that d--d thing
so close to my head, and you can ride up here and be d--d to you.’ The
invitation was not very polite, but I accepted it. I gave him some good
tobacco, and we got to be friends before I got off.”
The short day was done. I was tired and warm and sleepy and went to
sleep while Dan was talking. I don’t know how long I had dozed when
the driver doubled up suddenly and turned head over heels backward into
my lap. I struggled from under him, and Dan gave him a push that helped
to free me and at the same time jumped on to the driver’s seat and
caught up the lines.
“Lord-a-mussy on me!” I heard the man groaning, “dat ar d--n mu-el! she
have kicked me in de pit er my stummick!”
He gathered himself together in a corner of the ambulance, and
continued to express forcible opinions of the mule.
“Dan,” I said, “please get away from there! That mule might kick you.”
“Don’t be silly, Nell! Somebody’s got to drive.”
“But, Dan, if you get kicked, you _can’t_ drive.”
“I won’t get kicked. I know how to talk to a mule. Just shut your ears,
Nell, if you don’t want to hear me. I’ve got to convince this mule.
She’s just like that engineer and conductor. As soon as I get through
giving her my opinion in language she can understand, she’ll travel all
right.”
Presently Dan called out: “You can unstop your ears now, Nell--I think
she understands.”
“Dan,” I said, “are you cold out there?”
“Not a bit of it! This isn’t anything to a soldier. But a soldier’s
wife, eh, Nell? Getting to be rather hard lines, isn’t it?”
“Dan,” I said, my teeth chattering, “don’t it seem that I have had more
adventures in one day than I am entitled to?”
“Rather! By the way, Josh got on that same freight. How he managed it,
the Lord only knows! Worked himself in with the brakeman, I suppose.
But he got off--to look around, I reckon--just like him!--at some
station before Milford and got left. He’ll come straggling into camp
to-morrow. You see there’s another accident you can credit your account
with. Josh could have driven these mules instead of that fool white man
over there who don’t know what to do with a mule. Then I would have
been back there entertaining you, and you would have been complimenting
me by going to sleep.” He drove on singing:
“Sweet Nellie is by my side!”
We caught up with another ambulance. In it were an army friend of
Dan’s with his wife, and she proved the straw that broke the back of
my endurance. She played the martyr. She had rugs, and shawls, and
blankets. I cross-examined her and made her show that she hadn’t been
left on a car by herself without a ticket or a cent of money, and with
no knowledge of where she was going, that the driver of her ambulance
hadn’t been kicked in the stomach and tumbled himself backward into
her lap and nearly broken her bones, and that my case was far worse
than hers. But in spite of it, she complained of everything, and had
Dan and her husband sympathizing so with her that they had no time to
sympathize with me. I sat, almost frozen, huddled up in the one shawl
that answered for shawl, blanket, and rug, and tried to keep my teeth
from chattering and myself from hating that whining Mrs. Gummidge of a
woman.
At last our ambulance drew up in front of the Rev. Mr. McGuire’s,
where we were to stop. There was a hot supper ready, in parlor and
dining-room cheerful flames leaped up from hickory logs on bright
brass fire-dogs, and our welcome was as cheery as the glow of the fire.
As our ambulance had driven into the gate a few minutes in advance
of the other, and as Dan had also engaged board for me several days
before, I had a right to the first choice of rooms. One of these was
large with a bright fire burning in the fireplace, and a great downy
feather-bed on the four-poster; the other was small, and had neither
fireplace nor feather-bed. Of course “Mrs. Gummidge” got the best room.
Dan had to go back to camp. I slept on my hard bed in my cold room and
cried for Milicent and mother; and the next morning I broke the ice in
my bowl when I went to take my bath. I was very, very miserable that
morning. I was not out of my twenties, I had been a spoiled child, I
had not seen Milicent or mother since my marriage, I had nearly lost
my husband, and I had been ill unto death. Following my husband around
as I did, I yet saw very little of him, and I endured hardships of
every sort. I was in the land of war, and in spite of all his efforts
to protect me life was full of fears and horrors. I do not mean that
it was all woe. There were smiles, and music, and laughter, too; my
hosts were kind, Dan came over from camp whenever he could, and life
was too full of excitement ever to be dull. During the day I managed
fairly well--it was at night that the horrors overwhelmed me. My
room was cheerless, my bed was hard and cold--I wanted Milicent, I
wanted mother. I felt that the time had come when I _must_ see them
and I couldn’t: there was no way! The longing grew upon me the more
I struggled against it, until there was no risk I would not have run
to see them. I was sitting in the parlor one night thinking with
indescribable longing of the happy, care-free days in Norfolk, and
seeing dissolving pictures of home in the hickory fire. Tears were
rolling down my cheeks, for while I was living over those dear old
days I was living in the present, too. Suddenly I heard a voice in the
hall--Dan’s and another’s!
I sprang up. And there was Dan, and behind him in the doorway stood a
graceful figure in a long wrap. And a face--Milicent’s face--pale and
weary, but indescribably lovely and loving, was looking toward me with
shining eyes.
“Millie!”
“Nell!”
That was one time I forgot Dan, but he didn’t mind. He stayed with
us as long as he could, and after he left Milicent and I talked and
talked. Milicent--she was a widow now--had come all the way from
Baltimore to see me--she had left mother and Bobby to come to see me!
My little bed wasn’t hard any more, my room wasn’t cheerless any more;
I didn’t mind having to break the ice for my bath. Ah, me, what a night
that was and how happy we were until Dan’s command was moved!
Millie and I--Catholics--wish to pay tribute to the sweet piety of
that Protestant home which sheltered us. Every evening the big Bible
was brought out and prayers were held, the negro servants coming in to
share in the family devotions.