“ ‘He went away sorrowful, leaving me broken hearted. I could appear in public now and I returned to my profession. The beauty which had been so great an aid to me before, was impaired, and the old vivacity was gone. But I could play still and sing, and with my violin and my voice I easily earned enough for all my wants, until I got the scar. After that I sank into a wretched poverty, and was glad at last to secure employment as a stage dresser. My illness here has lost me that—.’
“I cannot tell you any more, Cousin Arthur. It pains me too much. But I am going to take my mother with me to America and provide for her in some way that she will permit. She has recovered from the surgery now, and I have simply taken possession of her. She refuses to go to Pocahontas, or in any other way to take her position as my father’s widow. But if this war comes, as you fear it will, she has decided to go into service as a field nurse, and you must arrange that for her.
“I understand now why my father forbade me to learn music, and why he taught me that a woman must have a master. I can even guess what Jefferson Peyton meant when I rejected his suit. My father, I suppose, planned to provide a master for me; but I decline to serve the one he selected. I am a woman and a proud one. I will never consent to be disposed of in marriage by the orders of other people as princesses and other chattel women are. But, oh, you cannot know how sorrowful my soul is, and how I long to be at home again! I hope the war will come. That is wicked in me, I suppose, but I cannot help it. I must have occupation or I shall go mad. I shall set to work at once, on my return, fitting up our laboratory, and there I’ll find work enough to fill all my hours, and it will be useful, humane, patriotic work, such as it is worth a woman’s while to do.”
XXXV
THE BIRTH OF WAR
IT was the seventeenth of April, 1861. It was the fateful day on which the greatest, the most terrible, the most disastrous of modern wars was born.
On that day the long struggle of devoted patriots to keep Virginia in the Union and to throw all her influence into the scale of peace, had ended in failure.
A few days before, Fort Sumter had been bombarded and had fallen. Still the Virginia convention had resisted all attempts to drag or force the Mother State into secession. Then had come Mr. Lincoln’s call upon Virginia for her quota of troops with which to make war upon the seceding sister states of the South and the alternative of secession or dishonor presented itself to this body of Union men. They decided at once, and on that seventeenth day of April they made a great war possible and indeed inevitable, by adopting an ordinance of secession and casting Virginia’s fate, Virginia’s strength, and Virginia’s matchless influence, into the scale of disunion and war.
Richmond was in delirium—a delirium which moved men to ecstatic joy or profound grief, or deeply rooted apprehension, according to their several temperaments. The thoughtless went parading excitedly up and down the streets singing songs, and making a gala time of it, wearing cockades by day and carrying torches by night, precisely as if some long hoped for and supremely desired good fortune had come upon the land of their birth. The more thoughtful looked on and kept silent. But mostly the spirit manifested was one of grim determination to meet fate—be it good or bad—with stout hearts and calmly resolute minds.
In that purpose all men were as one now. The vituperation with which the people’s representatives in the convention had been daily assailed for their hesitation to secede, was absolutely hushed. The sentiment of affection for the Union which had been growing for seventy years and more, gave way instantly to a determination to win a new independence or sacrifice all in the attempt.
Jubal A. Early, who had from the beginning opposed secession with all his might, reckoning it not only insensate folly but a political crime as well, voted against it to the last, and then, instantly sent to Gov. Letcher a tender of his services in the war, in whatever capacity his state might see fit to employ him. In the same way William C. Wickham, an equally determined opponent of secession, quitted his seat in the convention only to make hurried preparation for his part as a military leader on the Southern side.