UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES
The Arlington is one-half of a double house, a veranda without division
serving for both halves. Just before noon up rode a regiment of Yankees
and quartered themselves next door. We could hear them moving about and
talking, and rattling their sabers. But I must add that they were very
quiet and orderly. There was no unnecessary noise. They all went out
again, on duty, I suppose, leaving their baggage and servants behind
them. They did not molest or disturb us in any way. After a while we
heard a rap on the door, and on opening it three men entered. They
were fully armed, and had come, as they said, to search the house for
rebels. The one who undertook to search our rooms came quite in and
closed the door while his companions went below. He was very drunk.
Anxious to get rid of him quickly I helped him in his search.
He touched my arm and whispered: “Sis, I’m good Secesh as you--but
don’t say nothin’ about it.”
“You’d better look thoroughly,” I insisted, pretending not to hear him.
Going to the bed I threw the mattress over so he could see that no one
was concealed beneath. He followed and touched my arm again.
“Good Secesh as you is, sis. I ain’t agwine to look into nothin’, sis.”
“There’s nothing for you to find,” I informed him, as I pulled a bureau
drawer open for his inspection.
He waved it away with scorn. “I,” he repeated, touching his breast, “am
good Secesh. Don’t want to see nothin’. Don’t you say nothin’--I’m good
Secesh as you is, sis.”
I led the way into the next room to be searched, he following,
asseverating in tipsy whispers, “Good Secesh as you is, sis,” every few
minutes.
We found little Ruf Pagett cleaning his gun.
“Better hide that, sonny,” said our friend, glancing around. “That
other fellow out there, _he_’ll take it from you. But _I_ won’t take it
from you. I won’t take nothin’. I’m good Secesh as you is, bud. Hide
your gun, bud.”
Down-stairs our friends were having a harder time. The men who went
through their rooms searched everywhere, and tumbled their things
around outrageously. I could hear Mrs. Sampson quarreling. They went
away, but returned to search again. She said she wouldn’t stand it--she
would report them. She saw General Weitzel and made her complaint, and
he told her that the men were stragglers and had no authority for what
they had done. If they could be found they would be punished. Before
this time the fire had been brought under control. Houses not a square
from us had been in flames. What saved us was an open space between us
and the nearest house which had been on fire, and wet blankets. Mrs.
Fry’s son had had wet blankets spread over our roof for protection,
and we had also kept wet blankets hung in our windows. At one time,
however, cinders and smoke had blown into my room till the air was
stifling and the danger great.
A niece of my husband’s, a beautiful girl of eighteen, who had been ill
with typhoid fever, had to be carried out of a burning house that night
and laid on a cot in the street. She died in the street and I heard of
other sick persons who died from the terror and exposure of that time.
As night came on many people were wandering about without shelter,
amid blackened ruins. In the Square numbers were huddled for the night
under improvised shelter or without any protection at all. But profound
quiet reigned--the quiet of desolation as well as of order. The city
had been put under martial law as soon as the Federals took possession;
order and quiet had been quickly established and were well preserved.
Our next-door neighbors were so quiet that with only a wall between we
sometimes forgot their presence.
I must tell of one person who did not weep because the Yankees had
come. That was a little girl in the house who clapped her hands and
danced all around.
“The Yankees have come! the Yankees have come!” she shouted, “and now
we’ll get something to eat. I’m going to have pickles and molasses and
oranges and cheese and nuts and candy until I have a fit and die.”
She soon made acquaintances next door. The soldiers or their servants
gave her what she asked for. She stuffed herself with what they gave
her, and that night she had a fit and died, as she had said in jest she
would, poor little soul!
That afternoon there was a funeral from the house, and all day there
were burials going on in Hollywood.
Early on the morning of the third, when Miss Mary Pagett threw open her
blinds, she beheld the gallery under her window lined with sleeping
Yankees. When Delia McArthur and I went out for a walk we came upon
Federal soldiers asleep on the sidewalks and everywhere there was a
place for weary men to drop down and rest. In all this time of horror I
don’t think anything was much harder than making up our minds to “draw
rations from the Yankees.” We said we _would_ not do it--we _could_ not
do it!
But as hunger gained upon us and starvation stared us in the face Mrs.
Sampson rose up in her might!
“I’ll take anything I can get out of the Yankees!” she exclaimed. “They
haven’t had any delicacy of feeling in taking everything we’ve got! I’m
going for rations!”
So Mrs. Sampson nerved herself up to the point where she took quite
a pleasure and pride in her mission. But not so with the rest of us.
It was a bitter pill, hard, hard to swallow. Mother, to whose lot
some species of martyrdom was always falling, elected to go with
Mrs. Sampson. So forth sallied these old Virginia matrons to “draw
rations from the Yankees.” However, once on our way to humiliation we
began to console ourselves with thoughts of the loaves and fishes. We
would have enough to eat--sugar and tea and other delights! Presently
mother and Mrs. Sampson returned, each with a dried codfish! There was
disappointment and there was laughter. As each stately matron came
marching in, holding her codfish at arm’s length before her, Delia
McArthur and I fell into each other’s arms laughing. Besides the
codfish, they had each a piece of fat, strong bacon about the size of
a handkerchief folded once, and perhaps an inch thick. Now, we had had
no meat for a great while, and we were completely worn out with dried
apples and peas, so we immediately set about cooking our bacon. Having
such a great dainty and rare luxury, we felt ourselves in a position to
invite company to dinner. Mrs. Sampson invited half of the household to
dine with her, and we invited the other half. Soon there was a great
sputtering and a delicious smell issuing from the Sampsons’ apartments
and from ours.
Mother sliced the meat into the pan, and I sat on the floor and held it
over the fire, while Delia spread the table. There was a pot on, which
had to be stirred now and then. I, who always had a fertile brain in
culinary matters, suggested that the potatoes--I neglected to state
that a handful of potatoes had been dealt out with our rations--should
be sliced very thin and dropped into the pan with the meat; and this
done I fried them quite brown, taking much pains and pride in the
achievement. Mother dished up the peas and set them on the table
before our guests; and I passed around the fried meat and potatoes in
the frying-pan, from which the company, with much grace and delicacy,
helped themselves. Oh, how delicious it was!
As for the codfish, we had immediately hung that out of the window.
The passer-by in the street below could behold it, dangling from its
string, a melancholy and fragrant codfish. From Mrs. Sampson’s window
just below ours hung another melancholy codfish just like the one above
it. We paid the old negress to do things for us with codfish--but not
a whole codfish at a time. We cut off pieces of it, and so made good
bargains, and one codfish go as far as possible. We had by this time
got to a place where economy was not only a virtue but a necessity of
the direst sort.
The last time I was in Richmond I took my children by the Arlington and
pointed out to them the window from which our codfish hung.
And now Betty Taylor--Walter’s bride--and I began planning to run
through the Yankee lines together and join our husbands.
We did not think even then, you see, that the war was over. Our faith
was still crediting superhuman powers to Lee and his skeleton army.
Then there was President Davis’s proclamation issued from Danville,
wherein we found encouragement for hope. Then came the blow. We heard
that Lee had surrendered. Lee surrendered! that couldn’t be true! But
even while we were refusing to believe it General Lee, accompanied, as
I remember, by one or two members of his staff, rode up to his door. He
bared his weary gray head to the people who gathered around him with
greetings and passed into his house.
Hope was dead at last. But other things, precious and imperishable,
remained to us and to our children--the things that make for loyalty
and courage and endurance--an invincible faith--the enduring record
of heroic example. Lee had surrendered, but Lee was still himself and
our own--a heritage to be handed down by Americans to America when
sectional distinctions have been swallowed up in the strength of a
Union great enough to honor every son, whatever his creed, who has
lived and died for “conscience’ sake.”
Sitting in my window that sorrowful day I saw three officers in gray
uniforms galloping rapidly along Main Street. I recognized familiar
figures in them all before they came as far as the Arlington. One
turned out of Main Street, riding home to his wife, as I knew, before
they reached the window; another did the same.
The third came galloping past.
I thrust my head out of the window.
“Walter!” I called.
He looked up.
“Hello, Nell!” he cried, waving his hat around his head and galloping
on.
He was on his way to his bride from whom he had parted at the altar.
But even at this supreme moment of their lives he and Betty were good
enough to remember me, and in a few hours after I hailed him from the
window Walter called.
“Where is Dan?” was my first question.
“I don’t know, Nell,” he answered. “But I know he’s alive and well and
will be along in a few days.”
That was all the comfort I got from any friends returning from the
field.
A little later there was a grand review of Federal troops in Richmond,
and I remember how well-clad and sleek they were and how new and
glittering were their arms. Good boots, good hats, a whole suit of
clothes to every man--a long, bright, prosperous-looking procession.
On the sidewalk a poor Confederate in rags and bootless, stood looking
wistfully on.
The next day I heard that General Rooney Lee had arrived, and I went
to see him. I was shown up to his mother’s room, and she told me that
he had not come, but was hourly expected. When I called the next day I
met him and Miss Mildred Lee in the door. They were going out, but the
general stepped back with me into the hall.
“I came to see if you could tell me anything about Dan, general.”
“Mrs. Grey,” he said, “you know Dan as well as I do. He isn’t whipped
yet. I told him it was all foolishness, and that the war was over,
but he wouldn’t surrender with me, and is going through to Johnston’s
army. But he will have to come back, and he will be here soon, I think.
Johnston’s army has surrendered.”
“You think then that nothing has happened to him, general?”
“Oh, no. I am sure of that.”
General Lee dropped his voice.
“Mrs. Grey, it may be several days before Dan gets in. In the meanwhile
let me supply your wants as best I can. You should not mind applying to
me or accepting assistance from me.”
“I appreciate your kindness more than I can tell you, general, but I
don’t really need anything.”
“If you should stand in need of money or assistance of any kind before
Dan gets in, let me know, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will, dear general.”
We all three walked down Franklin Street together until Miss Mildred,
who was going to see some friends on Grace Street, had to turn. After
the two had just turned the corner I heard the general say:
“Wait for a minute, Mildred.”
He slipped back, put his hand in his pocket, and took out a thin roll
of bills, a very thin roll.
“Mrs. Grey,” he said, “here is all the money I have in the world, ten
dollars in greenbacks. Take half of it--I wish you would--it wouldn’t
inconvenience me at all. I will make some more soon, and then I will
divide with you again until Dan comes home.”
I could hardly speak for tears. At that moment I was richer than my
general. I had at home in gold and greenbacks more money than General
Lee.
“God bless you, general!” I managed to say. “But really I don’t need
it. If I do really and truly I will come to you for it.”
Franklin Street wasn’t a good place to cry in, so I hurried home.
Still the days that passed did not bring me Dan. I became thoroughly
miserable. I sat in my window and watched and was cross if anybody
spoke to me.
One day a servant brought up a message:
“Er gent’man in de parlor to see yer, missy.”
“What sort of a ‘gent’man’ is it?” I asked tartly. There was but one
man in the world I wanted to see or hear about just then.
“He ain’t lak our people, missy. He’s furrin--French or suppin nuther.
He say how he usen ter know yer in Petersburg. An’ how you lent ’im
some--er--music--er suppin lak dat. An’ he got--er--errah--suppin--I
clar fo’ de Lord, missy, I dunno what ’tis--but he got suppin----”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “He’s that old French music-teacher, and he’s
brought back that old music I lent him in the year one. Go tell him
that I don’t want it; he can have it.”
Jake departed only to return in a more perplexed frame of mind and
state of speech.
“He say how ’tain’t no music he’s got fur yer. He say--he do say,
missy--but de Lord knows I dunno what he say!--but anyway be bleeged to
see yer.”
I got up and went down to the parlor in desperation.
Sure enough, it was the little French music-teacher, and he began
apologies, acknowledgments and what not in his dreadful English.
“Madame, I haf no mooseek to you--not at all. I haf one message of you
to ze majaire. If you not b’lief me,” he fumbled in his pocket and
brought out a dirty bit of paper, “look at ze cart--vat sail I call
him? ze lettaire. If madame vill look--I beg ze pardon of madame----”
I snatched the paper out of his hand. And then--I couldn’t make it out.
Written in the first place with an indifferent pencil on a worn bit
of the poor paper of that day and carried in the little Frenchman’s
very ragged and grimy pocket, the scrawl was illegible. It had never
been more than a line of some five or six words. While I was trying to
make it out the little Frenchman explained that it was merely a line
introducing himself as the bearer of a message.
What that message was I never did hear, though the little Frenchman
did his best to deliver and I to receive it. I got enough out of him,
however, to know that Dan was well and on his way to Richmond. I
also understood that he was not far from Richmond now, but what was
detaining him I could not make out, though the little Frenchman, with
many apologies, conveyed the hint to me that it was a delicate matter.
After he was gone I wondered why I was so stupid as not to get the
little man’s address so that I could send some friends who understood
French after him. From what he had said I had inferred that my husband
would be with me the following day. I watched in a fever of impatience,
but two days passed and no Dan.
The third night as I laid my aching head on the pillow I said: “Mother,
if he don’t come to-morrow, the next day I start out to look for him.”
Do you know how it is to feel in your sleep that some one is looking at
you? This is the sort of sensation that aroused me the next morning,
and I opened my eyes in the early dawn to find my husband standing by
the bed with clasped hands looking down at me.
Ah, we were happy--we were happy! Ragged, defeated, broken, we but had
each other and that was enough.
But there is a ludicrous side that I must tell you. I must explain how
Dan was dressed. He wore a pair of threadbare gray trousers patched
with blue; they were much too short for him, and there were holes which
were not patched at all; he had no socks on, but wore a ragged shoe
of one size on one foot, and on the other a boot of another size and
ragged too; he had on a blue jacket much too small for him--it was
conspicuously too short, and there was a wide margin between where it
ended and his trousers began, and he had on a calico shirt that looked
like pink peppermint candy. Set back on his head was an old hat, shot
nearly all to pieces--you could look through the holes, and it had tags
hanging around where the brim had been. He was a perfect old ragman
except for the very new pink shirt.
“My dear Dan,” I said, “what a perfect fright you are! What a dreadful
ragtag and bobtail!”
“Why, Nell,” he said, “I thought these very good clothes. What’s
missing, my dear? My suit is very complete; whole trousers, jacket, new
shirt, hat on my head, even down to something on both feet. Last week
I didn’t have any shirt, nor any jacket to speak of, and my trousers
weren’t patched and I didn’t have anything on my feet. One reason I
took so long to get here was because I was trying to get a few clothes
together--I wasn’t dressed to my taste, you see. It took much time and
labor to collect all this wearing apparel. I got first one piece and
then another, until I am as you see me, fit to enter Richmond. Somebody
stole my trousers one morning--I was in an awful plight. That was the
time the little Frenchman passed and I sent you a message. Did he tell
you that I’d get home as soon as I got another pair of trousers if
somebody didn’t steal my jacket by that time?”
I was laughing and crying all the time he was talking. When I pulled
off boot and shoe I found that he had spoken the truth in jest when he
said he had been walking barefoot nearly all the way. His feet were
sore. I had some good shoes for him, and I got out an old civilian
suit that he had worn before the war. It didn’t fit him now and looked
antiquated, but he donned it with great satisfaction.
Then we went out shopping. It was shopping in a city of ruins. As we
walked along the streets there were smoking pits on each side of us.
Here and there the remnants of what had been a store enabled us to
purchase shoes at one place and the materials for two white shirts at
another, and to our great joy we found a hat for which he paid two
dollars, United States money.
We had nothing on which to begin life over again, but we were young and
strong, and began it cheerily enough. We are prosperous now, our heads
are nearly white; little grandchildren cluster about us and listen
with interest to grandpapa’s and grandmamma’s tales of the days when
they “fought and bled and died together.” They can’t understand how
such nice people as the Yankees and ourselves ever could have fought
each other. “It doesn’t seem reasonable,” says Nellie the third, who
is engaged to a gentleman from Boston, where we sent her to cultivate
her musical talents, but where she applied herself to other matters,
“it doesn’t seem reasonable, grandmamma, when you could just as easily
have settled it all comfortably without any fighting. How glad I am
I wasn’t living then! How thankful I am that ‘Old Glory’ floats alike
over North and South, now!”
And so am I, my darling, so am I!
But for us--for Dan and me--we could almost as easily give up each
other as those terrible, beloved days. They are the very fiber of us.
THE END