But the day of her revenge came. At negro balls in Richmond, guests were required to carry “passes,” and, in changing his coat Lawrence forgot his pass. Next day Lawrence was missing, and Molly came to me laughing to tears. “Come and look,” said she. “Here is the fine gentleman tied between two black niggers and marched off to jail.” She laughed and jeered so she could not stand without holding on to the window. Lawrence disregarded her
* * *
Page 218
and called to me at the top of his voice: “Please, ma’am, ask Mars Jeems to come take me out of this. I ain’t done nothin’.”
As soon as Mr. Chesnut came home I told him of Lawrence’s sad fall, and he went at once to his rescue. There had been a fight and a disturbance at the ball. The police had been called in, and when every negro was required to show his “pass,” Lawrence had been taken up as having none. He was terribly chopfallen when he came home walking behind Mr. Chesnut. He is always so respectable and well-behaved and stands on his dignity.
I went over to Mrs. Preston’s at Columbia. Camden had become simply intolerable to me. There the telegram found me, saying I must go to my mother, who was ill at her home here in Alabama. Colonel Goodwyn, his wife, and two daughters were going, and so I joined the party. I telegraphed Mr. Chesnut for Lawrence, and he replied, forbidding me to go at all; it was so hot, the cars so disagreeable, fever would be the inevitable result. Miss Kate Hampton, in her soft voice, said: “The only trouble in life is when one can’t decide in which way duty leads. Once know your duty, then all is easy.”
I do not know whether she thought it my duty to obey my husband. But I thought it my duty to go to my mother, as I risked nothing but myself.
We had two days of an exciting drama under our very noses, before our eyes. A party had come to Columbia who said they had run the blockade, had come in by flag of truce, etc. Colonel Goodwyn asked me to look around and see if I could pick out the suspected crew. It was easily done. We were all in a sadly molting condition. We had come to the end of our good clothes in three years, and now our only resource was to turn them upside down, or inside out, and in mending, darning, patching, etc.
Near me on the train to Alabama sat a young woman in a traveling dress of bright yellow; she wore a profusion
* * *
Page 219
of curls, had pink cheeks, was delightfully airy and easy in her manner, and was absorbed in a flirtation with a Confederate major, who, in spite of his nice, new gray uniform and two stars, had a very Yankee face, fresh, clean-cut, sharp, utterly unsunburned, florid, wholesome, handsome. What more in compliment can one say of one’s enemies? Two other women faced this man and woman, and we knew them to be newcomers by their good clothes. One of these women was a German. She it was who had betrayed them. I found that out afterward.
The handsomest of the three women had a hard, Northern face, but all were in splendid array as to feathers, flowers, lace, and jewelry. If they were spies why were they so foolish as to brag of New York, and compare us unfavorably with the other side all the time, and in loud, shrill accents? Surely that was not the way to pass unnoticed in the Confederacy.
A man came in, stood up, and read from a paper, “The surrender of Vicksburg.”1 I felt as if I had been struck a hard blow on the top of my head, and my heart took one of its queer turns. I was utterly unconscious: not long, I dare say. The first thing I heard was exclamations of joy and exultation from the overdressed party. My rage and humiliation were great. A man within earshot of this party had slept through everything. He had a greyhound face, eager and inquisitive when awake, but now he was as one of the seven sleepers.
Colonel Goodwyn wrote on a blank page of my book (one of De Quincey’s – the note is there now), that the sleeper was a Richmond detective.
1. Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. Since the close of 1862, it had again and again been assaulted by Grant and Sherman. It was commanded by Johnston and Pemberton, Pemberton being in command at the time of the surrender. John C. Pemberton was a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of West Point, and had served in the Mexican War.
* * *
Page 220
Finally, hot and tired out, we arrived at West Point, on the Chattahoochee River. The dusty cars were quite still, except for the giggling flirtation of the yellow gown and her major. Two Confederate officers walked in. I felt mischief in the air. One touched the smart major, who was whispering to Yellow Gown. The major turned quickly. Instantly, every drop of blood left his face; a spasm seized his throat; it was a piteous sight. And at once I was awfully sorry for him. He was marched out of the car. Poor Yellow Gown’s color was fast, but the whites of her eyes were lurid. Of the three women spies we never heard again. They never do anything worse to women, the high-minded Confederates, than send them out of the country. But when we read soon afterward of the execution of a male spy, we thought of the “major.”
At Montgomery the boat waited for us, and in my haste I tumbled out of the omnibus with Dr. Robert Johnson’s assistance, but nearly broke my neck. The thermometer was high up in the nineties, and they gave me a stateroom over the boiler. I paid out my Confederate rags of money freely to the maid in order to get out of that oven. Surely, go where we may hereafter, an Alabama steamer in August lying under the bluff with the sun looking down, will give one a foretaste, almost an adequate idea, of what’s to come, as far as heat goes. The planks of the floor burned one’s feet under the bluff at Selma, where we stayed nearly all day – I do not know why.
Met James Boykin, who had lost 1,200 bales of cotton at Vicksburg, and charged it all to Jeff Davis in his wrath, which did not seem exactly reasonable to me. At Portland there was a horse for James Boykin, and he rode away, promising to have a carriage sent for me at once. But he had to go seven miles on horseback before he reached my sister Sally’s, and then Sally was to send back. On that lonely riverside Molly and I remained with dismal swamps on every side, and immense plantations, the white people
* * *
Page 221
few or none. In my heart I knew my husband was right when he forbade me to undertake this journey.
There was one living thing at this little riverside inn- a white man who had a store opposite, and oh, how drunk he was! Hot as it was, Molly kept up a fire of pine knots. There was neither lamp nor candle in that deserted house. The drunken man reeled over now and then, lantern in hand; he would stand with his idiotic, drunken glare, or go solemnly staggering round us, but always bowing in his politeness. He nearly fell over us, but I sprang out of his way as he asked, “Well, madam, what can I do for you?”
Shall I ever forget the headache of that night and the fright, My temples throbbed with dumb misery. I sat upon a chair, Molly on the floor, with her head resting against my chair. She was as near as she could get to me, and I kept my hand on her. “Missis,” said she, “now I do believe you are scared, scared of that poor, drunken thing. If he was sober I could whip him in a fair fight, and drunk as he is I kin throw him over the banister, ef he so much as teches you. I don’t value him a button!”
Taking heart from such brave words I laughed. It seemed an eternity, but the carriage came by ten o’clock, and then, with the coachman as our sole protector, we poor women drove eight miles or more over a carriage road, through long lanes, swamps of pitchy darkness, with plantations on every side.
The house, as we drew near, looked like a graveyard in a nightmare, so vague and phantom-like were its outlines.
I found my mother ill in bed, feeble still, but better than I hoped to see her. “I knew you would come,” was her greeting, with outstretched hands. Then I went to bed in that silent house, a house of the dead it seemed. I supposed I was not to see my sister until the next day. But she came in some time after I had gone to bed. She kissed me quietly, without a tear. She was thin and pale, but her voice was calm and kind.