No need to say that Harold was well cared for by his two friendly foes.
Beverly had given his personal parole for his safe keeping, and he was
therefore free from all surveillance or annoyance on that score. His
wounds were not serious, although the contusion on the temple, which,
however, had left the skull uninjured, occasioned some uneasiness at
first. But the third day he was able to leave his bed, and with his arm
in a sling, sat comfortably in an easy-chair, and conversed freely with
his two excellent nurses.
"Did Beverly tell you of Arthur's imprisonment?" he asked of Oriana,
breaking a pause in the general conversation.
"Yes," she answered, looking down, with a scarcely perceptible blush
upon her cheek. "Poor Arthur! Yours is a cruel government, Harold, that
would make traitors of such men. His noble heart would not harbor a
dangerous thought, much less a traitorous design."
"I think with you," said Harold. "There is some strange mistake, which
we must fathom. I received his letter only the day preceding the battle.
Had there been no immediate prospect of an engagement, I would have
asked a furlough, and have answered it in person. I have small reason to
regret my own imprisonment," he added, "my jailers are so kind; yet I do
regret it for his sake."
"You know that we are powerless to help him," said Beverly, "or even to
shorten your captivity, since your government will not exchange with us.
However, you must write, both to Arthur and to Mr. Lincoln, and I will
use my best interest with the general to have your letters sent on with
a flag."
"I know that you will do all in your power, and I trust that my
representations may avail with the government, for I judge from Arthur's
letter that he is not well, although he makes no complaint. He is but
delicate at the best, and what with the effects of his late injuries, I
fear that the restraint of a prison may go ill with him."
"How unnatural is this strife that makes us sorrow for our foes no less
than for our friends?" said Oriana. "I seem to be living in a strange
clime, and in an age that has passed away. And how long can friendship
endure this fiery ordeal? How many scenes of carnage like this last
terrible one can afflict the land, without wiping away all trace of
brotherhood, and leaving in the void the seed of deadly hate?"
"If this repulse," said Beverly, "which your arms have suffered so early
in the contest, will awaken the North to a sense of the utter futility
of their design of subjugation, the blood that flowed at Manassas will
not have been shed in vain."
"No, not in vain," replied Harold, "but its fruits will be other than
you anticipate. The North will be awakened, but only to gird up its
loins and put forth its giant strength. The shame of that one defeat
will be worth to us hereafter a hundred victories. The North has
been smitten in its sleep; it will arouse from its lethargy like a lion
awakening under the smart of the hunter's spear. Beverly, base no vain
hopes upon the triumph of the hour; it seals your doom, for it serves
but to throw into the scale against you the aroused energies that till
now have been withheld."
"You count upon your resources, Harold, like a purse-proud millionaire,
who boasts his bursting coffers. We depend rather upon our determined
hearts and resolute right hands. Upon our power to endure, greater than
yours to inflict, reverse. Upon our united people, and the spirit that
animates them, which can never be subdued. The naked Britons could
defend their native soil against Caesar's legions, the veterans of a
hundred fights. Shall we do less, who have already tasted the fruits of
liberty so dearly earned? Harold, your people have assumed an impossible
task, and you may as well go cast your treasures into the sea as
squander them in arms to smite your kith and kin. We are Americans, like
yourselves; and when you confess that _you_ can be conquered by invading
armies, then dream of conquering us."
"And we will startle you from your dream with the crack of our Southern
rifles," added Oriana, somewhat maliciously, while Harold smiled at her
enthusiasm.
"There is a great deal of romance in both your natures," he replied.
"But it is not so good as powder for a fighting medium. The spirit you
boast of will not support you long without the aid of good round
dollars."
"Thank heaven we have less faith in their efficacy than you Northern
gold-worshippers," observed Oriana, with playful sarcasm. "While our
soldiers have good round corn-cakes, they will ask for no richer metals
than lead and steel. Have you never heard of the regiment of
Mississippians, who, having received their pay in government
certificates, to a man tore up the documents as they took up the line of
march, saying 'we do not fight for money?'"
Harold smiled, thinking perhaps that nothing better could have been done
with the currency in question.
"I think," said Beverly, "you are far out of the way in your estimate of
our resources. The South is strictly an agricultural country, and as
such, best able to support itself under the exhaustion consequent upon a
lengthened warfare, especially as it will remain in the attitude of
resistance to invasion. From the bosom of its prolific soil it can draw
its natural nourishment and retain its vigor throughout any period of
isolation, while you are draining your resources for the means of
providing an active aggressive warfare. The rallying of our white
population to the battle field will not interrupt the course of
agricultural pursuit, while every enlistment in the North will take one
man away from the tillage of the land or from some industrial
avocation."
"Not so," replied Harold. "Our armies for the most part will be
recruited from the surplus population, and abundant hands will remain
behind for the purposes of industry."
"At first, perhaps. But not after a few more such fields as were fought
on Sunday last. To carry out even a show of your project of subjugation,
you must keep a million of men in the field from year to year. Your
manufacturing interests will be paralyzed, your best customers shut out.
You will be spending enormously and producing little beyond the
necessities of consumption. We, on the contrary, will be producing as
usual, and spending little more than before."
"Can your armies be fed, clothed, and equipped without expense?"
"No. But all our means will be applied to military uses, and our
operations will be necessarily much less expensive than yours. In other
matters, we will forget our habits of extravagance. We will become, by
the law of necessity, economists in place of spendthrifts. We will
gather in rich harvests, but will stint ourselves to the bare
necessities of life, that our troops may be fed and clothed. The money
that our wealthy planters have been in the habit of spending yearly in
Northern cities and watering places, will be circulated at home. Some
fifty millions of Southern dollars, heretofore annually wasted in
fashionable dissipation, will thus be kept in our own pockets and out of
yours. The spendthrift sons of our planters, and their yet more
extravagant daughters, will be found studying economy in the rude school
of the soldier, and plying the needle to supply the soldiers' wants, in
place of drawing upon the paternal estates for frivolous enjoyments. Our
spending population will be on the battle-field, and the laborer will
remain in the cotton and corn-field. There will be suffering and
privation, it is true, but rest assured, Harold, we will bear it all
without a murmur, as our fathers did in the days of '76. And we will
trust to the good old soil we are defending to give us our daily bread."
"Or if it should not," said Oriana, "we can at least claim from it, each
one, a grave, over which the foot of the invader may trample, but not
over our living bodies."
"I have no power to convince you of your error," answered Harold. "Let
us speak of it no more, since it is destined that the sword must decide
between us. Beverly, you promised that I should go visit my wounded
comrades, who have not yet been removed. Shall we go now? I think it
would do me good to breathe the air."
They prepared for the charitable errand, and Oriana went with them, with
a little basket of delicacies for the suffering prisoners.