XXXIII
_UNDER RED LEAVES_
Agatha's note, coming after her curt message, was a sore puzzle to itsrecipient. One might interpret it to mean anything or nothing. It wascourteous enough, but its courtesy was colourless and cold. It was sucha note as might have been addressed to the veriest stranger. There wasnothing in it to reassure the master of Warlock as to Agatha's view ofhis conduct, nothing to allay his fear that she had resented hisinquiries as an impertinence. On the contrary, if that were the meaningof the former silence and of the morning's message, this note wasprecisely such as a sensitively self-respecting young woman might havewritten when compelled by his persistence to write to him at all.
It was a very bad quarter of an hour with him, during which he read themissive a dozen times, unable to make out what it meant.
But Baillie Pegram was not a man to despair until he must, or to restunder a painful uncertainty. It was his habit of mind to meet dangersand difficulties half-way, and question them insistently concerningtheir extent. He called Sam, therefore, and bade him bring theeasy-going pacer which he had begun to ride for exercise, and mountingthe animal he set off at a gentle gait toward The Forest.
He appeared there half an hour before the four o'clock dinner wasannounced, and his welcome by his hostesses, Miss Blair and her sister,was all the warmer for the reason that his arrival indicated, moresurely than any message from Warlock could have done, the extent of hisconvalescence.
Perhaps he was welcome also on another account. For the Misses Blairwere deeply concerned about Agatha, and they hoped that he mightpersuade her, as they had failed to do, to give up her plan of going toRichmond and seeking service as a hospital nurse or in some othercapacity in which a woman might employ herself. They were deeplyconcerned as to the matter of nursing for the reason that it was deemedhighly improper in Virginia for any but married women to nurse in themilitary hospitals, where the patients, of course, were men.
Agatha had told them as little as possible of her affairs. She had saidnothing whatever of her quarrel with her aunts, only telling them thatshe had left The Oaks finally, and asking them to send thither for suchpersonal belongings as she had there, so that she might remain overnightat The Forest, and go to Richmond on the morrow. The younger Miss Blairhad volunteered to go in person on this errand, and from her the ladiesat The Oaks had first learned that Agatha had finally quitted the placein her resentment. They were greatly distressed, and immediately orderedtheir carriage and drove to The Forest, where Baillie Pegram found themon his arrival.
Their pleadings with Agatha had been earnest, insistent, and whollyfruitless. She had manifested no anger, and they had discovered noresentment in her voice as she replied to them. She had made nocomplaints and uttered no reproaches. To all their pleadings she hadanswered, simply:
"I have quite decided upon my course. I shall not change my plans."
The good dames were in such despair that they even welcomed Baillie'scoming.
"We have done everything, said everything," they hastily explained tohim; "why, we have almost _apologised_ to the child, and all to nopurpose. Perhaps you can have some influence, Captain Pegram. Will younot speak to her?"
"I shall speak to her, of course," was his reply. "I am here indeed forthat express purpose. But I shall certainly not try to dissuade her fromany course that she may desire to pursue. That would be an impertinenceof which I am incapable."
The Oaks ladies flushed as he spoke the word "impertinence," rememberingtheir own recent use of the term in connection with his conduct. PerhapsAgatha had told him of that in her letter, they thought. If so it wouldbe most embarrassing for them to dine in his company and hers. So,pleading their great agitation of mind as their excuse, they returned atonce to The Oaks, leaving Baillie and Agatha as the only guests of theMisses Blair at dinner.
When left alone with the young woman after dinner, the master of Warlockopened the conversation as promptly as it was his custom to open firewhen the proper moment had come.
"Agatha," he began, as the two stood in the piazza in the glow of theearly setting sun and in the midst of the blood-red Virginia creepersthat embowered the place, "Agatha, do you remember the words I spoke toyou on the picket-line at Fairfax Court-house?" Then without waiting forher reply, he continued: "I have come to you now to say those words overagain, at a more fitting time and in a more appropriate place. I loveyou. I have loved you ever since those days in Richmond, those preciousdays when I first began to know you for what you are. I loved you allthrough that cruel time when, in obedience to what you believed was yourduty, you decreed that there should be 'war between me and thee.' Andnow after all that you have done and dared for me, my love for a natureso pure, so noble, so heroic, passes understanding. I have a right totell you this now. Tell me in return, if it displeases you?"
With that absolute truthfulness which was the basis of her nature,Agatha replied as frankly as he had spoken.
"It pleases me," she said. "I had not expected this. I thought I hadrepulsed you so rudely that--oh! Baillie, you will never know."
In a torrent of tears that were a more welcome answer than any wordscould have been, she buried her face in her hands.
Half an hour later these two sat by a crackling fire, arrangingpractical affairs.
"You do not wish to go back to The Oaks, then, even for a few weeks, andto save appearances?"
"No, Baillie, I cannot. I should have to act a lie every hour of my staythere. I should be obliged to pretend friendship for my aunts when Ifeel nothing of the kind. They have insulted the memory of mygrandfather, and they have spoken of you in a way that never so long asI live will I let any human being speak of you without resenting it. Ido not care to 'save appearances,' as you put it. Appearances may lookout for themselves. 'Saving appearances' is only a sneaking way oflying. No. I will go to some friends in Richmond, if they will let me--"
"Why not go to Warlock?" he asked.
"Why, that would outrage the proprieties beyond forgiveness now thatwe--well, under the circumstances."
So Mistress Agatha did "care for appearances" and conventions after all.But Baillie did not think of that.
"Why not go there as the mistress of Warlock--as my wife?" he asked."Why should we not be married to-morrow at Christ-Church-in-the-Woods? Iam a soldier. I shall be strong enough to return to duty presently. WhenI do so I shall want to feel that you are safe at Warlock, that you aremine, my wife to cherish while I live. Say that it shall be so, Agatha!Let me send word to Mr. Berkeley, the rector, to-night, that we shall beat the church at noon to-morrow!"
"'_'At Christ-church-in-the-wood_'"]
The girl thought for a moment, and then said:
"Yes, that will be best. For then, if you fall ill or are wounded again,I shall have a right to go to you and care for you. Let it be so. Nowyou must not ride to Warlock on horseback to-night. It is very cool, andyou have already overtaxed your strength. I shall ask Miss Blair to sendyou over in her carriage."
When he had gone Agatha announced the news to her hostesses andstraightway set about writing a score of little notes to be despatchedby negro messengers early in the morning, to her friends in theneighbourhood. To her aunts she wrote simply, and without formal addressof any kind, the bare statement:
"Captain Baillie Pegram and I are to be married to-morrow, Thursday, atnoon, at Christ-Church-in-the-Woods."
This note she sent before going to bed. When it was received at TheOaks, a conversation ensued which was largely ejaculatory:
"How shocking!"
"Yes, and how scandalous!"
"What will people say!"
"The girl must be bewitched!"
"And yet it is better than nursing soldiers, and she an unmarriedwoman!"
"Perhaps. At any rate it is clear that we can exercise no restraintover the poor, headstrong child."
"No, Captain Pegram has completely undermined our influence. Of coursewe cannot lend our countenance to the affair by attending!"
/>
"I think we must. Otherwise people will talk. They might even call it arunaway match."
"That would be too dreadful!"
"Yes. I think we must put the best face we can on the affair byattending. In these war-times everything is topsyturvy. Ah, me! What apity we couldn't have had the child's bringing-up to ourselves!"
"Yes, we should have made a very different woman of her. Anyhow, withthis marriage all our responsibility for her will be at an end. Andafter all, perhaps it is as well to have it so, for if she had remainedsingle there is no knowing at what moment she would have done somethingelse as scandalous as her going North to nurse Mr. Pegram was."
And so they cackled for half the night.
XXXIV
_THE END AND AFTER_
A few weeks later came the news that a campaign was on and battleimpending. Burnside had replaced McClellan in command of the Federalarmies in Virginia. He had at once begun a campaign against Richmond,moving by way of Fredericksburg. There Lee met him, posting the Southernveterans on the circling hills behind the town and awaiting hisadversary's assault.
Baillie Pegram had resumed command of his battery now, but no longerwith the light guns that he had used while galloping with Stuart. Acaptured Federal battery of six twelve-pounder Napoleons had beenassigned to him, and with these he took position on the crest of Marye'sHeights, where there was presently to occur one of the most heroicbattles of all the war.
It was nearly mid-December when Burnside crossed the river and moved toassault Lee. His army, though greater than Lee's, was not quite so greatin numbers as it had been when McClellan had commanded it nearRichmond's gates; but it was greatly more formidable in all otherrespects. The men who composed it were war-seasoned veterans now, andits officers had fully learned their trade of command. Moreover the armyhad successfully held its own against Lee at Sharpsburg, and theconfidence inspired by that event was an important element of strength.But in Burnside the Federal administration had again failed to find aleader capable of so employing the North's stupendous resources of men,money, and material as to crush the splendid resistance of the Army ofNorthern Virginia.
So Burnside failed, as McDowell, and McClellan, and Pope had failedbefore, and as Hooker, who succeeded him in command, failed even moreconspicuously, when, in the following spring, he made the campaign ofChancellorsville.
After Chancellorsville Lee crossed the Potomac again. Then cameGettysburg, which proved to be the turning-point in the war, so far asthe armies of Virginia were concerned.
For before the next campaign opened--the campaign of the Wilderness,Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbour--the North had recognised in Grant aleader who knew what use to make of the means at his command, and, moreimportant still, a leader who clearly saw that the strength of theConfederacy lay, not in the possession of cities or the holding ofstrategic positions, but in the superb fighting force of Lee's army.Grant, in supreme command of all the armies of the Union, directed thework of all of them to the one task of crushing Lee, and in the end heaccomplished it. When that was done, this most stupendous war in modernhistory was over.
In all these epoch-making events the master of Warlock did his part,with a devotion that wrought a colonel's stars upon his collar and addedhonour to the name he bore. During the long winter of 1863-64, while themud-bound armies lay helplessly idle in winter quarters, Baillie hadAgatha with him in his log hut near Orange Court-house, and before thecampaign opened at the Wilderness in the spring, an heir to Warlock wasborn in camp,--a child veritably "cradled in a revolution."
Agatha was near her husband, too, during the long siege of Petersburg,though she could not be actually with him; for his place was on thelines, where the "scream of shot, and burst of shell, and bellowing ofthe mortars" were ceaseless by night and by day, for the space of eightmonths, before the end came. But she was always near at hand, as one ofthat heroic band of women who stayed and starved in the beleagueredcity, heedless of the storm of huge shells that daily wrecked buildingsthere and tore cavernous trenches in the streets. She remained there tothe end as the others did, in order that they might minister in loving,life-saving ways to the wounded, who were daily brought in from thelines on ever-busy litters.
When at last the attenuated lines that had so long and so heroicallyheld their ground against an ever-increasing disparity of numbers, werebroken, and Lee ordered the instant evacuation of the city, Agatha madeher way on foot to Warlock, and there, with her babe, awaited the returnof the man she loved, and whose voice she fancied she could hear in thereceding echoes of the cannon.
He came at last,--ten days later,--and Agatha greeted him with lovinglooks and words that cheered him in that despondency that at first madeevery returning Confederate lament that he had not been permitted toshare the fate of those who had fallen facing the foe.
Over the mantel in that family room which in Virginia was always called"the chamber," Agatha hung up the artillery sword, the pistols, thecolonel's sash, and the Mexican spurs that the master of Warlock hadworn in his campaigning.
"Those are for the little boy to see daily as he grows up, so that hemay know what manner of man his mother wishes him to become--what mannerof man his mother loves and reveres."
Then she brought two other mementos and hung them also on the wall. Onewas the sergeant-major's jacket on which she had stitched the chevronson the day before Manassas.
"So you found the old jacket, did you?" asked Baillie. "I kept it as areminder of you."
"Yes--I know. I found it in the little closet where you had hung it. Ishould have left it there always, just as your hands had placed it,if--if you had not come back to Warlock again."
She was weeping now, but her face was joyous in spite of the tears. Forhad he not come back to her, strong and well and still young? And shouldnot they two find ways in which to meet their present poverty with stouthearts and heads erect?
"We must 'look up,' Baillie, 'and not down--forward and not backward.'We have each other left--"
"And the boy--_our_ boy!" he interrupted. "Yes, we have enough to livefor--enough to enrich our lives to the end. And thanks to you I havecourage left both to do and to endure."
"Courage? Of course. You could never lose that and still live. It is asvital a part of you as your head itself is."
Then she brought the other memento and fastened it into its place. Itwas a faded red feather.
"I have carried that on my person," she said, "ever since that day atFairfax Court-house when you first told me that you loved me."
* * * * *
A few months later Marshall Pollard came. He hobbled upon a cork legwhich he had not yet learned to use with ease, but the old smile was onhis face, the old cheer in his voice.
"Agatha," he said, "I should like to occupy my old quarters here duringmy stay, if I may. You see, Baillie, it is as I told you long yearsago--I must ask leave of my lady now. But I don't mind, as my ladyhappens to be Agatha instead of some other."
"And your other prediction is fulfilled, too," answered the master ofWarlock, "the prediction that you made out there by the plantation gate.The old life of Virginia is completely gone, the old conditions havebeen utterly swept away. We can never re-create them. We can never bringthe old life back, and perhaps it is better so. We Virginians had forgenerations lived in the past. Our manner of life and all ourconceptions of living were those of a century ago. We had not kept stepwith progress. We have been rudely shaken out of the lethargic ease thatwas so delightful and perhaps so bad for us. We are free now to create anew life in tune with that of the modern world.
"And we shall do that right manfully. We shall develop the resources ofour region, and the South will grow more prosperous than it ever wasbefore. Better still, our children will be educated in the gospel ofwork, and learn the lesson that was never taught to you and me till warcame to teach us, that it is in strenuous endeavour, and not inparalysing ease, that a man finds the greatest happiness in life."
"Tell me of your plans, Baillie."
"They are not mine. They are Agatha's. We have arranged to convert thisplantation, and The Oaks, and all the land round about--for the companywe have formed has bought every acre that could be had--into a nest ofcoal mines. The deposit is a rich one, you know, and I have had nodifficulty in getting practical men with abundant capital to join me inthe enterprise. We are already building a branch railroad to carry ourproduct. But there is to be no shaft sunk within half a mile of WarlockHouse, so that I shall be 'master of Warlock' still. Tell us now of yourown affairs, Marshall."
"There is not much to tell. Thanks to Agatha's wonderful economy inspending, I still have investments at the North which yield me asufficient income for my small needs. I have divided my plantation intolittle farms, and have let them to the best of the negroes and to somewhite farmers. I am to get my rentals in the shape of a share of thecrops. This sets me free to do the work that best pleases me. You know Ihave been writing in a small way with some success ever since I grew up.I shall write some books now. I think I have some messages to deliverthat some at least of my fellow men may be the better or the happier forhearing."
"But you will want to marry some day."
"No. My 'some day' died years ago."
THE END.
* * * * *
The Master of Warlock
By GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON, Author of "Dorothy South," "A CarolinaCavalier." Six Illustrations by C. D. Williams.
"THE MASTER OF WARLOCK" has an interesting plot, and is full of purityof sentiment, charm of atmosphere, and stirring doings. One of thetypical family feuds of Virginia separates the lovers at first; but,when the hero goes to the war, the heroine undergoes many hardships andadventures to serve him, and they are happily united in the end.
* * * * *
Dorothy South
A STORY OF VIRGINIA JUST BEFORE THE WAR
Baltimore Sun says:
"No writer in the score and more of novelists now exploiting the Southern field can, for a moment, compare in truth and interest to Mr. Eggleston. In the novel before us we have a peculiarly interesting picture of the Virginian in the late fifties. We are taken into the life of the people. We are shown the hearts of men and women. Characters are clearly drawn, and incidents are skilfully presented."
* * * * *
A Carolina Cavalier
A STIRRING TALE OF WAR AND ADVENTURE
Philadelphia Home Advocate says:
"As a love story, 'A Carolina Cavalier' is sweet and true; but as a patriotic novel, it is grand and inspiring. We have seldom found a stronger and simpler appeal to our manhood and love of country."
* * * * *
The Captain
By CHURCHILL WILLIAMS, author of "J. Devlin--Boss." Illustrated by A. I.Keller.
Who is the Captain? thousands of readers of this fine book will beasking. It is a story of love and war, of scenes and characters beforeand during the great civil conflict. It has lots of color and movement,and the splendid figure naming the book dominates the whole.
* * * * *
J. Devlin--Boss
A ROMANCE OF AMERICAN POLITICS.
Mary E. Wilkins says:
"I am delighted with your book. Of all the first novels, I believe yours is the very best. The novel is American to the core. The spirit of the times is in it. It is inimitably clever. It is an amazing first novel, and no one except a real novelist could have written it."
The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story Page 33