The room stifled her and she ran hurriedly down into the street, where a few startled women and old men had rushed at the first roll of the cannon. As she stood among them, straining her eyes from end to end of the little village, her heart beat in her throat and she could only quaver out an appeal for news.
“Where is it? Doesn't any one know anything? What does it mean?”
“It means a battle, Miss, that's one thing,” remarked on obliging by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. “Bless you, I kin a'most taste the powder.” He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. “To think that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight,” he pursued regretfully, “when I could have set right here at home and had it all in old Virginny. Well, well, that comes of hurryin' the Lord afo' he's ready.”
He rambled on excitedly, but Betty, frowning with impatience, turned from him and walked rapidly up and down the single street, where the voices of the guns growled through the muffling distance. “That killed how many? how many?” she would say at each long roll, and again, “How many died that moment, and was one Dan?”
Up and down the little village, through the heavy sunshine and the white dust, among the whimpering women and old men, she walked until the day wore on and the shadows grew longer across the street. Once a man had come with the news of a sharp repulse, and in the early afternoon a deserter straggled in with the cry that the enemy was marching upon the village. It was not until the night had fallen, when the wounded began to arrive on baggage trains, that the story of the day was told, and a single shout went up from the waiting groups. The Confederacy was established! Washington was theirs by right of arms, and tomorrow the young army would dictate terms of peace to a great nation! The flags waved, women wept, and the wounded soldiers, as they rolled in on baggage cars, were hailed as the deliverers of a people. The new Confederacy! An emotion half romantic, half maternal filled Betty as she bent above an open wound—for it was in her blood to do battle to the death for a belief, to throw herself into a cause as into the arms of a lover. She was made of the stuff of soldiers, and come what might she would always take her stand upon her people's side.
There were cheers and sobs in the little street about her; in the distance a man was shouting for the flag, and nearer by a woman with a lantern in her hand was searching among the living for her dead. The joy and the anguish of it entered into the girl like wine. She felt her pulses leap and a vigour that was not her own nerved her from head to foot. With that power of ardent sacrifice which lies beneath all shams in the Southern heart, she told herself that no endurance was too great, no hope too large with which to serve the cause.
The exaltation was still with her when, a little later, she went up to her room and knelt down to thank God. Her people's simple faith was hers also, and as she prayed with her brow on her clasped hands it was as if she gave thanks to some great warrior who had drawn his sword in defence of the land she loved. God was on her side, supreme, beneficent, watchful in little things, as He has been on the side of all fervent hearts since the beginning of time.
But after her return to Uplands in midsummer she suffered a peculiar restlessness from the tranquil August weather. The long white road irritated her with its aspect of listless patience, and at times she wanted to push back the crowding hills and leave the horizon open to her view. When a squadron of cavalry swept along the turnpike her heart would follow it like a bird while she leaned, with straining eyes, against a great white column. Then, as the last rider was blotted out into the landscape, she would clasp her hands and walk rapidly up and down between the lilacs. It was all waiting—waiting—waiting—nothing else.
“Something must happen, mamma, or I shall go mad,” she said one day, breaking in upon Mrs. Ambler as she sorted a heap of old letters in the library.
“But what? What?” asked Virginia from the shadow of the window seat. “Surely you don't want a battle, Betty?”