dangerous service to her cause and country, than she set herself
diligently to the work of perfecting plans which were at first vague and
undefined. It was no part of her purpose to fail if by any forethought
and thoroughness of preparation she might avert the danger of failure.
She determined to do nothing until every point and possibility, so far
as conditions could be foreseen, should be considered and provided for.
First of all, she entered into perfect confidence with her maid, Martha,
telling the trusty negro woman as she meant to tell no other person near
her, except her grandfather, precisely what she intended to do, and how.
Martha had a shrewd intelligence likely to be useful in emergencies, and
her devotion to her mistress was as absolute as that of any devotee to
an object of worship. This mistress had been hers to care for by night
and by day ever since Agatha had been four years of age. All of loyalty,
all of affection, all of self-sacrificing devotion of which the negro
character in its best estate is capable, she gave to Agatha, never
doubting her due or questioning her right to such service of the heart
and soul. She knew no other love than this, no other life than that of
unceasing, all-embracing care for her mistress.
It was with no shadow of doubt or hesitation, therefore, that Agatha
revealed her purposes to Martha, and asked for her aid in carrying them
out. And Martha received the somewhat startling confidence as calmly as
if her mistress had been telling her of an intended afternoon drive.
When matters had settled down into apathetic idleness after the battle
of Manassas, Agatha made occasion to visit the army. Officers at Fairfax
Court-house had their wives and daughters with them at their
headquarters then, and many of these were Agatha's intimates, whom she
might visit without formal invitation.
At their quarters, she received visits from such of her friends as
belonged to the cavalry forces stationed thereabouts. In her intercourse
with these, she steadily maintained the innocent little fiction that she
was there solely for social purposes, and to see the splendid army that
had so recently won an astonishing victory.
One day, she learned that the picturesque cavalier, General J. E. B.
Stuart, had boldly pushed his outposts to Mason's and Munson's Hills,
and established his headquarters under a tree, within easy sight of
Washington. She instantly developed an intense desire to visit him
there. It happened that she knew Stuart and his family personally, and
had often dined in the great cavalry leader's company at her own and
other homes. So she said one day, to a young cavalry officer, who was
calling upon her:
"I want you to do me a very great service. I want you to ask General
Stuart to let me visit him at the outposts. He'll offer to come here to
call upon me instead, for he is always gallant, but you are to tell him
I will not permit that. The service needs him at the front, and I want
to visit him there. Besides, I particularly want to take a peep at
Washington City in its new guise as a foreign capital which we are
besieging."
The young man remonstrated. He protested that there was very great
danger in the attempt--that raids from the picket-lines were of daily
occurrence, that the firing was often severe--and all the rest of it,
wherefore General Stuart would almost certainly forbid the young lady's
proposed enterprise.
The girl calmly looked the young man in the eyes--he was an old friend
whom she had known from her childhood--and said, very solemnly:
"Charlie, I am no more afraid of bullets than you are. My heart is set
upon this visit, and you _must_ arrange it for me. As for General
Stuart, I'll manage him, if you'll carry a note to him for me."
That young man had once begun to make love to Agatha, and she had
checked him gently and affectionately in time to spare his pride, and to
make of him her willing knight for all time to come. So he answered
promptly:
"I'll carry your note, of course, and if Stuart gives permission, I'll
beg to be myself your escort. Then, if anybody bothers you with bullets
or anything else, it'll be a good deal the worse for him."
The girl thanked him in a way that would have made a hero of him in her
defence had occasion served, and presently she scribbled a little note
and placed it in the young cavalryman's hands for delivery. It was
simple enough, but it was so worded as to make sure that Stuart would
promptly grant its request. It ran as follows:
"MY DEAR GENERAL STUART:--I very much want to see you for half an
hour out where you are, at Mason's or Munson's Hill, and not here
at Fairfax Court-house. My visit will be absolutely and entirely in
the public interest, though to all others than yourself I am
pretending that it is prompted solely by the whim of a romantic
young girl. Please send a permit at once, and please permit
Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who bears this, to be my escort."
The note was unsealed, of course, except by the honour of the gentleman
who bore it. Stuart's response was prompt, as every act of his
enthusiastic life was sure to be. He read the note, held a corner of
the sheet in the blaze of his camp-fire, and retained his hold upon the
farther corner of it until it was quite consumed. Then he dropped the
charred sheets into the coals, and turning to Lieutenant Fauntleroy,
commanded:
"Return at once to Fairfax Court-house, detail an escort of half a dozen
good men under your own personal command, and escort Miss Ronald to my
headquarters. Be very careful not to place the young lady under fire if
you can avoid it. Ride in the woods, or under other cover, wherever you
can. Remember, you will have a lady in charge, and must take no risks."
"At what time shall I report with Miss Ronald?"
"At her time--at whatever time she shall fix upon as most pleasing to
her."
Thus it came about that before noon of the next day, in the midst of a
pouring rain-storm, General Stuart lifted Agatha Ronald from her saddle,
taking her by the waist for that purpose. He welcomed her with a kiss
upon her brow, as the daughter of a house whose hospitality he had often
enjoyed. He quickly escorted her to a little brush shelter which he had
made his men hastily construct as a defence for her against the rain,
and ordered the sentries posted full fifty yards away, in order that the
conversation might by no chance be overheard.
"It is a splendid service," he said, when the girl had finished telling
him of her plans. "But it will be attended by extraordinary danger to a
young woman like you."
"I have considered all that, General," she replied, very seriously. "I
do not shrink from the danger."
"Of course not. You are a woman, a Virginian, and a Ronald,--three
sufficient guarantees of courage. But I'm afraid for you. It is a
terrible risk you are going to take--immeasurably greater in the case of
a woman than in that of a man."
"I have my wits, General,--and this," showing him a tiny revolver. "With
that a woman can always defend her honour."
"You mean by suicide?"
"Yes--if necessity compels." Stuart looked at the gentle girl, gazing
into her fawn-like brown eyes as if trying to read her soul in their
depths. Presently he said:
"God bless you and keep you, dear! I'm going to ride back to Fairfax
Court-house with you. Make yourself as comfortable as you can here for
half an hour, while I ride out to the pickets. I'll be with you soon,
and then we'll have dinner, for you are my guest to-day."
When the dinner was served, it consisted of some ears of corn, plucked
from a neighbouring field, and roasted with husks unremoved, among the
live coals of the cavalier's camp-fire. Stuart made no apology for the
lack of variety in the meal, for he sincerely accepted the doctrine
which he often preached to his men, that "anything edible makes a good
enough dinner if you are hungry, and the simpler it is, the better.
There's nothing more troublesome in a campaign than cooking utensils and
unnecessary things generally. If armies would move without them, there'd
be more and better fighting done. The chief thing in war is to start at
once and get there without delay."
The meal over, Stuart held out his hand as a step, from which Agatha
lightly sprang into her saddle. Then he mounted the superb gray, which
he always rode when battle was on, or when he had a gentlewoman under
his charge. For there was a touch of the boyish dandy in Stuart, and a
good deal more than a touch of that gallantry which prompts every true
man of warm blood to honour womanhood with every possible attention.
The horse was fit for his rider, and that is saying quite all that can
be said in praise of a horse. Mounted upon him, Stuart was the bodily
presentment of all that painters and sculptors have imagined the typical
cavalier to be or to seem. Stalwart of figure, erect in carriage, his
muscles showing themselves in graceful strength with every movement of
his body, his head carried like that of a boy or a young bull, his beard
closely clipped, his moustache standing out straight at the ends, and
resembling that of Virginia's earliest knight errant, Captain John
Smith, of Jamestown, Stuart was a picture to look upon, which the
onlooker did not soon forget. His many-gabled slouch hat was decorated
with streaming plumes, that helped to make of him a target for the
enemy's sharpest sharpshooters whenever battle was on. Full of vigour,
full of health, and full to the very lips of a boyish enthusiasm of
life, he seemed never to know what weariness might signify, and never
for one moment to abate the intensity of his purpose. He did all things
as if all had been part of a great game in which he was playing for a
championship.
On this occasion, however, his manner was subdued, and his conversation
serious in a degree unusual to one of his effervescent spirits. He was
riding with Agatha Ronald for the very serious purpose of talking with
her about details that must be carefully arranged with a view to her
safety in the dangerous undertaking upon which she was about to enter. A
word or two to Lieutenant Fauntleroy sent that officer with his escort
squad to the front, while Stuart and his charge rode in rear.
"Now, one thing more is necessary, Miss Agatha," he said. "You ought to
reënter our country far to the west, if you can, where there are no
armies, and only small detachments. Still, I don't know so well about
that. Here we keep the Yankees too busy at the front to attend to
matters in the rear, while over in the valley they'll have nothing
better to do than look out for wandering women like you. Anyhow, you may
find it necessary or advisable to enter my lines. In that case, you must
be arrested immediately and brought to my headquarters. That is
necessary on all accounts--to prevent the nature of your mission from
being discovered, and--well, to prevent you from having to report to
anybody but me. I shall want to see you, and hear all about your
results. So I'm going to give orders every day that will put every
picket-officer on watch for you, and impress every one of them with the
idea that you are a peculiarly dangerous person, in league with traitors
on our side, and trying to put yourself into communication with such. I
cannot give you any sort of paper, you see, for papers are always
dangerous. But I'll give you six words that will answer the purpose.
Whenever you speak the right one of these words with emphasis, the
picket-officer will understand that you are the very dangerous spy whose
entrance into our lines I anticipate, and whose arrest I particularly
desire to secure. I'll give out one of the six words each day,
particularly charging officers of the pickets that any woman entering
our lines by any means, and using that word with emphasis, is the spy I
want,--that her use of it will be intended for the purpose of finding
traitorous friends, and that any such woman, no matter upon what pretext
she enters the lines, is to be arrested as soon as she uses the word.
Only one of these words will be given out each day, but you will know
them all, and use them in succession until you use the right one and are
arrested. The words will be such as you can embody in an ordinary
sentence without exciting the suspicion of any of the men who may be
standing by,--for, of course, only officers will be commissioned to
arrest you. You can use the words in different sentences, until you use
the right one. Then you will be arrested and brought to my headquarters,
where I hope to have a better dinner than that of to-day to offer you."
Just at that moment, the road along which they were riding passed
between two abandoned fields, each of which was skirted by woodlands on
its farther side. Stuart raised his head like a startled deer, and said:
"We must quit the road here, and put ourselves behind that skirt of
timber over on the left. Your horse will take the fence easily."
With that the pair pushed their animals over the rail fence on the left,
and at a gallop rode across the field toward a little strip of young
chestnut woodland that lay beyond. But just as they reached the centre
of the field there came the zip, zip, zip of bullets striking the earth,
the whiz of bullets passing their ears, and the weird whistle of bullets
passing over them, one of which, now and then, turned somersaults in its
course, and produced the peculiar sound that only bullets so misbehaving
are capable of producing. At the same moment, the escort under
Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who had been in front, fell back to protect its
charge, as it was its duty to do. Stuart hurriedly said to the girl:
"Ride for your life to the chestnut-trees, and hide yourself there,
while I take care of those fellows. I'll come to you when it's over."
With that he turned about, placed himself at the head of the little
escort squad, and, swinging his sabre, as he always did in action, led
them at a furious pace, over a fence and into the thicket from which the
fire was coming. The few men who were lurking there were quickly
scattered, and abandoning their arms, they ran with all their might to
the strong picket-post from which they had been thrown out to intercept
him.
This done, all danger of further trouble was at an end, or would have
been, had Stuart willed it so. But the scent of battle was always in his
nostrils. His men were accustomed to say that he was always "looking for
trouble," whenever there was the smallest chance of finding it. So
instead of contenting himself with having dispersed the assailing party,
he wheeled about to the right, and led his squad with the fury of
Mameluke against the strong picket-post itself. Amid a hailstorm of
bullets he charged through the half-company there posted, and then,
turning about, charged back again, completing the work of destruction
and dispersal.
It was not until this was over, and he had given the command, "Trot,"
that he saw Agatha by his side, her pistol in hand and empty of its
charges, her hair loosened and falling in tangled masses over her
shoulders, her face aglow, and her lithe form as erect as that of any
trooper among them all.
"But my dear Miss Ronald," Stuart ejaculated, "what are you doing here?"
"Riding under gallant escort, General, that is all."
[Illustration: "'_Riding under gallant escort_'"]
"But I ordered you to take refuge in the timber."
"Yes, I know," she answered, with a laughing challenge in her eyes, "but
as I have never been mustered in, I'm not subject to your orders. You
can't court-martial me, can you, General?"
Stuart looked at her before answering--his eyes full of an admiration
that was dimmed by glad tears. At last he leaned over, kissed her again
upon the forehead, and said, impressively:
"What a wife you'll make for a soldier some day!"
XIII
_A SOUVENIR SERVICE_
During the rest of the journey Agatha was excited and full of
enthusiasm. She had participated in a fight under the lead of the
gallantest of cavaliers, and she had borne herself under fire in a way
that had won his admiration. That admiration found expression in a
hundred ways, and chiefly in pressing offers of service. Before their
parting he said to her:
"Now, my dear Miss Agatha, you really must let me do you some favour. I
want to cherish the memory of this day's glorious ride, and I want to
render you some service, the memory of which may serve as a souvenir.
What shall it be?"
At that moment there came to Agatha's mind one of those inspirations
that come to all of us at times, quite without consciousness of whence
they come or why. She answered:
"You are already doing everything for me, General. You have sanctioned
an enterprise on which I have set my heart, and you have done all you
could to make it successful. You gave me for dinner to-day the very best
ear of green corn that I ever tasted. You have personally and very
gallantly escorted me back here to Fairfax Court-house, and on the way
you have got up for me the most dramatic bit of action that I ever saw.
I am convinced that you did it only for my entertainment, and I am truly
grateful." Then with a sudden access of intense seriousness, she added,
"And you have opened a way to me to render that service to my country
which I had planned. Never, so long as you live,--and I hope that may be
long for Virginia's sake,--will you know or imagine how great a service
you have rendered me in this. But you insist upon doing more. You insist
that I shall crave a boon at your hands. Very well; I will do so."
With that readiness of response which characterised everything that
Stuart did, he seized the opportunity offered, and broke into Agatha's
sentence with the answer:
"Of course I insist. What is it that I may do?"
"I want you to secure a captain's commission, then, for Sergeant-Major
Baillie Pegram. You know all about his family. He volunteered as a
private. He was promoted to be sergeant-major by Stonewall Jackson's own
request, in recognition of his good conduct. He was terribly wounded at
Manassas, mentioned in general orders, and strongly recommended for
promotion for gallantry on the field. My aunts write to me--" here
Agatha fibbed a little, as a woman is permitted to do under
circumstances that might otherwise compromise her dignity, for it was
not her aunts, but a highly intelligent negro maid in their service who
kept the young lady informed as to Baillie Pegram's condition--"my aunts
tell me he is getting well again, and will soon be ready for duty."
"What is his arm?" asked Stuart, eagerly.
"Light artillery," Agatha answered.
"Has he influence?"
"How do you mean?"
"Could he get men to enlist?"
"Why, of course. He's the master of Warlock, you know."
Then with a little touch of embarrassment, she added, "I mean he is the
head of one of the great families, and they always have influence."
"O, yes, of course," Stuart answered. "I see the situation clearly. Will
you say to Mr. Pegram--Sergeant-Major Pegram, I mean--that I have
authority from the War Department to raise three companies of flying
artillery, with the men all mounted, to serve with the cavalry, and that
if he can form such a company,--of fifty or seventy-five men, or better
still a hundred men--I will secure him a captain's commission with
authority to do so?"
"But, General," said the girl, quickly, and in manifest fright, "I do
not correspond with Mr. Pegram. In fact we are _very nearly strangers_."
"O, I see," answered the cavalier, with a twinkle in his eyes. "How long
has it been since you and this gallant young gentleman arranged to be
'very nearly strangers?'"
"O, you entirely mistake, General," the girl quickly answered. "Really
and truly I never knew Mr. Pegram very well; but he wore a red feather
of mine at the battle of Manassas, and afterward he sent it back to me
and--well, anyhow he proved his gallantry and he really ought to be
something more than a sergeant-major, don't you think?"
For answer Stuart made a sweeping bow, removing his hat and saying:
"Concerning Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, I think whatever you think.
Anyhow, as he had the good taste to wear your red feather, and as he has
fought well enough to secure a wound and a mention in general orders and
your personal approval, he shall be a captain if he wants to be. Give me
his address, and you need not have any correspondence with him."
"I'll write it," she answered, "if you'll excuse me for a moment," and
with that she retired within doors--for they had been standing in the
porch--in a rage of vexation with herself. She hastily sponged off her
inflamed face with cold water, dried it, and loosely twisted up her
errant hair, which had run riot over her neck and shoulders ever since
the little encounter with the enemy. Then she scribbled Baillie Pegram's
Warlock address on a scrap of paper and returned to Stuart's presence,
with the mien and bearing of a queen.
The cavalier's face was rippling all over with smiles as he bade her
adieu, wished her Godspeed in her enterprise, and turned away. At the
steps he faced about, and advancing said to her:
"When do you wish to return to Fauquier?"
"I shall go home to-morrow morning," she answered.
"You travel in your own carriage, of course?"
"Yes, and my maid is with me."
"Very well," he answered. "At sunrise a platoon under command of a
trusty officer will report here and serve as your escort."
"But, General, surely that is not necessary."
"Not necessary, perhaps," was the answer, "but it pleases me to have it
so, and you'll indulge my fancy, I am sure. I hope to have you as my
prisoner before many moons have passed."
She understood, and with a rippling smile she replied:
"Thank you, and good-bye. I shall certainly enjoy my next ear of green
corn if I am permitted to take it in your company, under some tree that
you have honoured by making it your headquarters."
"O, my ravenous cavalrymen will have eaten up all the green corn long
before that time; but I'll give you a dinner if I have to raid a
Federal picket-post to get it."
With that he sprang into his saddle, waved a farewell, and rode away
singing:
"If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cav-al-ry."
It was Stuart's boast at that time that he knew the face and name of
every man in his old first regiment, and he afterward extended this
boast to include all the men in the first brigade of Virginia Cavalry.
He used to say: "I ought to remember those fellows; they made me a
major-general."
But however well Stuart knew his men, with whom he fraternised in a way
very unusual to most officers bred in the regular army, as he had been,
nobody ever pretended to know him well enough to guess with any accuracy
what he would do next under any given circumstances. On this occasion he
had not brought his staff with him, but that made small difference with
an officer of his temper, whose habit of mind it was to disregard forms
and ceremonies, and to go straight to his purpose, whatever it might
happen to be. When he left Agatha, he rode at once to the camp of a
detached company and asked for its captain. To him he said:
"Send couriers to all the cavalry camps, and say that General Stuart
orders the entire force to report in front at once."
He designated three roads and four bridle-paths by which the commands
were to move; and three or four points of rendezvous. Then he added:
"Let the men move light--no baggage or blankets or anything else but
arms and ammunition."
A moment later he met Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, who had succeeded him in
command of the old first regiment,--"my Mamelukes," as Stuart loved to
call them. The two grasped hands, and Stuart said: "I've ordered
everybody to the front. You are to take command on the left. We must
drive the Federal pickets back from all their advanced posts. They are
growing impudent. They fired at a lady under my personal escort to-day.
We must teach them not to repeat that."
Of course the men who had done the firing in question had no means of
knowing that there was a woman among the assailed, and Stuart knew the
fact very well. But he chose to regard whatever happened as something
intended.
Turning from Lee, he galloped to the camp of some batteries, and said to
the officer in command: