VIII
_A RED FEATHER_
The sun shone with the fervent heat of noonday in mid-July, as the longline of cannon and caissons came lumbering down the incline of theroadway that leads from the mountainside into the little railwayvillage. The breath of the guns was still offensively sulphurous, forthere had been no time in which to cleanse them since their work ofyesterday. The officers and non-commissioned officers on their horses,and the cannoniers who rode upon the ammunition-chests, werepowder-grimed and dusty--for there had been no opportunity on thishurried march for those ablutions that all soldiers so eagerly delightin.
There were no shouted commands given, for this battery had been threetimes under fire, and one of the first things an officer learns in realwar is not to shout his orders except when the din of battle rendersshouting necessary. Three months ago on parade the captain of thisbattery would have bellowed, "Forward into battery!" by way ofimpressing his importance upon the lookers-on. Now that he had learnedto be in earnest, he merely turned to his bugler, and said, as if in aparlour, "Forward into battery, then halt."
A little musical snatch on the bugle did the rest, and with theprecision of a piece of mechanism, the guns were moved into place, eachwith its caissons at a fixed distance in the rear, and the command, "Atease," was followed by a stable-call, in obedience to which the driversset to work to feed and groom their horses. For while men may be allowedto go grimed and dirty on campaign, the horses at least must be curriedand rubbed and sponged into perfect health and comfort whenever there isopportunity.
Here at the little railway station were assembled all the womankind froma dozen miles round about. These had come to look upon the Army of theShenandoah, with which Johnston, after several days of skirmishing inthe valley with the Federals under Patterson, was hurrying onward toManassas to join Beauregard there, in the battle which was so obviouslyat hand.
The women of every degree had come, not merely to see the spectacle ofwar, but to cheer the soldiers with smiles and words of encouragement,and still more to minister in what ways they could to their needs. Themaids and matrons thus assembled were gaily clad, for war had not yetrobbed them of the wherewithal to deck themselves as gaily as the liliesdo. They were full of high confidence and ardent hope, for war had notyet brought to them, and for many moons to come was not destined tobring to them, the realisation that defeat and disaster are sometimes apart of the bravest soldiers' fortune. These women believed absolutelyand unquestioningly in the righteousness of the Southern cause, and theyhad not yet read the history of Poland, and La Vendee, and the Huguenotswith discretion enough to doubt that victory always in the end crownsthe struggles of those who stand for the right.
How much of disappointment and suffering this curiously perverse readingof history has wrought, to be sure! And how confidently, in every case,the men and women on either side of a war commend their cause to Heaven,in full confidence that God, in his justice, cannot fail to give victoryto the right, and cannot fail to understand that they are right andtheir enemies hopelessly wrong. Probably every educated woman amongthose who were assembled at the little village on that twentieth day ofJuly, 1861, had read Motley's histories; every one of them knew thestory of Poland and of Ireland and of La Vendee and the Camisards; butthey still believed that God and not the guns decides the outcome ofbattles.
In one article of their faith at least they were absolutely right. Theybelieved in the courage, the devotion, the unflinching prowess of themen who had enlisted to fight for their cause. They had come now, at theapproach of a first great battle, to bid these men Godspeed. Four yearslater, when war had well-nigh worn out the gallant Army of NorthernVirginia, and when the very hope of ultimate victory, over enormouslysuperior numbers and against incalculably superior resources, wasscarcely more than an impulse of faith-inspired insanity, these women ofthe South were still present and helpful wherever their presence couldcheer, and wherever their help was needed.
To-day, they looked to the morrow for a victory that should make an endof the war. The victory came with a startling completeness whollyunmatched in all the history of battles. But the end did not come, andthe war wore itself out, through four long years of brilliantachievement, alternated with terrible disaster. At Petersburg thesewomen did not look to the morrow at all, but their courage was the same,their cheer the same, their devotion the same. It was still their chosentask to encourage the little remnant of an army which still held thedefensive works with a line stretched out to attenuation. To the veryend--and even after the end--these brave women faltered not nor failed.
When the war began, the women of the South made a gala-day of every daywhen soldiers were in sight. As the war neared its calamitous end, alldays were to them days of mourning and of always willing self-sacrifice.
On that twentieth day of July, 1861, the women gathered together werefull of high hope and confidence. Some were perched upon goods boxes,arranged to serve as seats. Some were tripping about on foot, glidinghither and thither in gladness, as girls do in a dance, simply becausetheir nerves were tuned to a high pitch, and their sympathetic feetrefused to be still. But for the most part they sat in their carriages,with the tops thrown back in defiance of the fervour of the sun.Defiance was in the air, indeed, and the troops on their way to thebattle-field were not more resolute in their determination to do and todare, than were the dames and damsels there gathered together in theirpurpose to disregard sunshine and circumstance, while bestowing theirsmiles upon these men, their heroes.
After the fashion of the time among volunteers who were presently tobecome war-worn into veterans, but who were never to be reduced to thecondition of hireling regulars, the men were free, as soon as a halt wascalled, to move about among the feminine throng, greeting theiracquaintances when they had any, and being cheerily greeted bystrangers, in utter disregard of those conventions with which womanhoodelsewhere than in Virginia surrounds itself. There womanhood had alwaysfelt itself free, because it had always felt itself under the protectionof all there was of manhood in the land. No woman in that time andcountry was ever in danger of affront, for the reason that no man daredaffront her, lest he encounter vengeance, swift, sure, and relentless,at the hands of the first other man who might hear of the circumstance.No Virginian girl of that time had her mind directed to evil things bythe suggestion of chaperonage; and no Virginia gentleman was subjectedto insulting imputation by the refusal of a woman's guardians to entrusther protection against himself, as against all others, to his chivalry.So far was the point of honour pressed in such matters, that no man wasfree even to make the most deferential proposal of marriage to any womanwhile she was actually or technically under his charge and protection.To do that, it was held, was to place the woman in an embarrassingposition, to subject her to the necessity of accepting the offer on theone hand, or of declining it while yet under obligation to accept escortand protection at the hands of the man making it.
Under this rigid code of social intercourse, which granted perfectfreedom to all women, and exacted scrupulous respect for such freedom atthe hands of all men, the intercourse between gentlemen volunteers andthe young women who had come to visit them in camp was even lessrestrained than that of a drawing-room, in which all are guests of acommon host, and all are guaranteed, as it were, by that host'ssponsorship of invitation.
In all their dealings with the volunteers, the women of Virginia broughtcommon sense to bear in a positively astonishing degree, reinforcing itwith abounding good-will and perfect confidence in the manhood of men astheir sufficient shield against misinterpretation. And they wereentirely right in this. For "battle, murder, and sudden death," wouldvery certainly have been the part of any man in those ranks who shouldhave failed in due respect to this generosity of mind on the part ofwomanhood. The dignity of womanhood was never so safe as when women thusconfidently left its guardianship to the instinctive chivalry of men.
For a time after the halt, Baillie Pegram was too busy to inquirewhether or not any f
riends of his own were among the throng. Forsomething had happened to Baillie Pegram over there in the Valley of theShenandoah two or three days before. The gun to whose detachment hebelonged as a cannonier had been detached and sent to an exposedposition on the Martinsburg road. The sergeant in command of it had beenkilled by a bullet, and the two corporals--the gunner and the chief ofcaisson--had been carried to the rear on litters, with bullets in theirbodies. There was absolutely nobody in command of the gun, but BailliePegram was serving as number one at the piece--that is to say, as thecannonier handling the sponge and rammer. Seeing the badly weakenedgun-crew disposed to falter for lack of anybody to command them, andseeing, too, the necessity of continuing the fire, Baillie assumed anauthority which did not belong to him in any way.
"Stand to the gun, men!" he cried. "If any man flunks till this job isdone, I'll brain him with my rammer-head, orders or no orders."
A moment later the faltering of number three called upon him for theexecution of his threat, and he instantly did what he had said hewould do, felling the man to the grass, stunned for the time by a quickblow with the iron-bound rammer-head. Then he called upon number five totake the recreant's place, and that gun continued its work until the hotlittle action was over.
"'_If any man flunks--I'll brain him_'"]
A slouchy-looking personage had been standing by all the while. At theend of it all he demanded Baillie Pegram's name and rank, and the nameof his battery. That evening Baillie Pegram's captain sent for him, andsaid:
"I am going to make you my sergeant-major. I have General Jackson'srequest to recognise your good conduct under his eye to-day. Evenwithout his suggestion I should wish to have you with me as my staffsergeant. I have kept that post open until now, in order that I mightchoose the best man for it."
It should be explained that the rank of sergeant-major is the veryhighest non-commissioned rank known to military life. Ordinarily, thesergeant-major is a regimental non-commissioned officer. But followingthe French system, the Confederate regulations allowed every battery offield-artillery a sergeant-major, if its captain so desired. Heoutranked all other non-commissioned officers, and usually exercised alieutenant's command in battle--always if any commissioned officer wereabsent or disabled.
Thus it came about that Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram was too busy onthat morning to look up acquaintances among the spectators gatheredthere. He had orders to execute, and details of many kinds to lookafter, including the making out of that morning report which everycompany in the service must daily render, and upon which the commandinggeneral must rely for information as to the exact number of fighting menhe has available for duty.
Baillie had just completed this task, when some one brought him newsthat a lady in a carriage near by wished to speak with him. Havingnothing now to do, he responded to the call, and found Agatha Ronaldawaiting him. She sat in her carriage alone. In her lap was awork-basket, fully equipped for that mending which these women alwayscame prepared to do when soldiers were passing by. Baillie had nomending to be done, but Agatha bade him remove his jacket and deliver itinto her charge.
"We've heard what happened in the Valley the other day," she said, "andit is not seemly for a sergeant-major to be on duty without the insigniaof his rank. Red is the artillery colour, I believe, and your marks arethree chevrons, with three arches connecting them, are they not?Fortunately, I brought a roll of red braid. So let me have your coat,please, and I'll readjust your costume to your rank."
Agatha spoke glibly, but it was under manifest constraint. She forcedand feigned a lightness of mood which she did not feel, and her mannerdeceived Baillie Pegram completely, as it was meant to do.
"What a fool I am," he thought, "to expect anything else. She wasembarrassed when I last saw her, and worried, but that was all onaccount of her aunts. She is her own mistress to-day, and--well, it isbetter so. There'll be a fight to-morrow, and that's fortunate."
At that point the girl interrupted his meditations by saying, in herassumed tone of lightness, which he so greatly misinterpreted:
"I know there is war between your house and mine, but I'm going to giveaid and comfort to the enemy, if it comforts you to have your chevronsproperly sewed on."
"There can surely be no war between me and thee," he answered, withearnestness in his tone. "At any rate, I do not make war upon a woman,and least of all--"
"You must not misunderstand, Mr. Pegram," the girl broke in, looking athim earnestly out of her great brown eyes. "I esteem you highly, and Iam sorry there is trouble between your house and mine. But I am notdisloyal to the memory of my father. You must never think that. It isonly that you are a gentleman who has been kind to me, and a soldierwhom I honour. But the war endures between your house and mine."
Had she slapped him in the face with her open palm, she could not havehurt his pride more deeply. He snatched his jacket from her hand. Onlyone sleeve was finished, and the needle still hung from it by a thread.
"I'll wear it so," he said. "I, at any rate, have no house. I am thelast of my race, and let me say to you now--for I shall never see youagain of my own free will--that the war between our houses willcompletely end when I receive my discharge from life."
Then a new thought struck him.
"It is not for Baillie Pegram, the master of Warlock, that you have donethis," touching the braided sleeve, "but for Baillie Pegram, the soldieron his way to battle. Let it be so."
Stung by his own words, and controlled by an impulse akin to that whichhad seized him at the gun two days before, he reached out and pluckedfrom her headgear the red feather that she wore there, saying:
"Here! fasten that in my hat. I've a mind to wear it in battleto-morrow. Then I'll send it back to you."
What demon of the perverse had prompted him to this action, he did notknow, but the girl in her turn seemed subject to its will. Instead ofresenting what he had done, she took the feather and with some quicklyplied stitches fastened it securely to his already soiled and wornslouch hat. Then handing it back to him, she said:
"Good-bye. God grant that when the feather comes back to me, it be notstained to a deeper red than now."
At that moment the bugle blew. Baillie touched his hat, bowed low, andsaid:
"At least you are a courteous enemy."
"And a generous one?" she asked.
But he did not answer the implied question.
* * * * *
When he had gone, Agatha bent low over her work-basket, as if in searchof something that she could not find. If two little tear-drops slippedfrom between her eyelids, nobody caught sight of them.
Presently another bugle blew, and as Baillie Pegram's battery took upthe march, the guns and men of Captain Skinner took its place. But thistime there was no mingling of the men with the spectators. CaptainSkinner was too rigid a disciplinarian to permit that, and he knew hisruffians too well. The moment the battery halted, the sergeant of theguard posted his sentries, and the men remained within the batterylines.
Seeing this, Agatha tripped from her carriage, and, work-basket in hand,started to enter the battery. She was instantly halted by a sentry,whose appearance did not tempt her to dispute his authority. Shetherefore simply said to him, "Call your sergeant of the guard, please."To the sergeant, when he came, she said, "Will you please report toCaptain Skinner that Miss Agatha Ronald, of Willoughby, asks leave toenter the battery lines, in order to do such mending for the men as maybe needed?"
But it was not necessary for the sergeant to deliver his message, forCaptain Skinner, way-worn and dusty, at that moment presented himself,and greeted the visitor.
"It is very gracious of you," he said, "but, my dear young lady, my mendo not belong to that class with which alone you are acquainted. You hadbetter not visit my camp."
"Your men are soldiers, sir," she said, "and their needs may be quite asgreat as those of any others. We are not living in drawing-rooms justnow. I crave your permission to enter the battery."
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br /> The captain touched his hat again, signed to the sentry to let the youngwoman pass, and then, turning to the sergeant of the guard, said:
"Post ten extra sentinels among the guns, with orders to arrestinstantly any man who utters an oath or in any other way offends thisyoung lady's ears. See to it yourself that this order is obeyed to theletter."
The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story Page 8
