SYMPHONY OF LIFE.
MOVEMENT IV.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
During the night of this 18th of October, while we were making our toilsome advance upon the enemy, a Virginia soldier, wounded in the battle of Winchester, lay in a small room of a house in the edge of Middletown; around which village the battle of Cedar Creek was chiefly fought. Upon some bedding, spread upon the floor, lay a young woman, his cousin; who, having heard that he had been hard hit, had made her way to the enemy’s pickets, and, after some parleying, gained permission to pass within their lines and nurse her wounded relative. This young woman had, since the beginning of the war, passed her life, as one might say, in our hospitals. But her present position, within the enemy’s lines, was a trying one. It so happened that between the Federal officer who occupied a room in the same house and herself a strong antipathy soon grew up. The little nurse was too busy attending to the wants of her wounded cousin to leave his side often; but being under the same roof with the Federal officer, they met, in a casual manner, not infrequently. These meetings he contrived to make very disagreeable, by continually attempting to force political discussions upon her. But she, on her side, managed to render them far more exasperating to him.
He that would get the better of a woman had best finish her with a club at once and be done with it; he is sure to get the worst of it in a tongue-battle. It may be a washerwoman opening on you with Gatling-gun invective, and sweeping you from the face of the earth; or a dainty society belle, with a dropping sharp-shooter fire of soft-voiced sarcasm,—in either case you shall wish that you had held your peace.
And so this big Federal colonel never had an encounter with the little rebel nurse but he gnashed his teeth and raged for hours afterwards. She always contrived, in the subtlest way, and without saying so, to make him feel that she did not look upon him as a gentleman. One day, for example, he had been carefully explaining to her in how many ways the Northern people were superior to the Southern.
“But I don’t believe,” added he, with evident acrimony, “that you F. F. V.’s think there is one gentleman in the whole North. This arrogance on your part is really one main cause of the war.”
“I can readily believe you,—for I understand the feeling. But really you do us an injustice. I know, personally, a number of Northern gentlemen. In New York, for instance” (the colonel was from that city), “I am acquainted with the ——— family and the ———s and the ———s, do you know them?”
The colonel hesitated.
“No?” said she, in soft surprise. “Ah, you should lose no time in making their acquaintance on your return to the city. They are very nice. But I hear my patient calling. Good-day!”
The colonel knew, and he saw plainly that she knew, that he could no more enter one of those houses than he could fly. He could not answer her. All that was left him was to hate her, and this he did with his whole heart; and all aristocrats, living and dead.