The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story

IX

The birth of womanhood

The captain's stern commands were not needed, and the extra sentinels had no work to do in restraining the men from offensive speech and conduct. 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. But looking up at last in search of further work to do, she recognised the form of Marshall Pollard. Instantly a deep flush overspread her face, and, dismounting from the limber-chest, she approached and addressed him. He presented arms and said to her in French, so that those about them might not understand:

"Pardon me, mademoiselle, but it is forbidden to speak to a sentinel on duty." With that he recovered arms and resumed the monotonous pacing of his beat.

As the girl hurried out of the battery, flushed and agitated, she again encountered Captain Skinner.

"Has anybody been rude to you, Miss Ronald?" he asked, quickly.

"No, Captain Skinner, I have only praise for your men. They have been courteous in the extreme. I predict that they will acquit themselves right gallantly in to-morrow's battle."

"O, they're fighters, and will give a good account of themselves if this muddled railroad management lets us get to Manassas before the fighting is over."

With thanks to Agatha for her kindness, Captain Skinner bowed low in farewell.

Springing into her carriage she gave the command, "Home," and drove away without waiting to see the remainder of the Army of the Shenandoah as it moved, partly by train, and partly on march, toward the scene of the coming battle.

During the homeward ride the girl laughed and chatted with her companions with more than her usual vivacity, quite as if this had been the gladdest of all her gala-days. But the gaiety was forced, and the laughter had a nervous note in it which would have betrayed its impulse to her companions had they been of closely observant habit of mind.

But when she reached home Agatha excused herself to her friends, and shut herself in her room. Throwing off her hat, but making no other change in her costume, she stretched herself upon the polished floor, after a habit she had indulged since childhood whenever her spirit was perturbed. For an hour she lay there upon the hard ash boards, with her hands clasped under her head, thinking, thinking, thinking.

"God knows," she thought, "I have tried to do my duty, and it is bitterly hard for a woman. In loyalty to my dead father's memory, I have insulted and wounded the only man I could ever have loved, and sent him away from me in anger and wretchedness. And even in doing that – even in being cruel to him and to myself, I have fallen short of my duty as Agatha Ronald. I have weakly yielded something at least of that proud attitude which it is my duty to my family traditions to maintain. I have recognised the state of war, but I have parleyed with the enemy. And Baillie Pegram is at this hour wearing a plume plucked from my hat and fastened into his by my own hands. God forgive me if I have been disloyal! But is it disloyalty?"

With that question echoing in her mind she sat up, staring at the wall, as if trying there to read her answer.

"Is it my duty to cherish a feud that is meaningless to me – to hate a man who has done no wrong to me or mine, simply because there was a quarrel between our ancestors before either of us was born? I do not know! I do not know! But I must be true to my family, true to my race, true to the traditions in which I have been bred. I have fallen short of that in this case. I must not err again. I must never again forget, even for a moment, that Baillie Pegram is my hereditary enemy."

Then she caught herself thinking and almost wishing that a Federal bullet might end her perplexity – that Baillie Pegram might never live to see her again. "I wonder," she thought, "if that is what Christ meant when he said that one who hates his neighbour is a murderer in his heart. It is all a blind riddle to me. 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!"

Presently the girl's mind reverted to the second meeting of that eventful day, – her encounter with Marshall Pollard. 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.

"And I am the cause of it all," she mourned. For she knew that Marshall Pollard had loved her with the love of an honest man, and that his life had been darkened, to say the least, by her inability to respond to his devotion. In this case she should have had the consolation of knowing that she had been guilty of no wilful, no conscious wrong, but, in her present mood, she was disposed to flagellate her soul for an imagined offence.

"He came to me," she reflected, "loving me from the first. Little idiot that I was, I did not understand. I liked him as a girl may like a boy, – for I was only a girl then, – and I did not dream that the affection he manifested toward me meant more than that sort of thing on his part. Those things which ought to have revealed to me his state of mind meant nothing more to me then than do the little gallantries and deferences which all men pay to all women. How bitterly he reproached me at the last for having deceived him and led him on with encouragements which I at least had not intended as such. Are all women born coquettes? Is it our cruel instinct to trifle with the souls of men, as little children love to torture their pets? Have we women no principles, no earnestness, no consciences – except afterward, when remorse awakens us? Are we blind, that we do not see, and deaf that we do not hear? Or is it our nature to be cruel, especially to those who love us and offer us the best that there is in their strong natures?

"I remember how we stood out there in the grounds, under the jessamine arbour, as the sun went down; and how at last, when I had made him understand, he plucked a sprig of the beautiful, golden flowers from the bunch that I held in my hand, and how I bade him beware, for that the jessamine is poisonous, and how he replied, 'Not more poisonous than it is to love a coquette.'

"I remember that he gave me no chance to answer, no opportunity to protest again my innocence of such intent as he had imputed to me in his passionate speech, but turned his back and stalked away, with that stride which I saw again to-day, as he paced his beat. That was two years ago – and to-day I have seen him again in such company as he would never have sought but for me, – the willing companion of ruffians, the associate of desperadoes, the messmate of thieves!"

Agatha was on her feet now, and nervously laying aside one after another of the little fripperies with which she had decorated her person that day. She found herself presently half-unconsciously searching for the gown that she must wear at dinner, though her never-failing maid had laid it out long before her home-coming, that it might be in readiness for her need.

A sudden thought came into the suffering girl's mind.

"These two men, whose lives are hurt by their love for me, will suffer far less than I shall. They are soldiers as strong to endure as they are strong to dare. They have occupation for all their waking hours. They will be upon the march, in battle, or otherwise actively employed all the time. In remembering more strenuous things they will forget their sorrows and throw aside their griefs as they cast away everything when they go into battle that may in any wise hinder their activity or embarrass their freedom. 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."

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.

X

In action

It was midnight when the battery to which Baillie was attached reached Manassas Junction. The men were weary and half-starved after three days of fighting and marching, and the horses, worn out with dragging the guns and caissons over well-nigh impassable roads, were famishing for water. But an effort to secure water and forage for them failed, and so did an effort to secure water and rations for the men.

For on the eve of the first great battle of the war the Southern army was in a state of semi-starvation which grew worse with every hour that brought fresh relays of troops but no new supplies of food. Already had begun that course of extraordinary mismanagement in the supply departments at Richmond which throughout the war kept the Army of Northern Virginia constantly half-starving or wholly starving, even when, as at Manassas, it lay in the midst of a land of abounding plenty.

All the efforts of the generals commanding in the field to remedy this state of things by drawing upon the granaries and smoke-houses round about them for supplies that were in danger of presently falling into the enemy's hands, were thwarted by the stupid obstinacy of a crack-brained commissary-general. It was his inexplicable policy, while the army lay at Manassas with an unused railroad reaching into the rich fields to the west, to forbid the purchase of food and forage there except by his own direct agents, who were required to send it all to Richmond, whence it was transported back again, in such meagre quantities as an already overtaxed single track railroad could manage to carry.

Red-tape was choking the army to death from the very beginning, and it continued to do so to the end, in spite of all remonstrances.

Even in the matter of water the men at Manassas were restricted to a few pints a day to each man for all uses, simply because the commanding general was not allowed the simple means of procuring a more adequate supply.

This, however, is not the place in which to set forth in detail those facts of perverse stupidity which have been fully stated in official reports, in General Beauregard's memoirs, and in other authoritative works. Such matters are mentioned herein only so far as they affected the events that go to make up the present story.

When the Army of the Shenandoah began to add its numbers to that already gathered at Manassas, a way out was found, so far at least as water was concerned, by sending the regiments and batteries, as fast as they came, to positions near Bull Run, some miles in front, where water at least was to be had. Baillie's command, worn out as it was, and suffering from hunger, was hurried through the camp and forced to march some weary miles farther before taking even that small measure of rest and sleep that the rapidly waning night allowed. It was nearly morning when the men and horses were permitted to drink together out of the muddy stream which was presently to mark the fighting-line between two armies in fierce battle for the mastery.

It was nearly sunrise when a cannon-shot broke the stillness of a peculiarly brilliant Sunday morning and summoned all the weary men to their posts. A little later the battery with which we are concerned received its orders and was moved into position on the line. Its complement of commissioned officers being short, Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram had command of the two guns which constituted the left section, and had a lieutenant's work to do.

Troops were being hurried hither and thither in what seemed to Baillie's inexperienced eyes a hopeless confusion. But as he watched, he saw order grow out of the chaos, – a manifestation of the fact that there was one mind in control, and that every movement, however meaningless it might seem, was part and parcel of a concerted plan, and was intended to have its bearing upon the result.

In the meanwhile the occasional report of a rifle had grown into a continuous rattle of musketry on the farther side of the stream, where the skirmishers were hotly at work, their firing being punctuated now and then by the deeper exclamation of a cannon. But the work of the day had not yet begun in earnest. The main line was not yet engaged, and would not be until the skirmishers should slowly fall back upon it from their position beyond the stream.

To men in line of battle this is the most trying of all war's experiences. Then it is that every man questions himself closely as to his ability to endure the strain. Nerves are stretched to a tension that threatens collapse. 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! It is at such a time, and not in the heat of battle, that men's courage is apt to falter, and that discipline alone holds them to their duty.

The strain was rather relieved of its intensity by the shrieking of a Hotchkiss shell, which presently burst in the midst of Baillie Pegram's section and not far from his person. Then came the less noisy but more nerve-racking patter of musket-balls, – few and scattering still, as the skirmish-lines were still well in front, – but deadly in their force, as was seen when two or three of the men suddenly sank to the ground in the midst of a stillness which was broken only by the whiz of the occasional bullets.

One man cried out with pain. The rest of those struck were still. The one who cried out was slightly wounded. The others were dead. And the battle was not yet begun.

At this moment came a courier with orders. Upon receiving them the captain hurriedly turned to Baillie, and said:

"Take your section across the Run, at the ford there just to the left. Take position with the skirmish-line and get your orders from its commander. Leave your caissons behind, and move at a gallop."

Baillie Pegram was too new to the business of war to understand precisely what all this meant. Had he seen a little more of war he would have guessed at once that the enemy was moving upon the Confederate left along the road that lay beyond the stream, and that his guns were needed to aid the skirmishers in the work to be done in front in preparation for the battle that had not yet burst in all its fury. He would have understood, too, from the order to leave his caissons behind, that the stand beyond the stream was not meant to be of long duration. The fifty shots he carried in each of his limber-chests would be quite enough to last him till orders should come to fall back across the stream again.

But he did not understand all this clearly. What he did understand was that he was under orders to take his guns across the stream and use them there as vigorously as he could till further orders should come.

As he emerged from the woods a few hundred yards beyond Bull Run, he found a skirmish-line of men lying down and contesting the ground inch by inch with another line like their own, beyond which he could see the heavy columns of the enemy marching steadily to turn the Confederate left flank and force it from its position. Notwithstanding his lack of experience in such matters, he saw instantly what was happening, and realised that this left wing of Beauregard's army was destined to receive the brunt of the enemy's attack. He wondered, in his ignorance, if Beauregard knew all this, and if somebody ought not to go and tell him of it.

He had no time to think beyond this, for at that moment the skirmish-line, under some order which he had not heard, gave way to the right and left, leaving a little space open for his guns. Planting them there he opened fire with shrapnel, which he now and then changed to canister when the enemy, in his eagerness, pressed forward to within scant distance of the slowly retiring skirmish-line of the Confederates.

Under orders Baillie fell back with the skirmishers, moving the guns by hand, and continuing to fire as he went.

As the Confederate skirmishers drew near the stream which they were to cross, the officer in command of them said to Pegram:

"Advance your guns a trifle, Sergeant-Major, and give them your heaviest fire for twenty-five seconds or so. When they recoil, limber up and take your guns across the creek as quickly as possible. I'll cover your movement."

Baillie did not perfectly understand the purpose of this, but he understood his orders, and very promptly obeyed them. Advancing his guns quickly to a little knoll thirty or forty yards in front, he opened fire with double charges of canister, each gun firing at the rate of three or four times a minute, and each vomiting a gallon of iron balls at each discharge into the faces of a line of men not a hundred yards away. At the same moment the riflemen of the skirmish-line rose to their feet, rushed forward with a yell that impressed Baillie as truly demoniacal, and delivered a murderous volley of Minie balls in aid of his canister. The combined fire was irresistible, as it was meant to be, and the Federal skirmishers fell back in some confusion in face of it.

Then the cool-headed leader of the skirmishers turned to Baillie and commanded:

"Now be quick. Take your guns across the creek at once. They'll be on us again in a minute with reinforcements, but I'll hold them back till you get the guns across – "

He had not finished his order when he fell, with a bullet in his brain, and his men, picking him up, laid him limply across his horse, which two of them hurried to the rear, passing within ten feet of Baillie Pegram as he struggled to get his guns across the run without wetting his ammunition.

"Poor, gallant fellow!" thought Baillie, as the corpse was borne past him. "He was only a captain, but he would have made himself a major-general presently, with his coolness and his determination. He died too soon!"