In these days the picket lines were seldom stationary; one or the other
faction continually drew in close these outlying guards, as if by
presentiment,--an unexplained monition of caution, or perhaps because of
some vague rumor of danger. Now and again, by a sudden belligerent
impulse, they were impetuously attacked and driven in; but apparently in
pursuance of no definite plan of aggression emanating from the main
body. A few days of surly silence and stillness would ensue, and then
the opposing force would return the warlike compliment with interest,
holding the enemy's ground and kindling bivouac fires from the embers
they had left. It seemed a sort of game of tag--a grim game; for the
loss of life in these futile manoeuvres amounted to far more in the long
run than the few casualties in each skirmish might indicate. Sometimes
these feints were entirely relinquished, and intervals of absolute
inaction continued so long that it might seem a matter of doubt why the
two lines were there at all, with so vague a similitude of war.
Occasionally they lay so near that the individual soldiers, forgetful of
sectional enmity, gave rein to mere human interest in the opportunities
afforded by a common tongue and an apprehended and familiar range of
feeling. A lot of tobacco, thrown into a group about a bivouac fire by
an unseen hand one night, brought the next night a package of "hard
tack" from over the way. Now and again long-range conversations were
held, full of kindly curiosity, or humorously abusive, the questionable
wit of which mightily rejoiced the heart of the lonely sentinel, and
upon his relief all the jokes were duly rehearsed when once more in
camp, he himself, of course, represented as coming off winner in the
wordy war, being able to appropriate all the good things said by the
enemy. The loud, cheerful, "Say, air you the galoot ez wuz swapping lies
with Ben Smith day 'fore yestiddy?" and the response, "Smith, _Smith_,
you say. I dis-remember the name. I guess I never heard it afore!" all
were much more commendable from a merely humanitarian point of view than
the singing of the minie ball or the hissing shriek of a shell that had
been wont to intrude on the bland quietude of the sweet spring air.
Thus it was that Miss Mildred Fisher, accompanied by Lieutenant Seymour
and one of her father's ancient friends, Colonel Monette, himself
attended by a very smart orderly, riding out of Roanoke City down the
long turnpike road, saw naught that might indicate active hostilities.
The picturesque tents in the distance about the town, the outline of
the forts against the blue sky, and afar off a gunboat in the river,
were all still, all silent, all as suave as the painted incident of a
picture on the wall. The turnpike itself bore heavy tokens of the war in
the deeply worn holes and wheel tracks of the great wagon and artillery
trains, wrought during the wet weather of the winter. It was hard going
on the horses, and precluded that brisk pace and easy motion which are
essential to the pleasure of the equestrian. Mildred Fisher, indeed,
delighted in a breakneck speed, and it may be doubted whether it was
altogether a happy animal which had the honor of bearing her light
weight. As they reached a "cut off," where a "dirt road" had been
recently repaired and put into fine condition to obviate the obstacles
of the main travelled way, Miss Fisher proposed that they should "let
the horses out" along this detour for a bit. Then she challenged the two
officers for a race.
They could but accede, and indeed it would have been difficult to deny
her aught. The elder looked at her with an almost paternal pride, the
other with a sort of surly adoration, tempered by many a grievance and
many a realized imperfection in his idol, and a spirit of revolt against
the sunny whims and again the cold caprice which he and others sustained
at her hands. Seymour had little to complain of just now; yet, if she
smiled on him and his heart warmed to the sunshine of her eyes, the
next moment he was saying to himself that it meant nothing, it was not
for his sake; for she was smiling with the same degree of brightness on
that whiskerando, the elderly colonel. Her face was exquisitely fair,
and in horseback exercise--the luxury she loved--she tolerated no veil
to protect the perfection of her complexion. Her fluffy red hair had a
sheen rather like gold, because of the contrast with her damson-tinted
cloth riding-habit. The hat was of the low-crowned style then worn with
a feather, and this was a long ostrich plume of the same damson tint,
curling down over her hair, and shading to a lighter purple. Her hazel
eyes were full of joy like a child's. Her mouth was not closed for a
moment,--its red lips emitting disconnected exclamations, laughter, gay
banter, and sometimes just held apart, silently taking the swift rush of
the air, showing the rows of even white teeth and a glimpse of the
deeper red of the interior, like the heart of a crimson flower.
She tore along like the wind itself. "Madcap," who had raced before,
and, sooth to say, with more numerous spectators, had thrust his head
forward, striking out a long stride, and the soft, elastic, dirt road
fairly flew beneath his compact hoofs. The skirt of the
riding-habit--much longer than in the later fashions--floated out in the
breeze of the flight, and Colonel Monette, who did not really approve
outdoor sports for women, expected momently to see it catch in a thorn
tree of the thickets that lined the road, or on some stake of the
fragments of a ridered rail fence, and tear her from the saddle. Then,
her foot being held by the stirrup perhaps, she might be dragged by
Madcap or brained by one blow of the ironshod hoofs. Thus his heart was
in his mouth, and he was eminently appreciative of the folly of the
elderly wight who seeks to share the pleasures of the young.
The lieutenant, being young himself, was not so cautiously and
altruistically apprehensive. He admired Miss Fisher's dash and courage
and buoyant spirit of enjoyment, and, having a good horse, he pressed
Madcap to his best devoir. Colonel Monette, to keep them in sight at
all, was compelled to make very good speed, and went galloping and
plunging down the road in a wild and reckless manner.
It was the elder officer who was first visited by compunctions in behalf
of the horses.
"Halt!" he cried. "Halt! Miss Fisher is the winner--as she always is!
Halt! Lieutenant Seymour!" Then in a lower voice when he could be heard
to speak, "We shall have the horses badly blown," he said with an
admonitory cadence, which reminded Seymour that a military man's whole
duty does not consist in scampering after a harum-scarum girl in a race
with two wild young horses.
Seeing that she was not followed, Miss Fisher reined in after several
wild plunges from Madcap, who felt that he had not had his run half out,
and snorted with much surprise in his full bright eyes as, turning in
the road, he saw the two mounted officers far behind, stationary and
waiting. The victor should never be unduly elated, but Madcap expressed
his glee of triumph chiefly in his heels, curvetting and prancing,
presently kicking up so uncontrollably, the excitement of the contest,
the joy of racing, still surging in his veins and tense in his muscles,
that the officers might well have feared some disaster to the girl. They
at once put their steeds in motion to go to her assistance, but Madcap,
with outstretched head, viewing their start, suddenly made a bounding
_volte-face_ in the road, and with the bit between his teeth set out at
a pace that discounted his former efforts and carried him out of sight
in a few minutes.
Miss Fisher, with all the courage of the red-headed Fisher family,
albeit she had become pale and breathless, settled herself firmly in the
saddle, held the reins in close, now and then essaying a sharp jerk,
first with the right then quickly with the left hand--and it was as much
as she could do to keep the saddle at these moments--to displace the
grasp of his teeth on the bit. For a time these manoeuvres failed, but at
last the road became rougher, brambles appeared in its midst, the
intention of repair had evidently ceased, and running at full tilt was
no longer any great fun. The horse voluntarily slowed his pace, and the
sudden jerk right and left snatched the bit from his teeth. He might
still have pranced and curvetted, for the spirit of speed was not
satiated, but his foot slipped on the uneven gullied ground, he
stumbled, and being a town horse and seeing nowhere any promise of a
good road, he resigned himself to the guidance of his rider, thinking
perhaps she knew more of the country than he.
While she breathed him for a time, she looked about her along the curves
of the road, seeing nothing of her companions, and realizing that she
was quite alone. This gave her a sentiment of uneasiness for a moment;
then she reflected that her friends were doubtless riding forward to
overtake her. She drew up the reins, intending to turn, and, retracing
her way, to meet them.
The place was all unfamiliar. So swift had been her transit that she had
not had a moment's contemplation of the surroundings. She stood at the
summit of a gentle slope and could look off toward stretches of forest,
here and there interspersed with considerable acreage of cleared ground,
evidently formerly farm land, now abandoned in the stress of war and the
presence of contending armies. The correctness of this conclusion was
confirmed by the sight of two gaunt chimneys at no great distance,
between which lay a mass of charred timbers,--once the dwelling, now
burned to the ground. The scene was an epitome of desolation, despite
the sunshine, which indeed here was but a lonely splendor; despite the
brilliance of the trumpet vine, tangled in remnants of the fence, in
many a bush, and swaying in long lengths, its scarlet bugles flaring,
from the boughs of overshadowing trees; despite the appeal of the elder
blossoms of creamy, lacelike delicacy, catching her eye in the thickets,
which were so lush, so green, so favored by the rich earth and the
prodigal season. She was sensible of a clutch of dread on that merry
spirit of hers before she heard a sound--a significant sound that
stilled the pulsations of her heart and sent her blood cold. It was the
unmistakable sinister sibilance of a shell. She saw the tiny white puff
rise up above the forest, skim through the air, drop among the thickets,
and then she heard the detonation of an explosion. Before she could draw
her breath there came a sudden volley of musketry at a distance,--she
knew that for the demonstration of regular soldiers, firing at the
word,--then ensued another, and again only a patter of dropping shots.
She wondered that her companions did not overtake her--she must find
them--she must rejoin them,--when suddenly an object started up from the
side of the road, the sight of which palsied her every muscle. A man it
was who had lain in the bushes on the hillside, a man so covered with
blood that he had lost every semblance of humanity. The blood still came
in a steady stream from his mouth, impelled in jets, as if it were under
the impulse of a pump, and he held his hand to his stomach, whence too
there came blood, dripping down from his fingers. In sickened, aghast
dismay she watched his approach, and as he passed she found her voice
and called to him to stop,--might she not help him stanch his wounds?
His staring eyes gazed vacantly forward with no recognition of the
meaning of her words, and he walked deliriously on, every step sending
the blood forward, draining the vital currents to exhaustion. Now she
dared not turn, she could not pass that hideous apparition. She
shuddered and trembled and rode irresolutely forward, just to be
moving--hardly with a realized intention. Suddenly the road curved, and
the scene of the conflict was before her.
The woods were dense on three sides of a wide stretch of fields that
were springing green with new verdure; a portion had even been ploughed
and bedded up for cotton; here and there lay strange objects in curious
attitudes, which she did not at once recognize as slain men. Among them
were scattered carbines, horses already dead, and more than one in
scrambling agonies of dying. In the farthest vista field-guns were
evidently getting in battery, ready to sweep from the earth a little
force of dismounted cavalrymen who had come to close quarters with
infantry and who were fighting on foot with carbines. The minie balls
now and then sang sharply in the air, and in the excitement she did not
realize the danger. Suddenly a puff of smoke rose from the battery, the
shell winging its way high above the infantry line and at last falling
among the dismounted cavalrymen, who, perceiving the situation to be
hopeless, wavered, sought to rally, and at last broke and ran to the
horse-holders hidden in the thickets. Thither the shells pursued them,
bursting all along the plain, and as Mildred Fisher gazed she saw three
men on the field, powerless to reach the shelter. One was wounded,--an
officer, evidently,--and the other two were seeking to support him to
his horse hard by. At this moment a fragment of shell killed the animal
before their eyes.
"Ride out! Ride out!" cried Millie Fisher to a horse-holder that she
observed close by in the woods. He was mounted himself, and he held the
bridles of three horses. He looked half bewildered, pale, disabled. A
shell burst prematurely, out of range and wide of aim, high in the air
above their heads.
"I can't," he said; "I'm hit!"
"Give _me_ the line, then!" she cried.
He was past reasoning, beyond surprise, stunned by the clamors and
succumbing to wounds.
The next moment, the three great horses in a leash, Madcap led his
wildest chase across that stricken plain, now shying aside as some
wounded man lifted a ghastly face almost beneath his hoofs, or pitifully
sought to crawl away like a maimed and dying beast. The thunder of the
frenzied gallop shook the ground; the group of men, for whom the rescue
was designed, turned a startled and amazed gaze as the horses came on
abreast, snorting and neighing and with tossing manes and wild eyes,
rushing like the steeds of Automedon.
"The gallant little game-cock!" exclaimed Jim Fisher, eying the supposed
horse-holder from beside the smoking guns of his battery in the
distance. "Now, I'm glad to spare him if never another man goes clear!"
For the Confederate cavalry were starting out in pursuit, and to let the
squadrons pass without danger the cannonade was discontinued. The
bugle's mandate, "Cease firing!" rose lilting into the air, and there
was sudden silence among the guns. As Captain Fisher disengaged the
strap of his field-glass seeking to adjust it, he noted that there was
something continually flying out at the side of the young soldier's
saddle. One glance through the magnifying lenses at the floating folds
of the riding-habit and the radiant face crowned by the purple
plume--and Jim Fisher almost fell under the wheel of the limber as it
was run up to the gun-carriage. "My God, Watt!" he exclaimed to his
first lieutenant who was also his brother, "that--that--cavalryman
is--is Sister Millie!"
When she was at last with them, for in tumultuous agitation they had
rushed forward to meet her, beckoning and shouting, and their kisses had
smeared the gunpowder from their grim countenances to her lovely roseate
cheeks, they began to experience the reactionary effects of their fright
and scolded her with great rancor, declaring repeatedly they felt much
disposed, even yet, to slap her. All of which had no effect at all on
Millie Fisher. They tried aesthetic methods of reducing her to see her
deed from their standpoint.
"I thought you were a patriotic girl, Sister," one of them urged. "And
see, now--you have helped three Yankees to escape!"
"I _am_ patriotic--more patriotic than anybody," she asseverated. "But I
forgot they were Yankees--they were just three men in great danger!"
"But _you_ were in great danger, Sister, I--I--might have shot you!"
"Didn't you feel funny when you found out who 'twas?" she queried with a
giggle of great zest.
"I felt mighty funny," said Jim Fisher, grimly. "I suppose few men have
ever felt so funny!"
Few men have ever looked less funny than he as he reflected on the
episode. He recovered his equanimity only gradually, but especially
after he had been able to make arrangements to convey intelligence to
his mother within the Federal lines as to his sister's safety. This was
rendered possible by a flag of truce sent out almost immediately by
Colonel Monette, who with Lieutenant Seymour was in the greatest anxiety
as to her fate, feeling a sense of responsibility in the matter. She
insisted on adding a line addressed to the younger officer, bidding him
sing daily with his hand on his heart:--
"'Would I were with thee!'--_In the Confederate lines!_"
if he expected her to conserve any faith in his constancy.
That evening Jim Fisher almost regained his wonted cheerfulness. The
other four brothers had gathered together to welcome the unexpected
guest, and as they sat around a great wood fire in an old deserted
farm-house, a primitive structure built of logs, with Millie and the
youngest, favorite brother, Walter, in the centre, it seemed so joyful a
reunion that he was almost tempted to forgive the manner in which it had
come about.
Jim Fisher's body-servant, Caesar, cooked a supper for them, in a room
across an open passage, consisting of corn-bread, bean-coffee, bacon,
and a chicken, which last came as a miracle, as he mysteriously
expressed it, upon inquiry--"as de mussy ob Providence!" Caesar was a
brisk young darkey, with a capacity for a sullen and lowering change,
and with a great distaste for ridicule, induced by much suffering as the
butt of the practical jokes of his young masters, for among so many
Fisher boys one or another must needs be always disposed for mirth.
"You needn't ax me so p'inted 'bout dat chicken's pedigree, Marse Watt,"
Caesar was beguiled into retorting acrimoniously. "Naw, sah. I dunno. I
dunno whedder hit's Dominicky or Shanghai. An' _ye_ have no call to know
whedder hit's foreign or native! _I_ tell you hit's fried--an' dat's all
I'm _gwine_ ter tell you!--fried ter a turn! An' if you bed enny
religion, you'd say grace, an' give Miss Millie a piece while it's hot.
Naw, sah! naw, Marse Watt! I _ain't_ no robber! Marse Jim--you hear what
Marse Watt done call me! Naw, sah! I don't expec' ter see Satan!--not
_dis week_, nohow."
Caesar was glad to gather up the fragments and make off to the kitchen
opposite, where he sat before the fire and crunched the last bone of the
precious fowl, and grinned over the adroit methods of its capture on
this great occasion, for such a luxury could hardly be bought at any
price, in Confederate money or any other currency.
After supper was despatched something of a levee was held; so many of
Miss Millie Fisher's old friends--officers in the military force--called
to renew the acquaintance of happier times. And as she recognized the
more intimate old playfellows or neighbors, with a gush of delighted
little screams and a musical acclaim of their Christian names, sometimes
an old half-forgotten nickname, other guests, later acquaintances, were
envious and wistful, and sought to stem the tide of reminiscence, the
"Don't you remembers" and "Oh-h-h, wasn't it funny?" and to impress the
values of the present, despite the lures of the past.
She was delightfully gracious and gay with them all, and perhaps she had
never seemed more lovely than the flicker of the firelight revealed her,
for there were no other means of illumination. She stood to receive in
the centre of the floor, radiant in her dark purple riding-habit and
hat, the military figures, all in full uniform, clustering about her,
some resting on their swords, some half leaning on a comrade's shoulder,
while jest and repartee went around, the laughter now and again making
the rafters ring. It was with reluctance that they gradually tore
themselves away in obedience to a realization that after so long a
separation the family might desire to spend the evening alone, for three
of the brothers must needs repair to their own command at some distance
at break of day, and it might be long before they could all be together
once more.
So at last, the visitors gone, the door barred, the night wearing on,
the Fishers gathered round the replenished fire, for the air was chill
and the warmth was as welcome as the light. The deserted house was
entirely bare of furniture, and as the force was a "flying column,"
flung forward without the impediments of baggage trains or tents, there
was not even a camp-stool available. Millie and Watt sat side by side on
a billet of wood, their arms around each other's waists to preserve the
equilibrium, and the rest of the brothers half reclined on the saddles
on the floor. And every face was smiling, and every head was red. Again
and again a shout of laughter went up, as she detailed the news of the
town,--and some very queer things, indeed, she told,--and Watt, the
lieutenant, responded with the news of the battery and the camp.
Perhaps he felt that his prestige as a wit was threatened, for once he
said, "I'd give a hundred dollars, Sister, to be assured that all you
are telling is the truth."
"I wouldn't give a brass thimble to be assured that all _you_ are
telling is the truth, for I know 'tisn't!" retorted Millie.
"Oh, I meant in Confederate money!" He lowered the face value of his
bid.
They kept late hours that night; but at last, when the fire was burning
low and great masses of coals had accumulated, they swung a military
cloak hammock-wise across a corner of a little inner room, hardly more
than a cupboard, and this Millie Fisher in her new role as a campaigner
found a comfortable bed enough. The restricted apartment had no window,
and no door save the one opening into the larger room; and this she set
ajar, making Walter place a great solid shot against it lest it close,
declaring that if that catastrophe should supervene, she should die of
solitary fright. The five Fisher brothers were well within call and
sight, as they clustered around the embers, talking for a time in low
voices of what had chanced in the interval of their separation. For only
Jim and Watt were together in the same company. They commented on the
relative cost and value of their _chaussure_, as they stretched out
their long, booted legs, with their feet on the hearth, and compared the
wearing qualities of the soles and upper leather. They looked kindly
into each other's faces and laughed as they made a point, and between
the two younger brothers, Watt and Lucien, there was a disposition to
horse-play, manifested in unexpected tweaks, that each was glad to
receive as a compliment, so did separation and the sense of an imminent
and ever environing danger soften and make tender their fraternal
sentiment. But first one, then another, flung his cloak around him and,
pillowing his head on his saddle, lay down to rest, the two younger
brothers the last of all.
And now--silence. The dull red light of the embers gloomed on the daubed
and chinked walls of the old log house, with its rude puncheon floor.
The five prostrate, cloaked figures upon it were still, asleep. Here and
there from amongst the arms, placed ready to seize at a moment's notice,
came a keen steely gleam. Mildred could hear the sentry's tread outside
up and down before the door. Once, far away, she noted the measured
tramp of marching feet, then a challenge, and anon, "Stand! Grand
Rounds! Advance, Sergeant, with the countersign!" and presently the
march was resumed in the distance. And again--silence! Only the wind
astir in the forest, only the rustle of the lush foliage. All--how
different from her dainty bedroom where she had spent last night, the
downy couch, the silken coverlet, the velvet carpet, the lace curtains,
the tremulous flicker of the wind in the flower-stand on the balcony!
"Hugh!" she said suddenly.
Every red head on the floor had lifted at the sound, and every hand had
clutched a weapon.
"What's the matter, Sister?"
"I--I--believe there must be a flying squirrel or--or--something in the
wall. Don't they build in old walls? I've seen that in some book."
Jim and Hugh arose and investigated the wall of the inner room by means
of a torch of light-wood.
"Why, Sister, it is as solid as a rock!" Jim asseverated. "There's no
flying squirrel here."
He extinguished the flaming torch in the ashes banked in the
chimney-place in the larger room, and again the two brothers laid
themselves down to rest, with their feet on the hearth.
Once more the silence of the night, the vague crumbling of the ash, the
measured sound of the sentry's tread. There was no echo of the passing
of time--but how leaden-footed! How slowly fared the night! How
motionless lay those cloaked figures, each with his head on his saddle!
"Watt," her voice came plaintively out of the gloom. "I'm scared!"
This time, though all stirred, they did not rise.
"Pshaw! Scared of what?"
She did not answer. Only after a time she queried irrelevantly, "Can
mice climb?"
"Did you see that in a book, too?" asked Watt.
"They can only climb under certain conditions," opined Hugh, sleepily.
"But they'd scorn to intrude on a lady in a hammock, Sister," declared
George.
"Oh, hush, George!" said Jim, authoritatively. "No mouse can get up
there, Sister. Why don't you go to sleep?"
"I can't," said Millie Fisher, plaintively. "I saw so many awful things
to-day!"
"You had better think about mice," said Watt, quickly, to effect a
diversion. "They are minute, but monstrous. Just imagine how one could
scale the wall, and taking its tail under its left arm spring across to
your hammock, and run along, say, the nape of your neck! Oh-h-h!
wouldn't that be just _aw-w-wful_!"
"Oh, hush, Watt!" said Jim. "Just compose your mind, Sister. Shut your
eyes and think about nothing."
"Think how nearly you scared a gallant captain of artillery out of his
seven senses to-day," suggested Watt, anew. "I thought Jim would get run
over by the gun-carriages and the caissons, whether or no. He was so
scatter-brained, and white, and wild-eyed, and blundering--nearly under
the horses' feet."
Millie Fisher gave a pleased little laugh.
"Was he? Was he, truly?"
"He was, for a fact. Few captains of artillery have the opportunity to
make their own sister a target in a regular knock-down-and-drag-out
fight. I thought I was going to have to support the gentleman off the
field of battle. He couldn't stand up for a while."
"How funny!" exclaimed Millie Fisher, delightedly. "Just _too_ funny."
She shifted her position in the hammock, closed her eyes, and when she
opened them again the sun was flaring into the open door and window of
the large room, and all the five Fisher brothers were up and fully
accoutred for the duty of the service, and she was requested to get out
of the hammock that it might again be turned into a cloak.
The details of her exploit were brought back to the main body of the
Federal army and bruited abroad by the men whom she had rescued from
death or capture. One of these, the officer, was much disposed to vaunt
his gratitude and sense of obligation, and as Miss Millie Fisher was as
well known as the river itself, the incident created no small stir in
many different circles. The girl was held to be a prodigy of courage.
All the men of the family were known to be brave, eke to say, fractious.
There had been seldom a row of any sort, in several generations, in
which a Fisher's red head had not been in the thick of it, and held
high. There were several who were now men of mark, but never had aught
else so appealed to their pulse of pride, their close bond of union in
family ties and clannish affection for which they were noted. Great were
the boastings of the Fisher brothers, each feeling that he shone by
reflected light, and echoes of their vain-glorious brag were borne to
the storm centre by that mysterious means of communication known as the
Grape-vine Telegraph.
One day Seymour detailed, with a touch of bitter sarcasm, the rumor that
Jim Fisher had declared that Sister Millie could stampede the whole
Yankee army if she had the chance. With his customary bluntness Seymour
had broached the subject on a hospitable occasion, in a group both of
officers and civilians. The latter said nothing, leaving it to the
comrades of the men who had benefited by her hair-brained bravery and
dashing equestrianism to controvert the hyperbole. But Ashley's tact was
so rooted in good nature that it was difficult to take him amiss. He
could not say, he declared, whether she could stampede the army, but he
could testify that she had captured it.
The Grape-vine was shortly burdened with other rumors that were of far
more import to Seymour, who was of a serious mind, and of an exacting,
not to say, petulant, temper. These traits had been intensified by his
recent subjection to the whims and caprices of a coquette of exceptional
capacity, for his feelings were deeply involved. He was truly in love,
and all his dearest interests hung on the uncertain telegraphy of the
Grape-vine. It was an unhappy time for him, when he doubted in a rush of
hope, and again believed sunk in the despondency of absolute despair,
having almost as much foundation for the one as the other, the reports
of her marriage to Lawrence Lloyd.
This time the Grape-vine had proved a reliable medium of information.
Colonel Lloyd had sought and secured leave of absence long enough to
ride fifty miles across country to greet her as soon as he had heard she
was within the Confederacy. When her father joined the family party
Colonel Lloyd laid siege for his consent to an immediate marriage.
They had long been engaged, he urged.
"I had almost forgotten that," Millie interpolated. She had promised her
assistance in the persuasion of her father, and thus she fulfilled her
pledge.
"There is no reason for further delay," Lloyd insisted.
"I _have_ been a _debutante_ these--four--years!" she suggested
demurely.
Lloyd submitted that he hoped there were no objections to him in Colonel
Fisher's estimation.
"Except such as are insuperable--you'll never be any better," suggested
Millie.
It would be undesirable, even dangerous, Lloyd argued, to send her back
to her home in Roanoke City with a flag of truce in the present state of
conflict.
"But it is not at all dull there--" she interrupted vivaciously. "Some
very nice Yankee officers are in society there--several old friends of
yours, papa. Colonel Monette and Lieutenant-Colonel Blake of the regular
army--old classmates of yours. And some others whom you don't
know--Captain Baynell, who is _very_ handsome, and Colonel Ashley--he
belongs to the volunteers; he is most agreeable and highly thought of,
and oh--of course Lieutenant Seymour--oh, it is _not_ dull there!"
Lloyd looked at her in blank dismay, and the blank dismay on the face of
her father was nearly as marked, but the latter's anxiety was due to a
different cause--what would his wife decide if she were here!--for
every one who knew the Fishers was well aware that Guy Fisher, albeit a
man of much force in his own domain of business or military life, "sung
mighty small" in all matters in which his wife had concern.
Lloyd rallied to the attack and continued to explain that he had orders
detaching him, showing that he would be stationary, in command of a fort
in the far South for some time, and that Millie would be in a position
to be comfortable.
"But can I ride horseback there?" she stipulated. "I have just found out
what I can do in that line!"
She liked to describe this conversation afterward. Her lover was the
most serious and literal-minded of men, anxious and doubtful, and her
father the prey of vacillation and indecision. They looked alternately
at her and at each other with an expression of startled bewilderment as
she spoke, seeking to adjust what she had said with their own knowledge
of the facts.
The flying column was once more in motion, and one evening, after a
considerable distance southward had been accomplished, the leave both of
Colonel Fisher and Colonel Lloyd being close upon expiration and
decision exigent, the doubting, anxious father gave his consent.
The young people were married like campaigners under a tree in a
beautiful magnolia grove, the rhododendron blooming everywhere in the
woods and the mocking-birds in full song. Colonel Lloyd was in uniform,
armed and spurred, Miss Fisher in her hat and riding-habit, which last
she wore with peculiar elegance; as the skirts of the day were of great
length, the superfluous folds were caught up and carried over one arm,
and it was said she had attained her graceful proficiency in this art,
which was esteemed of much difficulty, by constant practice before the
long mirror in her wardrobe at home. She used to tell afterward of the
beautiful site, the velvet turf, the magnolia blooms, the rhododendron
blossoms, the singing mocking-birds. Then she would enumerate the
brilliant martial assemblage that witnessed the ceremony, the men of
high rank in full uniform; the wives of a number of them--refugees in
the Confederacy "seeking for a home," as the sardonically humorous song
of that day phrased it--also graced the occasion. Her father and
brothers, all the six Fisher men, were present, and she used to say,
with the tone of an after-thought, but with a glint of mischief in her
eye, "_And_ Colonel Lloyd--_he_ was there, too!"
There, but hardly up to the standard. He was a man whose courage had
been of especial note, even in those days when bravery seemed the rule.
He had had, too, exceptional opportunities to display his mettle. But on
this occasion his terror was so palpable that he trembled perceptibly;
he was pale and agitated; he fumbled for the ring and occasioned a
general fear that he might let it fall--altogether furnishing an
admirable exhibition of the stage fright usual with bridegrooms.
All these details did she observe and recollect and even his gravity
would relax as she rehearsed them in after years. It was considered one
of the evidences of her incurable frivolity that she seemed to care
nothing for that momentous incident of her experience in those days,
hardly to remember it,--the exploit by which she had saved the lives of
three men, sore harassed and beset; but she found endless source of
interest in the reminiscence of trifles such as the incongruous aspect
of the chaplain who officiated at the wedding ceremony, with his spurs
showing on his reverend heels beneath his surplice, and the brass
buttons on his sleeves as he lifted his hands in benediction,--which
afforded her a glee of retrospect.