Then to ride away into the night, to fight again for the flag he loved, and that to him meant more than home, more than family—ah! more than the love of the woman who was long afterward to come into his life, and to console him somewhat for the fair sister he had lost.
For he did love her, quite completely. Is it not odd, when one considers the matter, that the fair sister—who would have been my aunt, and who never perhaps existed except in father’s fancy, but concerning whom I have heard him tell so many touching tales—is it not odd that I have never succeeded in inventing a satisfactory name for her? Father never—if I remember correctly—gave her a name and I have never succeeded in doing so.
How often have I tried and without success! Ophelia, Cornelia, Emily, Violet, Eunice. You see the difficulty? It must have a quaint and southern sound and must suggest—what must it not suggest?
But father’s tale must have its proper dénouement. One could trust the tale-teller for that. Even had he lived in the days of the movies and had the dénouement quite killed his story—for movie purposes, at least in the northern towns, which would have been the best market—even in the face of all of such difficulties which he fortunately did not have to meet, one could be quite sure of the dénouement.
And he made it splashy. It was at the dreadful battle of Gettysburg, late in the war and on the third of July too. The Confederates had such a dreadful way of getting off on just the wrong foot on the very eve of our national holiday. Vicksburg and Gettysburg for Fourth of July celebrations. Surely it was, what, during the World War, would have been called, “bad war psychology.”
There can be no doubt that father had been a soldier of some sort during the Civil War and so, as was natural, he would give his tale a soldier’s dénouement, sacrificing even the beloved and innocent younger sister to his purpose (to be brought back to life—oh, many, many times later, and made to serve in many future tales).
It was the second day of that great, that terrible battle of Gettysburg, father had picked upon to serve as the setting for the end of his yarn.
That was a moment! All over the North the people stood waiting; farmers stopped working in the fields and drove into northern towns, waiting for the click of the little telegraph instruments; country doctors let the sick lie unattended and stood with all the others in the streets of towns, where was no running in and out of stores. The whole North stood waiting, listening. No time for talk now.
Ah! that Confederate General Lee—the neat quiet Sunday-school superintendent among generals! One could never tell what he would do next. Was it not all planned that the war should be fought out on southern soil?—and here he had brought a great army of his finest troops far into the North.
Everyone waited and listened. No doubt the South waited and listened too.