George Cary Eggleston

“ With that she rang for her maid and bade her prepare a cold plunge bath. When she descended to dinner, an hour later, Agatha no longer chattered frivolously, as she had done in the carriage, by way of concealing her emotions, but bore herself seriously, as became her in view of the prospect of battle on the morrow.
In that hour of agonising thought, Agatha Ronald had ceased to be a girl, and had become an earnest, resolute woman, strong to do, strong to endure, and, if need be, strong to dare. Life had taken on a new meaning in her eyes. ”

“ I must sit still here at Willoughby, and think, and think, and think."
Then like a lightning flash another thought came into her mind, and she spoke it aloud:
"Why should I be idler than they are? Why should I sit here brooding while they are toiling and fighting for Virginia? I am no more afraid of death or of danger than they are, and while women may not fight, there are other ways in which a woman of courage may render quite as good a service. I'll do it. I'll take the risks. I'll endure the hardships. I'll render my country a service that shall count." ”

“ They courteously saluted as Agatha passed them by, and when they learned what her kindly mission was, they hurriedly brought armfuls of saddle-blankets and arranged them as a cushion for her on the top of a limber-chest. Perched up there, she called for their torn garments, and nimbly plied her needle and her scissors for the space of half an hour before observing the sentry who had been posted nearest to her. His slouch hat, indeed, was drawn down over his eyes in such fashion that but little of his face could be seen. ”

“ They could not have held liberty for young gentlewomen in greater dread and detestation, had they believed, as they certainly did not, in the total depravity of womankind.
"It is not that we fear you would do anything wrong, dear," they would gently explain. "It is only that—well, you see a young gentlewoman cannot be too careful."
Agatha did not see, but she yielded to the prejudices of her aunts with a loyalty all the more creditable to her for the reason that she did not and could not share their views. On this occasion she had not thought of offending. ”

“ If he had possessed one-half or one-tenth the tact that Agatha had shown fifteen minutes before, he would have protested that, much to his regret, he could not remain to dinner that day, as he had a guest of his own at Warlock, and had ridden over only to make his apologies and express his regret. But Baillie Pegram, not being a woman, did not think of the right thing to say until it was one full minute too late, wherefore, of course, it would not do for him to say it at all.
What a pity it is that men can't be women—sometimes! ”

“ Then he wrote:
"You see how shrewdly I have managed this thing, Ladybird. I wouldn't let you go to The Oaks till you had become too fully confirmed in your habit of being free, ever to be reformed."
Later, and more seriously, he said to the girl:
"Every human being is the better for being free—women as well as men. Liberty to a human being is like sunshine and fresh air. Restraint is like medicine—excellent for those who are ill, but very bad indeed for healthy people. Did it ever occur to you, Agatha, that you never took a pill or a powder in your life? ”

“ Then the courage and daring of her race came to Agatha's soul, and she resolved to make a last desperate attempt to save herself, not by running away from the fire,—which would be worse than useless,—but by running into it. The danger in doing this was scarcely greater, in fact, though it seemed so, than that involved in lying still, but it requires an extraordinary courage for one unarmed and not inspired by the desperate all-daring spirit of battle, to rush upon guns that are belching canister in half-gallon charges, at the rate of three or four times a minute. ”

“ She wondered why he had enlisted in company with such men as those who constituted Captain Skinner's battery, for even thus early those men had become known as the worst gang of desperadoes imaginable,—a band that must be kept day and night under a discipline as rigid and as watchful as that of any State prison, lest they lapse into crimes of violence. She wondered if this meant that the peculiarly gentle-souled Marshall Pollard was trying to "throw himself away," as she had heard that men disappointed in love sometimes do,—that he wished to degrade himself by low associations. ”

“ We are living in the past and fighting off the present, but the present will successfully assert itself in the end. You have yourself rejected all the overtures of the speculators who have wanted to open coal mines on Warlock plantation, but the time will come when you'll be glad to be made richer than any Pegram ever dreamed of being by the sinking of mine shafts among your lawn trees. ”

“ Speech is difficult even to the bravest men, and the longing to plunge into the fray and be actively engaged is well-nigh irresistible.
All this and worse is the experience even of war-seasoned veterans when they must stand or lie still during these endless minutes of waiting, while the skirmishers are engaged in front. What must have been the strain upon the nerves and brains of men, not one of whom had as yet seen a battle, and not one in ten of whom had even received his "baptism of fire" in a skirmish, as the men in Baillie's battery had done during the week before! ”

“ But in Virginia people were never in a hurry. They had all of leisure that well-settled and perfectly self-satisfied ways of life could bring to a people whose chief concern it was to live uprightly and happily in that state of existence into which it had pleased God to call them. What difference could it make to a people so minded, whether the journey to the Court-house—the centre and seat of county activities of all kinds—were a mile or two longer or shorter by reason of meaningless curves in the road, or by reason of a lack of them? ”

“ She hurriedly packed the few belongings which she had purchased in the Pennsylvania town, bade her friends good-bye, and before noon of the next day, was safely hidden in the little lodging which Marshall Pollard's friend had secured for her in New York. In the great city she might go and come and do as she pleased without fear of observation, and without the least danger of attracting attention to herself. There is no solitude so secure as that of a thronged city, where men are too completely self-centred to concern themselves with the affairs of their neighbours. ”

“ I am pleased to hear through Sam that you are so greatly better. Thank you again for all your kindness to me, and good-bye."
Having despatched this note, Agatha donned her hat and cloak and walked out of the house. Without a pause she passed on through the grounds and along the road to the plantation known as The Forest.
She had made no adieus to her aunts. "To do that," she reflected, "I should have to tell lies, or act them. I should have to say I am sorry to leave them, and I am not sorry. Oh, Chummie! the world is very lonely now that you are not in it! ”

“ Your grandfather was a soldier greatly distinguished in two wars. He should have a soldier's burial, and with your permission, which I take for granted, I am ordering a company of dragoons and a battery now stationed at Warrenton and under my command, to move at once to Willoughby, and there pay the last honours to the veteran."
Heart-broken as she was, Agatha met calamity with a fortitude which astonished even herself. She was still scarcely more than a girl, but the blood of a soldier filled her veins,—a soldier who had never flinched from danger or murmured under suffering. ”

“ If armies would move without them, there'd be more and better fighting done. The chief thing in war is to start at once and get there without delay."
The meal over, Stuart held out his hand as a step, from which Agatha lightly sprang into her saddle. Then he mounted the superb gray, which he always rode when battle was on, or when he had a gentlewoman under his charge. For there was a touch of the boyish dandy in Stuart, and a good deal more than a touch of that gallantry which prompts every true man of warm blood to honour womanhood with every possible attention. ”

“ Here have I been brought up a Christian, taught from my infancy that hatred is murder, and taught at the same time that it is my highest duty, as a Ronald, to go on hating all the Pegrams on earth because my father and Baillie Pegram's grandfather quarrelled over something that I know absolutely nothing about! ”

“ She realised, too, now that the parting was drawing near, how much Baillie Pegram's presence had come to mean to her, how necessary a part of her life he had become, and how barren and desolate that life must be when they two should have spoken a final good-bye. For during her period of nursing, he and she had come to be the best of comrades, and at such times as his condition had permitted, they had fallen into habits of intimate converse. ”

“ Good-bye, old Virginia life! God bless you for a good old life! May we live as worthily in the new, if we survive to see the new!"
VIII A red feather
The sun shone with the fervent heat of noonday in mid-July, as the long line of cannon and caissons came lumbering down the incline of the roadway that leads from the mountainside into the little railway village. The breath of the guns was still offensively sulphurous, for there had been no time in which to cleanse them since their work of yesterday. ”

“ They had come now, at the approach of a first great battle, to bid these men Godspeed. Four years later, when war had well-nigh worn out the gallant Army of Northern Virginia, and when the very hope of ultimate victory, over enormously superior numbers and against incalculably superior resources, was scarcely more than an impulse of faith-inspired insanity, these women of the South were still present and helpful wherever their presence could cheer, and wherever their help was needed. ”

“ You give me leave hereafter to behave like a gentleman toward you, whenever circumstances shall happen to force any sort of intercourse upon us; but beyond that you remind me that there is war between your house and mine, and between me and thee. It is not a treaty of peace that you offer, or even a protocol looking to peace; it is only an amenity of war, like a cartel for the exchange of prisoners, or a temporary truce, for the burial of the dead who have fallen between the lines. ”

“ The time has come when we are going out to fight the zeitgeist, and the zeitgeist is going to conquer us."
"You expect the South to fail in the war, then?" asked Baillie.
"I don't know. We may fail or we may win. But in either case the old régime in the Old Dominion will be at an end when the war is over. Virginia will become a modern State, whatever else happens, and the old life in which you and I were brought up will become a thing of the past, a matter of history, the memory of which the novelists may love to recall, but the conditions of which can never again be established. ”