CHAPTER XXVII

UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES

The Arlington is one-half of a double house, a veranda without division serving for both halves. Just before noon up rode a regiment of Yankees and quartered themselves next door. We could hear them moving about and talking, and rattling their sabers. But I must add that they were very quiet and orderly. There was no unnecessary noise. They all went out again, on duty, I suppose, leaving their baggage and servants behind them. They did not molest or disturb us in any way. After a while we heard a rap on the door, and on opening it three men entered. They were fully armed, and had come, as they said, to search the house for rebels. The one who undertook to search our rooms came quite in and closed the door while his companions went below. He was very drunk. Anxious to get rid of him quickly I helped him in his search.

He touched my arm and whispered: “Sis, I’m good Secesh as you--but don’t say nothin’ about it.”

“You’d better look thoroughly,” I insisted, pretending not to hear him.

Going to the bed I threw the mattress over so he could see that no one was concealed beneath. He followed and touched my arm again.

“Good Secesh as you is, sis. I ain’t agwine to look into nothin’, sis.”

“There’s nothing for you to find,” I informed him, as I pulled a bureau drawer open for his inspection.

He waved it away with scorn. “I,” he repeated, touching his breast, “am good Secesh. Don’t want to see nothin’. Don’t you say nothin’--I’m good Secesh as you is, sis.”

I led the way into the next room to be searched, he following, asseverating in tipsy whispers, “Good Secesh as you is, sis,” every few minutes.

We found little Ruf Pagett cleaning his gun.

“Better hide that, sonny,” said our friend, glancing around. “That other fellow out there, _he_’ll take it from you. But _I_ won’t take it from you. I won’t take nothin’. I’m good Secesh as you is, bud. Hide your gun, bud.”

Down-stairs our friends were having a harder time. The men who went through their rooms searched everywhere, and tumbled their things around outrageously. I could hear Mrs. Sampson quarreling. They went away, but returned to search again. She said she wouldn’t stand it--she would report them. She saw General Weitzel and made her complaint, and he told her that the men were stragglers and had no authority for what they had done. If they could be found they would be punished. Before this time the fire had been brought under control. Houses not a square from us had been in flames. What saved us was an open space between us and the nearest house which had been on fire, and wet blankets. Mrs. Fry’s son had had wet blankets spread over our roof for protection, and we had also kept wet blankets hung in our windows. At one time, however, cinders and smoke had blown into my room till the air was stifling and the danger great.

A niece of my husband’s, a beautiful girl of eighteen, who had been ill with typhoid fever, had to be carried out of a burning house that night and laid on a cot in the street. She died in the street and I heard of other sick persons who died from the terror and exposure of that time.

As night came on many people were wandering about without shelter, amid blackened ruins. In the Square numbers were huddled for the night under improvised shelter or without any protection at all. But profound quiet reigned--the quiet of desolation as well as of order. The city had been put under martial law as soon as the Federals took possession; order and quiet had been quickly established and were well preserved. Our next-door neighbors were so quiet that with only a wall between we sometimes forgot their presence.

I must tell of one person who did not weep because the Yankees had come. That was a little girl in the house who clapped her hands and danced all around.

“The Yankees have come! the Yankees have come!” she shouted, “and now we’ll get something to eat. I’m going to have pickles and molasses and oranges and cheese and nuts and candy until I have a fit and die.”

She soon made acquaintances next door. The soldiers or their servants gave her what she asked for. She stuffed herself with what they gave her, and that night she had a fit and died, as she had said in jest she would, poor little soul!

That afternoon there was a funeral from the house, and all day there were burials going on in Hollywood.

Early on the morning of the third, when Miss Mary Pagett threw open her blinds, she beheld the gallery under her window lined with sleeping Yankees. When Delia McArthur and I went out for a walk we came upon Federal soldiers asleep on the sidewalks and everywhere there was a place for weary men to drop down and rest. In all this time of horror I don’t think anything was much harder than making up our minds to “draw rations from the Yankees.” We said we _would_ not do it--we _could_ not do it!

But as hunger gained upon us and starvation stared us in the face Mrs. Sampson rose up in her might!

“I’ll take anything I can get out of the Yankees!” she exclaimed. “They haven’t had any delicacy of feeling in taking everything we’ve got! I’m going for rations!”

So Mrs. Sampson nerved herself up to the point where she took quite a pleasure and pride in her mission. But not so with the rest of us. It was a bitter pill, hard, hard to swallow. Mother, to whose lot some species of martyrdom was always falling, elected to go with Mrs. Sampson. So forth sallied these old Virginia matrons to “draw rations from the Yankees.” However, once on our way to humiliation we began to console ourselves with thoughts of the loaves and fishes. We would have enough to eat--sugar and tea and other delights! Presently mother and Mrs. Sampson returned, each with a dried codfish! There was disappointment and there was laughter. As each stately matron came marching in, holding her codfish at arm’s length before her, Delia McArthur and I fell into each other’s arms laughing. Besides the codfish, they had each a piece of fat, strong bacon about the size of a handkerchief folded once, and perhaps an inch thick. Now, we had had no meat for a great while, and we were completely worn out with dried apples and peas, so we immediately set about cooking our bacon. Having such a great dainty and rare luxury, we felt ourselves in a position to invite company to dinner. Mrs. Sampson invited half of the household to dine with her, and we invited the other half. Soon there was a great sputtering and a delicious smell issuing from the Sampsons’ apartments and from ours.

Mother sliced the meat into the pan, and I sat on the floor and held it over the fire, while Delia spread the table. There was a pot on, which had to be stirred now and then. I, who always had a fertile brain in culinary matters, suggested that the potatoes--I neglected to state that a handful of potatoes had been dealt out with our rations--should be sliced very thin and dropped into the pan with the meat; and this done I fried them quite brown, taking much pains and pride in the achievement. Mother dished up the peas and set them on the table before our guests; and I passed around the fried meat and potatoes in the frying-pan, from which the company, with much grace and delicacy, helped themselves. Oh, how delicious it was!

As for the codfish, we had immediately hung that out of the window. The passer-by in the street below could behold it, dangling from its string, a melancholy and fragrant codfish. From Mrs. Sampson’s window just below ours hung another melancholy codfish just like the one above it. We paid the old negress to do things for us with codfish--but not a whole codfish at a time. We cut off pieces of it, and so made good bargains, and one codfish go as far as possible. We had by this time got to a place where economy was not only a virtue but a necessity of the direst sort.

The last time I was in Richmond I took my children by the Arlington and pointed out to them the window from which our codfish hung.

And now Betty Taylor--Walter’s bride--and I began planning to run through the Yankee lines together and join our husbands.

We did not think even then, you see, that the war was over. Our faith was still crediting superhuman powers to Lee and his skeleton army. Then there was President Davis’s proclamation issued from Danville, wherein we found encouragement for hope. Then came the blow. We heard that Lee had surrendered. Lee surrendered! that couldn’t be true! But even while we were refusing to believe it General Lee, accompanied, as I remember, by one or two members of his staff, rode up to his door. He bared his weary gray head to the people who gathered around him with greetings and passed into his house.

Hope was dead at last. But other things, precious and imperishable, remained to us and to our children--the things that make for loyalty and courage and endurance--an invincible faith--the enduring record of heroic example. Lee had surrendered, but Lee was still himself and our own--a heritage to be handed down by Americans to America when sectional distinctions have been swallowed up in the strength of a Union great enough to honor every son, whatever his creed, who has lived and died for “conscience’ sake.”

Sitting in my window that sorrowful day I saw three officers in gray uniforms galloping rapidly along Main Street. I recognized familiar figures in them all before they came as far as the Arlington. One turned out of Main Street, riding home to his wife, as I knew, before they reached the window; another did the same.

The third came galloping past.

I thrust my head out of the window.

“Walter!” I called.

He looked up.

“Hello, Nell!” he cried, waving his hat around his head and galloping on.

He was on his way to his bride from whom he had parted at the altar.

But even at this supreme moment of their lives he and Betty were good enough to remember me, and in a few hours after I hailed him from the window Walter called.

“Where is Dan?” was my first question.

“I don’t know, Nell,” he answered. “But I know he’s alive and well and will be along in a few days.”

That was all the comfort I got from any friends returning from the field.

A little later there was a grand review of Federal troops in Richmond, and I remember how well-clad and sleek they were and how new and glittering were their arms. Good boots, good hats, a whole suit of clothes to every man--a long, bright, prosperous-looking procession. On the sidewalk a poor Confederate in rags and bootless, stood looking wistfully on.

The next day I heard that General Rooney Lee had arrived, and I went to see him. I was shown up to his mother’s room, and she told me that he had not come, but was hourly expected. When I called the next day I met him and Miss Mildred Lee in the door. They were going out, but the general stepped back with me into the hall.

“I came to see if you could tell me anything about Dan, general.”

“Mrs. Grey,” he said, “you know Dan as well as I do. He isn’t whipped yet. I told him it was all foolishness, and that the war was over, but he wouldn’t surrender with me, and is going through to Johnston’s army. But he will have to come back, and he will be here soon, I think. Johnston’s army has surrendered.”

“You think then that nothing has happened to him, general?”

“Oh, no. I am sure of that.”

General Lee dropped his voice.

“Mrs. Grey, it may be several days before Dan gets in. In the meanwhile let me supply your wants as best I can. You should not mind applying to me or accepting assistance from me.”

“I appreciate your kindness more than I can tell you, general, but I don’t really need anything.”

“If you should stand in need of money or assistance of any kind before Dan gets in, let me know, won’t you?”

“Indeed I will, dear general.”

We all three walked down Franklin Street together until Miss Mildred, who was going to see some friends on Grace Street, had to turn. After the two had just turned the corner I heard the general say:

“Wait for a minute, Mildred.”

He slipped back, put his hand in his pocket, and took out a thin roll of bills, a very thin roll.

“Mrs. Grey,” he said, “here is all the money I have in the world, ten dollars in greenbacks. Take half of it--I wish you would--it wouldn’t inconvenience me at all. I will make some more soon, and then I will divide with you again until Dan comes home.”

I could hardly speak for tears. At that moment I was richer than my general. I had at home in gold and greenbacks more money than General Lee.

“God bless you, general!” I managed to say. “But really I don’t need it. If I do really and truly I will come to you for it.”

Franklin Street wasn’t a good place to cry in, so I hurried home.

Still the days that passed did not bring me Dan. I became thoroughly miserable. I sat in my window and watched and was cross if anybody spoke to me.

One day a servant brought up a message:

“Er gent’man in de parlor to see yer, missy.”

“What sort of a ‘gent’man’ is it?” I asked tartly. There was but one man in the world I wanted to see or hear about just then.

“He ain’t lak our people, missy. He’s furrin--French or suppin nuther. He say how he usen ter know yer in Petersburg. An’ how you lent ’im some--er--music--er suppin lak dat. An’ he got--er--errah--suppin--I clar fo’ de Lord, missy, I dunno what ’tis--but he got suppin----”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “He’s that old French music-teacher, and he’s brought back that old music I lent him in the year one. Go tell him that I don’t want it; he can have it.”

Jake departed only to return in a more perplexed frame of mind and state of speech.

“He say how ’tain’t no music he’s got fur yer. He say--he do say, missy--but de Lord knows I dunno what he say!--but anyway be bleeged to see yer.”

I got up and went down to the parlor in desperation.

Sure enough, it was the little French music-teacher, and he began apologies, acknowledgments and what not in his dreadful English.

“Madame, I haf no mooseek to you--not at all. I haf one message of you to ze majaire. If you not b’lief me,” he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a dirty bit of paper, “look at ze cart--vat sail I call him? ze lettaire. If madame vill look--I beg ze pardon of madame----”

I snatched the paper out of his hand. And then--I couldn’t make it out. Written in the first place with an indifferent pencil on a worn bit of the poor paper of that day and carried in the little Frenchman’s very ragged and grimy pocket, the scrawl was illegible. It had never been more than a line of some five or six words. While I was trying to make it out the little Frenchman explained that it was merely a line introducing himself as the bearer of a message.

What that message was I never did hear, though the little Frenchman did his best to deliver and I to receive it. I got enough out of him, however, to know that Dan was well and on his way to Richmond. I also understood that he was not far from Richmond now, but what was detaining him I could not make out, though the little Frenchman, with many apologies, conveyed the hint to me that it was a delicate matter. After he was gone I wondered why I was so stupid as not to get the little man’s address so that I could send some friends who understood French after him. From what he had said I had inferred that my husband would be with me the following day. I watched in a fever of impatience, but two days passed and no Dan.

The third night as I laid my aching head on the pillow I said: “Mother, if he don’t come to-morrow, the next day I start out to look for him.”

Do you know how it is to feel in your sleep that some one is looking at you? This is the sort of sensation that aroused me the next morning, and I opened my eyes in the early dawn to find my husband standing by the bed with clasped hands looking down at me.

Ah, we were happy--we were happy! Ragged, defeated, broken, we but had each other and that was enough.

But there is a ludicrous side that I must tell you. I must explain how Dan was dressed. He wore a pair of threadbare gray trousers patched with blue; they were much too short for him, and there were holes which were not patched at all; he had no socks on, but wore a ragged shoe of one size on one foot, and on the other a boot of another size and ragged too; he had on a blue jacket much too small for him--it was conspicuously too short, and there was a wide margin between where it ended and his trousers began, and he had on a calico shirt that looked like pink peppermint candy. Set back on his head was an old hat, shot nearly all to pieces--you could look through the holes, and it had tags hanging around where the brim had been. He was a perfect old ragman except for the very new pink shirt.

“My dear Dan,” I said, “what a perfect fright you are! What a dreadful ragtag and bobtail!”

“Why, Nell,” he said, “I thought these very good clothes. What’s missing, my dear? My suit is very complete; whole trousers, jacket, new shirt, hat on my head, even down to something on both feet. Last week I didn’t have any shirt, nor any jacket to speak of, and my trousers weren’t patched and I didn’t have anything on my feet. One reason I took so long to get here was because I was trying to get a few clothes together--I wasn’t dressed to my taste, you see. It took much time and labor to collect all this wearing apparel. I got first one piece and then another, until I am as you see me, fit to enter Richmond. Somebody stole my trousers one morning--I was in an awful plight. That was the time the little Frenchman passed and I sent you a message. Did he tell you that I’d get home as soon as I got another pair of trousers if somebody didn’t steal my jacket by that time?”

I was laughing and crying all the time he was talking. When I pulled off boot and shoe I found that he had spoken the truth in jest when he said he had been walking barefoot nearly all the way. His feet were sore. I had some good shoes for him, and I got out an old civilian suit that he had worn before the war. It didn’t fit him now and looked antiquated, but he donned it with great satisfaction.

Then we went out shopping. It was shopping in a city of ruins. As we walked along the streets there were smoking pits on each side of us. Here and there the remnants of what had been a store enabled us to purchase shoes at one place and the materials for two white shirts at another, and to our great joy we found a hat for which he paid two dollars, United States money.

We had nothing on which to begin life over again, but we were young and strong, and began it cheerily enough. We are prosperous now, our heads are nearly white; little grandchildren cluster about us and listen with interest to grandpapa’s and grandmamma’s tales of the days when they “fought and bled and died together.” They can’t understand how such nice people as the Yankees and ourselves ever could have fought each other. “It doesn’t seem reasonable,” says Nellie the third, who is engaged to a gentleman from Boston, where we sent her to cultivate her musical talents, but where she applied herself to other matters, “it doesn’t seem reasonable, grandmamma, when you could just as easily have settled it all comfortably without any fighting. How glad I am I wasn’t living then! How thankful I am that ‘Old Glory’ floats alike over North and South, now!”

And so am I, my darling, so am I!

But for us--for Dan and me--we could almost as easily give up each other as those terrible, beloved days. They are the very fiber of us.

THE END