LOVE'S AGONY
As the exaggerated reports of a magnificent Confederate victory at Bull
Run continued to pour in, Major Burgoyne shared for a time in the general
elation, believing that independence, recognition abroad, and peace had
been virtually secured. All the rant about Northern cowardice appeared to
be confirmed, and he eagerly waited for the announcement that Washington
had been captured by Johnston's victorious army.
Instead, came the dismal tidings from his only sister that her husband,
Captain Hunter, had been killed in the battle over which he had been
rejoicing. Then for some mysterious reason the Southern army did not
follow the Federals, who had left the field in such utter rout and panic.
It soon appeared that the contending forces were occupying much the same
positions as before. News of the second great uprising of the North
followed closely, and presaged anything but a speedy termination of the
conflict. Major Burgoyne was not a Hotspur, and he grew thoughtful and
depressed in spirit, although he sedulously concealed the fact from his
associates. The shadow of coming events began to fall upon him, and his
daughter gradually divined his lack of hopefulness. The days were already
sad and full of anxiety, for her husband was absent. He had scouted the
idea of the Yankees standing up before the impetuous onset of the Southern
soldiers, and his words had apparently proved true, yet even those
Northern cowards had killed one closely allied to her before they fled.
Remembering, therefore, her husband's headlong courage, what assurance of
his safety could she have although victory followed victory?
Major Burgoyne urged his widowed sister to leave her plantation in the
charge of an overseer and make her home with him. "You are too near the
probable theatre of military operations to be safe," he wrote, "and my
mind cannot rest till you are with us in this city which we are rapidly
making impregnable." The result was that she eventually became a member of
his family. Her stern, sad face added to the young wife's depression, for
the stricken woman had been rendered intensely bitter by her loss. Mary
was too gentle in nature to hate readily, yet wrathful gleams would be
emitted at times even from her blue eyes, as her aunt inveighed in her
hard monotone against the "monstrous wrong of the North." They saw their
side with such downright sincerity and vividness that the offenders
appeared to be beyond the pale of humanity. Few men, even though the
frosts of many winters had cooled their blood and ripened their judgment,
could reason dispassionately in those days, much less women, whose hearts
were kept on the rack of torture by the loss of dear ones or the dread of
such loss.
It is my purpose to dwell upon the war, its harrowing scenes and intense
animosities, only so far as may be essential to account for my characters
and to explain subsequent events. The roots of personality strike deep,
and the taproot, heredity, runs back into the being of those who lived and
suffered before we were born.
Gentle Mary Burgoyne should have been part of a happier day and
generation. The bright hopes of a speedily conquered peace were dying
away; the foolish bluster on both sides at the beginning of the war had
ceased, and the truth so absurdly ignored at first, that Americans, North
and South, would fight with equal courage, was made clearer by every
battle. The heavy blows received by the South, however, did not change her
views as to the wisdom and righteousness of her cause, and she continued
to return blows at which the armies of the North reeled, stunned and
bleeding. Mary was not permitted to exult very long, however, for the
terrible pressure was quickly renewed with an unwavering pertinacity which
created misgivings in the stoutest hearts. The Federals had made a strong
lodgment on the coast of her own State, and were creeping nearer and
nearer, often repulsed yet still advancing as if impelled by the
remorseless principle of fate.
At last, in the afternoon of a day early in April, events occurred never
to be forgotten by those who witnessed them. Admiral Dupont with his
armored ships attempted to reduce Fort Sumter and capture the city.
Thousands of spectators watched the awful conflict; Mary Wallingford and
her aunt, Mrs. Hunter, among them. The combined roar of the guns exceeded
all the thunder they had ever heard. About three hundred Confederate
cannon were concentrated on the turreted monitors, and some of the
commanders said that "shot struck the vessels as fast as the ticking of a
watch." It would seem that the ships which appeared so diminutive in the
distance must be annihilated, yet Mary with her powerful glass saw them
creep nearer and nearer. It was their shots, not those of her friends,
that she watched with agonized absorption, for every tremendous bolt was
directed against the fort in which was her father.
The conflict was too unequal; the bottom of the harbor was known to be
paved with torpedoes, and in less than an hour Dupont withdrew his
squadron in order to save it from destruction.
In strong reaction from intense excitement, Mary's knees gave way, and she
sank upon them in thankfulness to God. Her aunt supported her to her room,
gave restoratives, and the daughter in deep anxiety waited for tidings
from her father. He did not come to her; he was brought, and there settled
down upon her young life a night of grief and horror which no words can
describe. While he was sighting a gun, it had been struck by a shell from
the fleet, and when the smoke of the explosion cleared away he was seen
among the debris, a mangled and unconscious form. He was tenderly taken
up, and after the conflict ended, conveyed to his home. On the way thither
he partially revived, but reason was gone. His eyes were scorched and
blinded, his hearing destroyed by the concussion, and but one lingering
thought survived in the wreck of his mind. In a plaintive and almost
childlike tone he continually uttered the words, "I was only trying to
defend my city and my home."
Hour after hour he repeated this sentence, deaf to his child's entreaties
for recognition and a farewell word. His voice grew more and more feeble
until he could only whisper the sad refrain; at last his lips moved but
there was no sound; then he was still.
For a time it seemed as if Mary would soon follow him, but her aunt, her
white face tearless and stern, bade her live for her husband and her
unborn child. These sacred motives eventually enabled her to rally, but
her heart now centred its love on her husband with an intensity which made
her friends tremble for her future. His visits had been few and brief, and
she lived upon his letters. When they were delayed, her eyes had a hunted,
agonized look which even her stoical aunt could not endure.
One day about midsummer she found the stricken wife, unconscious upon the
floor with the daily paper in her clenched hand. When at last the
physician had brought back feeble consciousness and again banished it by
the essential opiate, Mrs. Hunter read the paragraph which, like a bolt,
had struck down her niece. It was from an account of a battle in which the
Confederates had been worsted and were being driven from a certain vantage
point. "At this critical moment," ran the report, "Colonel Wallingford,
with his thinned regiment, burst through the crowd of fugitives rushing
down the road, and struck the pursuing enemy such a stinging blow as to
check its advance. If the heroic colonel and his little band could only
have been supported at this instant the position might have been regained.
As it was, they were simply overwhelmed as a slight obstacle is swept away
by a torrent. But few escaped; some were captured, while the colonel and
the majority were struck down, trampled upon and fairly obliterated as the
Northern horde of infantry and artillery swept forward all the more
impetuously. The check was of very great advantage, however, for it gave
our vastly outnumbered troops more time to rally in a stronger position."
This brief paragraph contained the substance of all that was ever learned
of the young husband, and his mangled remains filled an unknown grave. His
wife had received the blow direct, and she never rallied. Week after week
she moaned and wept upon her bed when the physician permitted
consciousness. Even in the deep sleep produced by opiates, she would
shudder at the sound of Gilmore's guns as they thundered against Forts
Sumter and Wagner. A faithful colored woman who had been a slave in the
family from infancy watched unweariedly beside her, giving place only to
the stern-visaged aunt, whose touch and words were gentle, but who had
lost the power to disguise the bitterness of her heart. She tried to
awaken maternal instincts in the wife, but in vain, for there are wounds
of the spirit, like those of the body, which are fatal. All efforts to
induce the widow to leave the city, already within reach of the Federal
guns, were unavailing, and she was the more readily permitted to have her
own way, because, in the physician's opinion, the attempt would prove
fatal.
Meanwhile her time was drawing near. One August night she was dozing, and
moaning in her sleep, when suddenly there was a strange, demoniac shriek
through the air followed by an explosion which in the still night was
terrifically loud. The invalid started up and looked wildly at her sable
nurse, who was trembling like a leaf.
"O Lawd hab mercy, Missus," she exclaimed. "Dem Yankees shellin' de town."
Mrs. Hunter was instantly at the bedside. The faithful doctor came
hurriedly of his own accord, and employed all his skill.
A few hours later Mrs. Hunter tried to say cheerily, "Come, Mary, here is
a fine little girl for you to love and live for."
"Aunty," said the mother calmly, "I am dying. Let me see my child and kiss
her. Then put her next my heart till it is cold."
Mrs. Hunter lifted her startled eyes to the physician, who sadly nodded
his head in acquiescence. In a few moments more the broken heart found
healing far beyond all human passion and strife.
With hot, yet tearless eyes, and a face that appeared to be chiselled from
marble in its whiteness and rigidity, the aunt took up the child. Her tone
revealed the indescribable intensity of her feelings as she said, "Thy
name is Mara--bitterness."