“WHOSE BUSINESS ’TIS TO DIE”
In forty-eight hours we knew that the surmise of the orderly was
correct--there was enough fighting. The first cannon-ball which tore
through the air at Brandy was only too grave assurance of the fact.
All day men were hurrying past the house, deserters from both armies
getting away from the scene of bloodshed and thunder as quickly as
possible. Then came the procession of the dead and wounded, some in
ambulances, some in carts, some on the shoulders of friends.
In the afternoon we began to hear rumors giving names of the killed
and wounded. I listened with my heart in my throat for Dan’s name, but
I did not hear it. I heard no news whatever of him all day--all day I
could only hope that no news was good news, and all day that ghastly
procession dragged heavily by. Among names of those killed I heard of
Colonel Sol Williams. A day or two before the battle of Brandy he had
returned from a furlough to Petersburg, where he had gone to marry a
lovely woman, a friend of mine. The day before he was killed he had sat
at table with me, chatting pleasantly of mutual friends at home from
whom he had brought messages, brimful of happiness, and of the charming
wife he had won! As the day waned I sat in my room, wretched and
miserable, thinking of my friend who was at once a wife and a widow,
and fearing for myself, whose husband even at that moment might be
falling under his death wound. I was aroused by hearing the voices of
men, subdued but excited, on the stairway leading to my room. I ran out
and saw several men of rank and Mr. Bradford on the stairway talking
excitedly, and I heard my name spoken.
“What’s the matter, gentlemen?” I asked with forced calmness.
They looked up at me in a stupid, masculine sort of way, as if they
had something disagreeable to say and didn’t want to say it. I could
shake those men now, when I think of how stupid they were! They were
listening to Mr. Bradford, and I don’t think they really caught my
question, nor did my manner betray to them how fast my heart was
beating, but they were stupid, nevertheless. I could hardly get the
next words out:
“Is Dan hurt?”
This time my voice was so low that they did not hear it at all.
“For God’s sake, gentlemen,” I cried out, “tell me if my husband is
wounded or dead.”
“Neither, madam!” several voices answered instantly, and the officer
nearest me, thinking I was going to fall, sprang quickly to my side.
I gathered myself together, and they told me their business, and I
saw why my presence had embarrassed them--they wanted my room for the
wounded. A funny thing had happened, incongruous as it was, in their
telling me that my fears for Dan were groundless. When I asked, “Is Dan
hurt?” one of them had answered, “No, ma’am; it’s General Rooney Lee;”
and I had said, “Thank God!” I can’t describe the look of horror with
which they heard me.
“These gentlemen,” began Mr. Bradford, who was always afraid to speak
his mind, “wanted to bring General Lee here, and I didn’t have a place
to put him, and I was telling ’em that I thought that--maybe--you would
give him your room. I could fix up a lounge for you somewhere.”
“Of course I will! I shall be delighted to give up my room, or do
anything else I can for General Lee.”
I busied myself getting my room ready for General “Rooney,” but he was
not brought to Mr. Bradford’s, after all; his men were afraid that he
might be captured too easily at Mr. Bradford’s. As night came on the
yard filled up with soldiers. In the lawn, the road, the backyard, the
porches, the outhouses, everywhere, there were soldiers. You could not
set your foot down without putting it on a soldier; if you thrust your
hand out of a window you touched a soldier’s back or shoulder, his
carbine or his musket. The place was crowded not only with cavalry, but
with infantry and artillery, and still they kept on coming. I had not
heard from Dan. It was late supper-time. I had no heart for supper,
and I felt almost too shaken to present myself at the table, but as I
passed the dining-room in my restless rovings I saw General Stuart’s
back, and went in and sat by him.
“General,” I said, “can you tell me anything of Dan?”
“He is neither killed nor wounded. I know that much. Is not that
enough?”
“Yes, thank God!
“Oh, general! I wish this war was over!” I said again.
“I, too, my child!” He spoke with more than Stuart’s sadness and
gravity, then, remembering himself, he added quickly in his own cheery
fashion, “But we’ve got to whip these Yankees first!”
He finished his cup of coffee (the kind in common use, made of corn
which had been roasted, parched, and ground), and then went on telling
me about Dan.
“He has borne himself gallantly, as he always does, and as you know
without my telling you. I don’t know where he is, but he will be along
presently.”
And at that moment Dan walked in, without a coat, and with the rest of
that new uniform a perfect fright. He was covered with dust and ashes
and gunpowder, and he looked haggard and jaded. He sat down between
General Stuart and me, too tired to talk; but after eating some supper,
he felt better, and began discussing the battle and relating some
incidents. He took a card out of his pocket and handed it to General
Stuart.
“A Federal officer who is about done for, poor fellow, handed me that
just now. I don’t know the name. He couldn’t talk.”
“_I_ do!” General Stuart exclaimed, with quick, strong interest. “Where
did you see him? This is the name of one of my classmates at West
Point.”
“I saw him on the roadside as I came on to supper. While riding along
I heard a strange sound, something like a groan, yet different from
any groan I ever heard--the strangest, most uncanny sound imaginable.
I dismounted and began to look around for it, and I found a Yankee
soldier lying in a ditch by the roadside. I couldn’t see that any
legs or arms were broken, nor that he was wounded at all. I felt him
all over, and asked what was the matter. He didn’t speak, and I saw
that he had been trying to direct my attention to his face. He tried
very hard to speak, but only succeeded in emitting the strange sound
I had heard before; and on examining his face closely, and moving the
whiskers aside, I found that he was shot through both jaws. He made the
same noise again, put his hand in his pocket, and gave me this card,
with another pitiful effort to speak. I put my coat under his head,
laid some brush across the ditch to hide him, and promised to go back
for him in an ambulance.”
“Thank you, in my own behalf!” General Stuart said warmly.
“Perhaps, poor fellow,” said Dan, “he took chances on that card’s
reaching you. Seeing my uniform of major of cavalry, he may not have
considered it impossible that you should hear of his condition through
me.”
“When you have finished your supper, major, we will go after him.”
Tired as they both were, they went out and attended personally to
the relief of the poor fellow by the roadside. General Stuart had
everything done for him that was possible, smoothed his last moments,
and grieved over him as deeply as if his classmate had not been his
enemy.
Another sad thing among the sorrows of that supper was when Colonel Sol
Williams’s brother-in-law, John Pegram, came in, and sat down in our
midst. General Stuart went up to him, and wrung his hand in a silence
that even the dauntless Stuart’s lips were too tremulous at once to
break. When he could speak he said:
“I grieve for myself as for you, lieutenant, but it was a death that
any one of us might be proud to die.”
Even then the shadow and glory of his own death was not far from him.
Colonel Williams had been Lieutenant Pegram’s superior officer as well
as brother-in-law. It had been his sorrowful lot to take the body of
his colonel on his horse in front of him, and carry it to a house where
it could be reverently cared for until he could send it home to bride
and kindred. He had cut a lock of hair from the dead, and when the
troops went off to Pennsylvania, he gave it to me for his sister. I
shall never forget that supper hour, or how the unhappy young fellow
looked when he came in among us after his ride with the dead, and I
shall never forget how I felt about that poor young Federal soldier
who was wounded in the jaws and couldn’t speak, and how I felt about
the women who loved him far away; I began to feel that war was an
utterly unjustifiable thing, and that the virtues of valor, loyalty,
devotion which it brings out had better be brought out some other way.
If General Rooney Lee didn’t take my room, I gave it up all the same.
Two wounded men were put into it. There were a number of wounded men
in the house, and, of course, everybody gave way to their comfort. All
but my two were removed in a day or two, but here these two were, and
here they were when Aunt Sally came home. Her homecoming was after a
fashion that turned our mourning into righteous and wholesome wrath.
We were sitting on the porch one afternoon, free and easy in our minds
and believing Aunt Sally away in distant Washington, when we noted a
small object far off down the road. As it crawled nearer and nearer
we perceived that it was an ox-cart; we saw the driver, and behind him
somebody else sitting on a trunk.
“Good gracious! that’s Aunt Sally!” cried Mr. Bradford in consternation.
We were all dreadfully sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.
She climbed off the cart at the gate, and called for some negro to come
get her trunk. Mr. Bradford had already found one, and was running
to the rescue. In fact he had been running in a half dozen different
directions ever since he had spied Aunt Sally. He looked as if his wits
had left him and as if he were racing around in a circle.
“You orter been on hand to he’p me off o’ that kyart,” she told him.
“It do look like when a man’s wife’s been away this long time he might
be on hand to he’p her off the kyart.”
As she came up the walk she said the yard looked awful torn and
“trompled down”; that she was afraid she would find it so soon as she
heard that the place had been camping ground for the whole army and
her away and nobody there to manage the army as she could have done.
She greeted me and her niece, and in the same breath told her niece
that there was some mud on the steps which ought to be washed off. Then
she went into the house, taking off her things and remarking on “things
that ought to be done.” Presently there was a great stir in the house;
she had found out the wounded men. She commented on their presence in
such a loud voice that we heard it on the porch, and the men themselves
must have heard it.
“Just like Mr. Bradford! If I had been here it wouldn’t have happened.
The idea! Turning the house into a hospital! I won’t have it! Nobody
knows who they are. I can’t have ’em on my best beds, and between my
best sheets and blankets. Dirty, common soldiers! I never heard of such
a thing!”
And she got them out before supper.
There was an office in the yard and she had them taken to this.
They had to be carried past us, and I can see them now, poor,
mortified, shame-faced fellows! I was as afraid of Aunt Sally as of a
rattlesnake, but I think I could have shaken her then!
Little it was that I saw of Dan or any of my army friends after the
battle of Brandy. The cavalry was too busy watching Hooker’s, while
our infantry was pushing on toward Pennsylvania, to spare any time to
lighter matters. Every day the boys in gray marched by on their way
North.
I watched from the porch and windows if by any means I might catch
sight of Dan. But his way did not lie by Bradford’s. One morning,
however, I saw General Stuart riding by at the head of a large command.
I thought they were going to stop and camp at Mr. Bradford’s, perhaps,
but I was mistaken. As soon as I saw that they were going by without
stopping, I ran to the fence and beckoned to General Stuart. He had
seen me on the porch, and rode up to the fence at once.
“Aren’t you going to stop at all?” I asked.
“Not to-day. In fact we’re off for some time now.”
“Is Dan going?”
“Yes. He’s ahead now with General Chambliss.”
“Am I not to see him at all, General Stuart?” I said, trying hard to
keep my lip from quivering--I had a reputation to keep up with him.
But he saw the quiver.
“You can go on with the army if you want to,” he said in quick
sympathy. “I will give you an ambulance. You can carry your own maid
along, have your own tent, and have your husband with you. I will do
anything I can for your comfort. You would nurse our poor fellows when
they get hurt, and be no end of good to us. But it would be awfully
hard on you.”
“I wouldn’t mind the hardships,” I answered, “but you know Dan won’t
let me go. I have begged him several times to let me live in camp with
him. I could nurse the sick and wounded, and take care of him if he
was shot, and I wouldn’t be a bit of trouble; and I could patch for
the soldiers. Oh, I’d love to do it! If you come up with him, General
Stuart, ask him to let me go, and if he says yes, send the ambulance.”
“I’ll promise him what I promised you,” he said, smiling kindly.
“Good-by now. I’ll ride on and send him back to say good-by to you, if
I can manage it. Then you can talk him into letting you come with us.”
I climbed up on the fence to shake hands with him and to say good-by,
and I had another word for him. Beneath my dress and next my skin was a
little Catholic medal which had been blessed by my confessor. It hung
around my neck by a slender chain. I unclasped the chain, drew forth
the medal and gave it to him, my eyes brimming with tears.
“It has been blessed by Father Mulvey,” I said. “Wear it about your
neck. Maybe it will bring you back safe.”
I was leaning upon the horse’s neck, crying as if my heart would break.
General Stuart’s own eyes were dim.
“Good-by,” I said, “and if you can send Dan back I thank you for us
both--I thank you anyway for thinking of it; but--the South and his
duty first. Good-by, and God bless you, General Stuart!”
That was the last time I ever saw him, the last time that knightly
hand clasped mine. Before he rode away he said some cheerful, hopeful
words, and looked back at me with the glint of merry mischief in his
eyes, threatening to tell Dan Grey that I was losing my good repute
for bravery. Dan did not come back to say good-by. I had a little note
which he contrived to send me in some way. It was only a hasty scrawl,
full of good-bys and God bless yous.
After saying good-by to General Stuart I returned to the house. Esten
Cooke sat at a table writing. He was preparing some official papers for
General Stuart, I think, and had been left behind for that purpose. I
understood him to answer one of my questions to the effect that he was
going to follow the cavalry presently.
“Colonel Cooke,” I asked humbly enough, for I was ready then to take
information and advice from anybody, “how long do you think it will be
before the army comes back?”
“Can’t say, madam.”
“Would you advise me to wait here until its return?”
“Can’t say, madam.”
“Would you advise me to go to Richmond?”
“Madam, I would advise you to go to Richmond.”
“You think then it will be some time before the army returns?”
“I can’t say, madam?”
I felt like shaking him and asking: “What _can_ you say?” He may have
been a brave soldier and written nice books and all that, but I think
John Esten Cooke was a very dull, disagreeable man.
I waited several days, but as I got nothing further from Dan than the
little note--which was bare of advice because, perhaps, he didn’t have
time to write more, and because he may not have known how to advise
me--I took John Esten Cooke’s advice and went to Richmond. I stopped
there only a very short time, and then went on to Petersburg, where
mother was. Reunion with her was compensation for many troubles, and
then, too, she needed me. She had not heard from Milicent since my
departure for Culpeper. Then a letter had reached us through the agency
of Mr. Cridland, in which Milicent had stated her purpose of coming to
us as soon as she could get a pass--a thing it was every day becoming
more difficult to secure--for she was determined upon reaching us
before the cold weather came again. Since that letter there had been
absolute silence.
Then came upon us that awful July of 1863, and the battle of
Gettysburg, the beginning of the end. Virginians fell by hundreds
in that fight, and Pickett’s charge goes down to history along with
Balaklava and Thermopylæ. There were more vacant chairs in Virginia,
already desolate--there were more broken hearts for which Heaven alone
held balm. “When Italy’s made, for what good is it done if we have not
a son?” Again the angel of death had passed me by. But my heart bled
for my friends who were dead on that red field far away--for my friends
who mourned and could not be comforted.
One of our wounded, whose father brought him home to be nursed, bore
to me a letter from my husband and a package from General Stuart. The
package contained a photograph of himself that he had promised me, and
a note, bright, genial, merry, like himself. That picture is hanging
on my wall now. On the back is written by a hand long crumbled into
dust, “To her who in being a devoted wife did not forget to be a true
patriot.” The eyes smile down upon us as I lift my little granddaughter
up to kiss my gallant cavalier’s lips, and as she lisps his name my
heart leaps to the memory of his dauntless life and death.
He was shot one beautiful May morning in 1864 while trying to prevent
Sheridan’s approach to Richmond. It was at Yellow Tavern--a dismantled
old tavern not many miles from the Confederate capital--that he fell,
and Colonel Venable, who was serving with him at the time and near him
when he fell, helped, if I remember aright, to shroud him. When he told
me what he could of General Stuart’s last hours, he said:
“There was a little Catholic medal around his neck, Nell. Did you give
him that? We left it on him.”
And so passes from this poor history my beloved and loyal friend, my
cavalry hero and good comrade. Virginia holds his dust sacred, and
in history he sits at the Round Table of all true-souled and gentle
knights.