If the part that the men played in the war must be passed over in silence as too large for this history, how much more impossible would it be to describe fitly the part that the women performed. It was a harder part to fill, yet they filled it to the brim, good measure, overflowing. It is no disparagement to the men to say that whatever courage they displayed, it was less than that which the women showed. Wherever a Southern woman stood during those four years, there in her small person was a garrison of the South, impregnable.
Year after year the mills of war ground steadily array after array, and crushed province after province, and still the ranks filled and poured with intrepid daring into the abyss of destruction, to be ground like their predecessors to dust; until at the end there was nothing left to grind. Some day the historian, annalist or novelist, may arise to tell the mighty story, but meantime this pen must pass it by as too great a theme, and deal with the times that come after.
One or two incidents, however, must be mentioned to fill the break and explain what came afterward.
Colonel Gray, who had been early promoted, fell at the head of his regiment on one of those great days which are the milestones of history.
His body was brought home and buried in the old grave-yard at Red Rock among generations of Grays, of whom, as old Mr. Langstaff, who had been bodily haled back to his parish by his congregation, said to the neighbors and servants about the grave, not one was a better or a braver man, or a truer gentleman. Colonel Gray’s burial marked one of the steps of the war in that retired neighborhood.
When it was all over, and the neighbors had gone home, and the servants had retired to their quarters, hushed to that vague quietude that follows the last putting away in the earth of those who have been near to us, Jacquelin came out of the office where he had held that last interview with his father, and walked into his mother’s room. His shoulders were square and his figure erect. Mrs. Gray rose from her knees as he entered, and stood before him in her black dress, her face deadly white; her eyes, full of fear, fastened on his face.
“Mamma—.” He stopped as if that were all he had to say, and, perhaps, it was; for Mrs. Gray seated herself calmly.
“Yes, my son.” The fine, sad eyes grew wistful. How like he was to his father!
—“Because, you know, there ought to be one of us in the old company, mamma,” he said, quite as though he had spoken the other sentence.