The Burial of the Guns
T >>
Thomas Nelson Page >> The Burial of the Guns
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12
Among her eccentricities was her absurd cowardice. She was afraid of cows,
afraid of horses, afraid even of sheep. And bugs, and anything that crawled,
used to give her a fit. If we drove her anywhere, and the horses cut up
the least bit, she would jump out and walk, even in the mud;
and I remember once seeing her cross the yard, where a young cow
that had a calf asleep in the weeds, over in a corner beyond her,
started toward it at a little trot with a whimper of motherly solicitude.
Cousin Fanny took it into her head that the cow was coming at her,
and just screamed, and sat down flat on the ground, carrying on
as if she were a baby. Of course, we boys used to tease her,
and tell her the cows were coming after her. You could not help teasing
anybody like that.
I do not see how she managed to do what she did when the enemy got to Woodside
in the war. That was quite remarkable, considering what a coward she was.
During 1864 the Yankees on a raid got to her house one evening in the summer.
As it happened, a young soldier, one of her cousins (she had no end
of cousins), had got a leave of absence, and had come there sick with fever
just the day before (the house was always a sort of hospital).
He was in the boys' room in bed when the Yankees arrived, and they were
all around the house before she knew it. She went downstairs to meet them.
They had been informed by one of the negroes that Cousin Charlie was there,
and they told her that they wanted him. She told them they could not get him.
They asked her, "Why? Is he not there?" (I heard her tell of it once.)
She said:
"You know, I thought when I told them they could not get him
that they would go away, but when they asked me if he was not there,
of course I could not tell them a story; so I said I declined to answer
impertinent questions. You know poor Charlie was at that moment
lying curled up under the bed in the boys' room with a roll of carpet
a foot thick around him, and it was as hot as an oven. Well, they insisted
on going through the house, and I let them go all through the lower stories;
but when they started up the staircase I was ready for them.
I had always kept, you know, one of papa's old horse-pistols as a protection.
Of course, it was not loaded. I would not have had it loaded
for anything in the world. I always kept it safely locked up,
and I was dreadfully afraid of it even then. But you have no idea what a
moral support it gave me, and I used to unlock the drawer every afternoon
to see if it was still there all right, and then lock it again,
and put the key away carefully. Well, as it happened, I had just been
looking at it -- which I called `inspecting my garrison'. I used to feel
just like Lady Margaret in Tillietudlam Castle. Well, I had just been
looking at it that afternoon when I heard the Yankees were coming,
and by a sudden inspiration -- I cannot tell for my life how I did it --
I seized the pistol, and hid it under my apron. I held on to it
with both hands, I was so afraid of it, and all the time those wretches
were going through the rooms down-stairs I was quaking with terror.
But when they started up the stairs I had a new feeling.
I knew they were bound to get poor Charlie if he had not melted and run away,
-- no, he would never have run away; I mean evaporated, --
and I suddenly ran up the stairway a few steps before them, and,
hauling out my big pistol, pointed it at them, and told them
that if they came one step higher I would certainly pull the trigger.
I could not say I would shoot, for it was not loaded. Well, do you know,
they stopped! They stopped dead still. I declare I was so afraid
the old pistol would go off, though, of course, I knew it was not loaded,
that I was just quaking. But as soon as they stopped, I began to attack.
I remembered my old grandmother and her scissors, and, like General Jackson,
I followed up my advantage. I descended the steps, brandishing my pistol
with both hands, and abusing them with all my might. I was so afraid
they might ask if it was loaded. But they really thought
I would shoot them (you know men have not liked to be slain by a woman
since the time of Abimelech), and they actually ran down the steps,
with me after them, and I got them all out of the house.
Then I locked the door and barred it, and ran up-stairs
and had such a cry over Charlie. [That was like an old maid.]
Afterwards they were going to burn the house, but I got hold of their colonel,
who was not there at first, and made him really ashamed of himself;
for I told him we were nothing but a lot of poor defenceless women
and a sick boy. He said he thought I was right well defended, as I had held
a company at bay. He finally promised that if I would give him some music
he would not go up-stairs. So I paid that for my ransom,
and a bitter ransom it was too, I can tell you, singing for a Yankee!
But I gave him a dose of Confederate songs, I promise you. He asked me
to sing the `Star Spangled Banner'; but I told him I would not do it
if he burnt the house down with me in it -- though it was inspired
by my cousin, Armistead. Then he asked me to sing `Home, Sweet Home',
and I did that, and he actually had tears in his eyes -- the hypocrite!
He had very fine eyes, too. I think I did sing it well, though.
I cried a little myself, thinking of the old house being so nearly burnt.
There was a young doctor there, a surgeon, a really nice-looking fellow
for a Yankee; I made him feel ashamed of himself, I tell you.
I told him I had no doubt he had a good mother and sister up at home,
and to think of his coming and warring on poor women. And they really
placed a guard over the house for me while they were there."
This she actually did. With her old empty horse-pistol she cleared the house
of the mob, and then vowed that if they burned the house she would burn up
in it, and finally saved it by singing "Home, Sweet Home", for the colonel.
She could not have done much better even if she had not been an old maid.
I did not see much of her after I grew up. I moved away from the old county.
Most others did the same. It had been desolated by the war,
and got poorer and poorer. With an old maid's usual crankiness
and inability to adapt herself to the order of things,
Cousin Fanny remained behind. She refused to come away; said, I believe,
she had to look after the old place, mammy, and Fash, or some such nonsense.
I think she had some idea that the church would go down, or that
the poor people around would miss her, or something equally unpractical.
Anyhow, she stayed behind, and lived for quite awhile
the last of her connection in the county. Of course all did the best
they could for her, and had she gone to live around with her relatives,
as they wished her to do, they would have borne with her and supported her.
But she said no; that a single woman ought never to live in any house
but her father's or her own; and we could not do anything with her.
She was so proud she would not take money as a gift from anyone,
not even from her nearest relatives.
Her health got rather poor -- not unnaturally, considering the way
she divided her time between doctoring herself and fussing after sick people
in all sorts of weather. With the fancifulness of her kind,
she finally took it into her head that she must consult a doctor in New York.
Of course, no one but an old maid would have done this;
the home doctors were good enough for everyone else. Nothing would do,
however, but she must go to New York; so, against the advice of everyone,
she wrote to a cousin who was living there to meet her,
and with her old wraps, and cap, and bags, and bundles, and stick,
and umbrella, she started. The lady met her; that is, went to meet her,
but failed to find her at the station, and supposing that she had not come,
or had taken some other railroad, which she was likely to do, returned home,
to find her in bed, with her "things" piled up on the floor.
Some gentleman had come across her in Washington, holding the right train
while she insisted on taking the wrong route, and had taken compassion on her,
and not only escorted her to New York, but had taken her and all her parcels
and brought her to her destination, where she had at once retired.
"He was a most charming man, my dear," she said to her cousin,
who told me of it afterward in narrating her eccentricities;
"and to think of it, I don't believe I had looked in a glass all day,
and when I got here, my cap had somehow got twisted around
and was perched right over my left ear, making me look a perfect fright.
He told me his name, but I have forgotten it, of course.
But he was such a gentleman, and to think of his being a Yankee!
I told him I hated all Yankees, and he just laughed, and did not mind
my stick, nor old umbrella, nor bundles a bit. You'd have thought my old cap
was a Parisian bonnet. I will not believe he was a Yankee."
Well, she went to see the doctor, the most celebrated in New York --
at the infirmary, of course, for she was too poor to go to his office;
one consultation would have taken every cent she had -- her cousin went
with her, and told me of it. She said that when she came downstairs to go
she never saw such a sight. On her head she had her blue cap,
and her green shade and her veil, and her shawl; and she had
the old umbrella and long stick, which she had brought from the country,
and a large pillow under her arm, because she "knew she was going to faint."
So they started out, but it was a slow procession. The noise and bustle
of the street dazed her, her cousin fancied, and every now and then she would
clutch her companion and declare she must go back or she should faint.
At every street-crossing she insisted upon having a policeman
to help her over, or, in default of that, she would stop some man and ask him
to escort her across, which, of course, he would do, thinking her crazy.
Finally they reached the infirmary, where there were already
a large number of patients, and many more came in afterwards.
Here she shortly established an acquaintance with several strangers.
She had to wait an hour or more for her turn, and then insisted
that several who had come in after her should go in before her,
because she said the poor things looked so tired. This would have
gone on indefinitely, her cousin said, if she had not finally dragged her
into the doctor's room. There the first thing that she did was to insist
that she must lie down, she was so faint, and her pillow was brought
into requisition. The doctor humored her, and waited on her.
Her friend started to tell him about her, but the doctor said,
"I prefer to have her tell me herself." She presently began to tell,
the doctor sitting quietly by listening and seeming to be much interested.
He gave her some prescription, and told her to come again next day,
and when she went he sent for her ahead of her turn, and after that
made her come to his office at his private house, instead of to the infirmary,
as at first. He turned out to be the surgeon who had been at her house
with the Yankees during the war. He was very kind to her.
I suppose he had never seen anyone like her. She used to go every day,
and soon dispensed with her friend's escort, finding no difficulty
in getting about. Indeed, she came to be known on the streets
she passed through, and on the cars she travelled by, and people guided her.
Several times as she was taking the wrong car men stopped her,
and said to her, "Madam, yours is the red car." She said, sure enough it was,
but she never could divine how they knew. She addressed the conductors as,
"My dear sir", and made them help her not only off, but quite to the sidewalk,
when she thanked them, and said "Good-by", as if she had been at home.
She said she did this on principle, for it was such a good thing
to teach them to help a feeble woman. Next time they would expect to do it,
and after a while it would become a habit. She said no one knew what terror
women had of being run over and trampled on.
She was, as I have said, an awful coward. She used to stand still
on the edge of the street and look up and down both ways ever so long,
then go out in the street and stand still, look both ways and then run back;
or as like as not start on and turn and run back after she was more
than half way across, and so get into real danger. One day, as she was
passing along, a driver had in his cart an old bag-of-bones of a horse,
which he was beating to make him pull up the hill, and Cousin Fanny,
with an old maid's meddlesomeness, pushed out into the street
and caught hold of him and made him stop, which of course collected a crowd,
and just as she was coming back a little cart came rattling along,
and though she was in no earthly danger, she ran so to get out of the way
of the horse that she tripped and fell down in the street and hurt herself.
So much for cowardice.
The doctor finally told her that she had nothing the matter with her,
except something with her nerves and, I believe, her spine,
and that she wanted company (you see she was a good deal alone).
He said it was the first law of health ever laid down, that it was not good
for man to be alone; that loneliness is a specific disease.
He said she wanted occupation, some sort of work to interest her,
and make her forget her aches and ailments. He suggested missionary work
of some kind. This was one of the worst things he could have told her,
for there was no missionary work to be had where she lived. Besides,
she could not have done missionary work; she had never done anything
in her life; she was always wasting her time pottering about the country
on her old horse, seeing sick old darkies or poor people in the pines.
No matter how bad the weather was, nor how deep the roads,
she would go prowling around to see some old "aunty" or "uncle",
in their out-of-the-way cabins, or somebody's sick child.
I have met her on old Fashion in the rain, toiling along in roads
that were knee-deep, to get the doctor to come to see some sick person,
or to get a dose of physic from the depot. How could she have done
any missionary work?
I believe she repaid the doctor for his care of her by sending him
a charity patient to look after -- Scroggs's eldest girl, who was
bedridden or something. Cousin Fanny had a fancy that she was musical.
I never knew how it was arranged. I think the doctor sent the money down
to have the child brought on to New York for him to see. I suppose
Cousin Fanny turned beggar, and asked him. I know she told him the child
was the daughter of "a friend" of hers (a curious sort of friend Scroggs was,
a drunken creature, who had done everything he could to pain her),
and she took a great deal of trouble to get her to the train,
lending old Fashion to haul her, which was a great deal more
than lending herself; and the doctor treated her in New York for three months
without any charge, till, I believe, the child got better.
Old maids do not mind giving people trouble.
She hung on at the old place as long as she could, but it had to be sold,
and finally she had to leave it; though, I believe, even after it was sold
she tried boarding for a while with Scroggs, the former tenant,
who had bought it. He treated her so badly that finally she had to leave,
and boarded around. I believe the real cause was she caught him ploughing
with old Fashion.
After that I do not know exactly what she did. I heard that though
the parish was vacant she had a Sunday-school at the old church,
and so kept the church open; and that she used to play the wheezy old organ
and teach the poor children the chants; but as they grew up they all joined
another Church; they had a new organ there. I do not know just how
she got on. I was surprised to hear finally that she was dead --
had been dead since Christmas. It had never occurred to me
that she would die. She had been dying so long that I had almost come
to regard her as immortal, and as a necessary part of the old county
and its associations.
I fell in some time afterwards with a young doctor from the old county,
who, I found, had attended her, and I made some inquiries about her.
He told me that she died Christmas night. She came to his house
on her old mare, in the rain and snow the night before, to get him to go
to see someone, some "friend" of hers who was sick. He said she had more
sick friends than anyone he ever knew; he told her that he was sick himself
and could not go; but she was so importunate that he promised to go
next morning (she was always very worrying). He said she was wet
and shivering then (she never had any idea about really protecting herself),
and that she appeared to have a wretched cold. She had been riding all day
seeing about a Christmas-tree for the poor children. He urged her to stop
and spend the night, but she insisted that she must go on, though it was
nearly dark and raining hard, and the roads would have mired a cat
(she was always self-willed). Next day he went to see the sick woman,
and when he arrived he found her in one bed and Cousin Fanny in another,
in the same room. When he had examined the patient, he turned and
asked Cousin Fanny what was the matter with her. "Oh, just a little cold,
a little trouble in the chest, as Theodore Hook said," she replied.
"But I know how to doctor myself." Something about her voice struck him.
He went over to her and looked at her, and found her suffering from
acute pneumonia. He at once set to work on her. He took the other patient
up in his arms and carried her into another room, where he told her that
Cousin Fanny was a desperately ill woman. "She was actually dying then, sir,"
he said to me, "and she died that night. When she arrived at the place
the night before, which was not until after nine o'clock,
she had gone to the stable herself to put up her old mare,
or rather to see that she was fed -- she always did that --
so when she got into the house she was wet and chilled through,
and she had to go to bed. She must have had on wet clothes," he said.
I asked him if she knew she was going to die. He said he did not think
she did; that he did not tell her, and she talked about nothing
except her Christmas-tree and the people she wanted to see. He heard her
praying in the night, "and, by the way," he said, "she mentioned you.
She shortly became rather delirious, and wandered a good deal,
talking of things that must have happened when she was young;
spoke of going to see her mother somewhere. The last thing she ever said
was something about fashion, which," he said, "showed how ingrained
is vanity in the female mind." The doctor knows something of human nature.
He concluded what he had to say with, "She was in some respects
a very remarkable woman -- if she had not been an old maid.
I do not suppose that she ever drew a well breath in her life.
Not that I think old maids cannot be very acceptable women," he apologized.
"They are sometimes very useful." The doctor was a rather enlightened man.
Some of her relatives got there in time for the funeral, and a good many
of the poor people came; and she was carried in a little old spring wagon,
drawn by Fashion, through the snow, to the old home place,
where Scroggs very kindly let them dig the grave, and was buried there
in the old graveyard in the garden, in a vacant space just beside her mother,
with the children around her. I really miss her a great deal.
The other boys say they do the same. I suppose it is the trouble
she used to give us.
The old set are all doing well. Doug is a professor.
He says the word "spinster" gave him a twist to philology.
Old Blinky is in Paris. He had a picture in the salon last year,
an autumn landscape, called "Le Cote du Bois". I believe
the translation of that is "The Woodside". His coloring is said to be
nature itself. To think of old Blinky being a great artist!
Little Kitty is now a big girl, and is doing finely at school.
I have told her she must not be an old maid. Joe is a preacher
with a church in the purlieus of a large city. I was there not long ago.
He had a choral service. The Gregorian music carried me back to old times.
He preached on the text, "I was sick, and ye visited me." It was such
a fine sermon, and he had such a large congregation, that I asked
why he did not go to a finer church. He said he was "carrying soup
to Mrs. Ronquist." By the way, his organist was a splendid musician.
She introduced herself to me. It was Scroggs's daughter. She is married,
and can walk as well as I can. She had a little girl with her that I think
she called "Fanny". I do not think that was Mrs. Scroggs's name.
Frank is now a doctor, or rather a surgeon, in the same city with Joe,
and becoming very distinguished. The other day he performed
a great operation, saving a woman's life, which was in all the papers.
He said to an interviewer that he became a surgeon from dressing a sore
on an old mare's back. I wonder what he was talking about?
He is about to start a woman's hospital for poor women.
Cousin Fanny would have been glad of that; she was always proud of Frank.
She would as likely as not have quoted that verse from Tennyson's song
about the echoes. She sleeps now under the myrtle at Scroggs's.
I have often thought of what that doctor said about her:
that she would have been a very remarkable woman, if she had not been
an old maid -- I mean, a spinster.
The Burial of the Guns
Lee surrendered the remnant of his army at Appomattox, April 9, 1865,
and yet a couple of days later the old Colonel's battery lay intrenched
right in the mountain-pass where it had halted three days before.
Two weeks previously it had been detailed with a light division
sent to meet and repel a force which it was understood was coming in
by way of the southwest valley to strike Lee in the rear of his long line
from Richmond to Petersburg. It had done its work. The mountain-pass
had been seized and held, and the Federal force had not gotten by that road
within the blue rampart which guarded on that side the heart of Virginia.
This pass, which was the key to the main line of passage over the mountains,
had been assigned by the commander of the division to the old Colonel
and his old battery, and they had held it. The position taken by the battery
had been chosen with a soldier's eye. A better place could not
have been selected to hold the pass. It was its highest point,
just where the road crawled over the shoulder of the mountain
along the limestone cliff, a hundred feet sheer above the deep river,
where its waters had cut their way in ages past, and now lay deep and silent,
as if resting after their arduous toil before they began to boil over
the great bowlders which filled the bed a hundred or more yards below.
The little plateau at the top guarded the descending road on either side
for nearly a mile, and the mountain on the other side of the river
was the centre of a clump of rocky, heavily timbered spurs, so inaccessible
that no feet but those of wild animals or of the hardiest hunter
had ever climbed it. On the side of the river on which the road lay,
the only path out over the mountain except the road itself
was a charcoal-burner's track, dwindling at times to a footway
known only to the mountain-folk, which a picket at the top
could hold against an army. The position, well defended, was impregnable,
and it was well defended. This the general of the division knew
when he detailed the old Colonel and gave him his order to hold the pass
until relieved, and not let his guns fall into the hands of the enemy.
He knew both the Colonel and his battery. The battery was one of the oldest
in the army. It had been in the service since April, 1861,
and its commander had come to be known as "The Wheel Horse of his division".
He was, perhaps, the oldest officer of his rank in his branch of the service.
Although he had bitterly opposed secession, and was many years past
the age of service when the war came on, yet as soon as the President
called on the State for her quota of troops to coerce South Carolina,
he had raised and uniformed an artillery company, and offered it,
not to the President of the United States, but to the Governor of Virginia.
It is just at this point that he suddenly looms up to me as a soldier;
the relation he never wholly lost to me afterward, though I knew him
for many, many years of peace. His gray coat with the red facing
and the bars on the collar; his military cap; his gray flannel shirt --
it was the first time I ever saw him wear anything but immaculate linen --
his high boots; his horse caparisoned with a black, high-peaked saddle,
with crupper and breast-girth, instead of the light English hunting-saddle
to which I had been accustomed, all come before me now as if it were
but the other day. I remember but little beyond it, yet I remember,
as if it were yesterday, his leaving home, and the scenes
which immediately preceded it; the excitement created by the news
of the President's call for troops; the unanimous judgment that it meant war;
the immediate determination of the old Colonel, who had hitherto
opposed secession, that it must be met; the suppressed agitation
on the plantation, attendant upon the tender of his services
and the Governor's acceptance of them. The prompt and continuous work
incident to the enlistment of the men, the bustle of preparation,
and all the scenes of that time, come before me now. It turned
the calm current of the life of an old and placid country neighborhood,
far from any city or centre, and stirred it into a boiling torrent,
strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its way and join the general torrent
which was bearing down and sweeping everything before it.
It seemed but a minute before the quiet old plantation, in which the harvest,
the corn-shucking, and the Christmas holidays alone marked the passage
of the quiet seasons, and where a strange carriage or a single horseman
coming down the big road was an event in life, was turned into
a depot of war-supplies, and the neighborhood became a parade-ground.
The old Colonel, not a colonel yet, nor even a captain, except by brevet,
was on his horse by daybreak and off on his rounds through the plantations
and the pines enlisting his company. The office in the yard, heretofore one
in name only, became one now in reality, and a table was set out
piled with papers, pens, ink, books of tactics and regulation, at which men
were accepted and enrolled. Soldiers seemed to spring from the ground,
as they did from the sowing of the dragon's teeth in the days of Cadmus.
Men came up the high road or down the paths across the fields,
sometimes singly, but oftener in little parties of two or three,
and, asking for the Captain, entered the office as private citizens
and came out soldiers enlisted for the war. There was nothing heard of
on the plantation except fighting; white and black, all were at work,
and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going
with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work
of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks,
picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms;
for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class,
far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment
had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was
carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion was urgent.
Meantime the men were being drilled by the Captain and his lieutenants,
who had been militia officers of old. We were carried to see the drill
at the cross-roads, and a brave sight it seemed to us: the lines marching
and countermarching in the field, with the horses galloping as they wheeled
amid clouds of dust, at the hoarse commands of the excited officers,
and the roadside lined with spectators of every age and condition.
I recall the arrival of the messenger one night, with the telegraphic order
to the Captain to report with his company at "Camp Lee" immediately;
the hush in the parlor that attended its reading; then the forced beginning
of the conversation afterwards in a somewhat strained and unnatural key,
and the Captain's quick and decisive outlining of his plans.
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12