I have heard of many generous deeds like this done by Belle Boyd. Once, when riding out to review some troops near Winchester, she met a soldier, a mere boy, trudging along painfully on his bare feet. She took off her own shoes and made him put them on; they were fine cloth gaiters laced at the side, and trimmed with patent leather. Some one remonstrated; the shoes would not last the boy long enough to pay for her sacrifice.
“Oh,” she said, “if it rests his poor young feet only a little while, I am repaid. He is not old enough to be away from his mother.”
She did not spend another night with us. She seemed to feel that she had the weight of the Confederacy on her shoulders, and took the afternoon train for Richmond.
CHAPTER VI
A FAITHFUL SLAVE AND A HOSPITAL WARD
Not long after this I had to give up my room to Governor Bailey of Florida and his family. They had come on in search of their son, whom they had for months believed to be dead, and who, they had only recently learned, was alive and in the mountains near Culpeper Court-house.
It seems that young Bailey had been shot at the battle of Cedar Mountain and left on the field for dead. An old negro, his body-servant, had carried him off by stealth to a hut in the woods, and there, with such simple resources as he had, had dressed and bandaged the wound. The hut was a mere shell of a house, a habitation for bats and owls; it had been unused so long that no paths led to it, and Uncle Reuben’s chief object in carrying his master there was to hide him from the Yankees. He had no medicine, no doctor, no help, the master was ill for a long time from his wounds and with a slow fever, and through it all Uncle Reuben never left him except at night to forage for both. Food in the Confederacy was far from plentiful, and under the circumstances almost impossible to get. The hardships they endured seem inconceivable to-day. Afraid to show himself lest in doing so he should turn his master over into the hands of the dreaded Yankees, the faithful old servant saw no way of communicating with the family. He was in a strange country; he could not leave his charge, alone and desperately ill, long enough to seek advice and assistance, and, besides, how was he to know the friend who would help him from the man who might betray him? He knew but one token – the Confederate uniform, and that was not always to be trusted, for spies wore it.
Confederate troops must have passed near his hiding-place several times, but in his anxiety to save his master from the Federals, the negro hid him from the Confederates as well.
It happened at last that a party of skirmishers who had frequently deployed along the obscure roads intersecting the country, noticed, rising from the depths of the forest, a thin streak of smoke suggesting deserters or spies, and began to investigate. So, it happened that they came upon the hut, and a poor, old, half-starved negro watching what seemed to be little more than a human skeleton. When convinced that his discoverers were really Confederates, his joy and eagerness knew no bounds.
“Ef any uv you gentlemen will jes send a ’spatch to Ole Marster,” he said tremulously, “Ole Marster’ll be hyer toreckly. He’ll be hyer jes ez quick ez de kyars kin git him hyer. We ain’t got no money. But Ole Marster’ll pay fur de ’spatch jes ez soon ez he comes. Ole Marster’s rich. He’ll pay fur anything anybody do fur Mars Hugh, an’ be thankful ter do it. Ole Marster’ll come arter Mars Hugh jes ez quick ez I kin git him word. He’ll pay anybody fur evvything.”
The soldiers hardly knew what to do; perhaps they never considered that they could do anything but what they did: ride away and leave behind them the pair in the hut. Perhaps, poor fellows, there was nothing else they could do. Comfortable hospitals for Southern soldiers were scarce, and the Confederate soldier had little to give to any one, even to his sick comrade.
The negro, the guardian in this instance, was not anxious to have his charge moved. His whole concern was “to git word to Ole Marster.”
“I kin take kyeer uv him,” he insisted, “jes lak I bin doin’ ’twell Ole Marster come. Den he’ll know what to do. Mars Hugh ain’t fitten to move now. Ef twarn’t done jes right, he couldn’t stan’ it, case he’s too weakly. ’Twon’t do fur no strange folks to tech him nor ’sturb him, lessen dey knows how. Mars Hugh jes same ez er baby.”
They gave the negro the rations they had with them, and the whisky in their canteens – it was all they had to give except their scant clothes – and rode on to Culpeper Court-house, where one of them sent the despatch to “Ole Marster,” according to the directions Uncle Reuben had given. And our Florida party was “Ole Marster” and his wife, and poor Hugh Bailey’s young wife and her uncle.
It was well into the night after their arrival when four soldiers carried up to my room a stretcher holding a skeleton of a man. A gaunt, ragged old negro followed.
The next day the party started for home, but they never got poor Hugh as far as Florida. They stopped in Richmond at the Exchange, and there Hugh Bailey died the next day.
And now began for me the nursing in hospital wards that made up so large a part of our lives during the war.
“Jeter shot, perhaps fatally. Go to the hospital and see what you can do for him. I have telegraphed to his wife and mother.
The orderly who brought me this message from my husband said that Captain Jeter’s command had been in a skirmish that day, and that the captain had fallen, mortally wounded, it was thought.
I went to him at once. He was lying unconscious across the bed as if he had fallen or been dropped there, dressed in full uniform with his coat buttoned up to his throat, breathing stertorously, and moaning. There was a small black hole in his temple. I thought he must be uncomfortable with his clothes on, and proposed to the nurse that we should try to undress him, but she said he was dying and it would only disturb him. All that day and until late that night I stayed with him, changing the towels on his head, wiping the ooze from his lips, listening to that agonizing moaning, and thinking of the wife and mother who could not reach him. About ten o’clock he seemed to be strangling.
“It’s phlegm in his throat,” the nurse said. She ran her finger down his throat, pulling out a quid of tobacco that had been in his mouth when he was shot and that had lain there ever since.
He died at midnight, and his mother came the next day at noon. I don’t know which was the hardest to stand, her first burst of agony or her endless questions when she could talk.
“Did he suffer much, Nell?”
“Not much, I think. He was unconscious from the time he was shot.”
“Nell, did he send me any message? Did he call for me?”
“He was unconscious,” I repeated gently, “and we must be thankful that he was. If he had been conscious he would have suffered more.”
“Yes, yes; I reckon I am thankful. I don’t know how I am now. But I’m trying to submit myself to the will of the Lord. Nellie, you don’t know what a sweet baby he was! the prettiest little fellow! as soon as he could walk, he was always toddling after me and pulling at my skirts.”
I turned my head away.
“Last night I dozed for a minute and I dreamed about him. He was my baby again, and I had him safe in my arms, and there never had been any war. But I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t come as soon as I got the telegram. I had to wait for a train. And I was up nearly all night cooking things to bring him.”
She opened her basket and satchel and showed me. They were full of little cakes and crackers, wine jellies and blanc-mange, and other delicacies for the sick.
“Do you think if I had gotten here in time he could have eaten them?” she asked wistfully.
“He could not eat anything,” I said, choking back my tears.
“You don’t think he was hungry at all, Nell? The soldiers have so little to eat sometimes – and I have heard it said that people are sometimes hungry when they are dying.”
“Dear Mrs. Jeter, he looked well and strong