He didn’t know—he thought about three hours.
Mahalah came running in. “O my Lawd, Miss Margaret! O my Lawd, de Yankees comin’ up de big road lak er swarm o’ bees! O my Lawd, dey kills an’ eats you!”
“Nonsense, Mahalah! Be quiet! Tullius, go upstairs to the east room window and see how near they are.”
Tullius returned. “They’ve got a mile an’ a half yit, Miss Margaret, an’ they ain’t marchin’ fast. Just kind o’ strollin’.”
“How many?”
“Hundred or two.”
“Get the wagon as quickly as you can. If Jim can get down the farm road to the woods without their seeing him, the rest may be done. Tell Jim to hurry. Then you and he come and lift Captain Yeardley.”
She turned and went upstairs toward Richard’s room. Going, she spoke over her shoulder to her daughter. “Miriam, get everybody together and make them take it quietly. Tell them no one’s going to harm them!”
“Everybody” was not hard to get together. Counting out Tullius and Jim, there were only Aunt Ailsey and Mahalah, old Peggy, Martha and young Martha, William and Mat and Rose’s Husband. They were already out of cabin and kitchen and in from the home fields. Miriam gathered them on the side porch. They all adored her and she handled them with genius. Her thin cheeks had in each a splash of carmine, her eyes were unearthly large, dark and liquid. All that she said to them was that it was good manners to do so and so—or not to do so and so—in a contingency like the present. Ladies and gentlemen keep very quiet and dignified—and we are ladies and gentlemen—and that is all there is about it. “And here is the wagon, and now we’ll see Captain Yeardley off, and wish him a good journey, and then we’ll forget that he has ever been here. That’s manners that every one of us must show!”
Tullius and Jim brought the wounded officer downstairs on his mattress and laid him in the wagon. Old Patsy followed to nurse him, and they placed beside him, too, his uniform and hat and sword. He was flushed with fever and light-headed.