Читать книгу A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865 - Avary Myrta Lockett - Страница 3

“Have you met Dan Grey?”

Charlie Murray and I were galloping along a country road.

“I haven’t, Charlie. I met his brother Dick in Norfolk, and didn’t like him at all.”

“Well, Nell, you’d like Dan – everybody does. I wonder you haven’t met him. Dan never fails to meet every pretty girl that comes here.”

I had heard that before. Indeed, I had heard a great deal about Dan Grey that made me long to get even with him. Everybody had a way of speaking as if Petersburg wasn’t Petersburg with Dan Grey left out.

“You ought to meet Dan Grey,” Charlie repeated.

“I don’t think so,” I rapped out. “I think I can get along very nicely without meeting Dan Grey” – Dan Grey seemed to be getting along very nicely without meeting me – “I know as many nice men now as I have time to see.”

So I dismissed Dan, whipped up my horse, and raced Charlie along the old Jerusalem Plank Road – that historic thoroughfare by which the Union troops first threatened Petersburg, and near which Fort Hell and Fort Damnation are still visible. We ran our horses past the old brick church, built of bricks brought from England to erect a place of worship for the aristocratic colonists, past the quiet graves in Blandford; and turning our horses into Washington Street, slackened their pace and, chatting merrily the while, rode slowly into the city toward the golden sunset. A few years later I was to run along this street in abject terror from bursting shells.

“You ought to meet Dan Grey.”

It came from George Van B – this time. George was the poet laureate of our set. Afterward he was Colonel Van B – , and as gallant a soldier as ever faced shot and shell. I had been playing an accompaniment for him; he was singing a popular ditty of the day, “Sweet Nellie is by my Side”; I wheeled around on the piano-stool and faced him.

“What is the matter with that man? He must be a curiosity?”

“He is just the nicest fellow in town,” George asserted with mingled resentment and amusement.

“He must be something extraordinary. One would think there was just one man in town and that his name was Dan Grey.”

Before the week was out I heard it again. This time it was Willie. He spoke oracularly, and as if he were broaching an original idea. Page, the best dancer in our set, repeated the recommendation, looking as if I were quite out of the swim in not knowing Dan Grey. (If Governor – reads this chapter, will he please overlook the familiar use of his name? Boys and girls who have played mumble-peg together and snowballed each other, do not attach handles to each other’s names until they are more thoroughly grown up than we were then.)

“I am sure it must be my duty to meet Dan Grey,” I said gravely. “I am continually being told that I ’ought to meet Dan Grey’ just as I might be told that I ought to go to church.”

“Dan isn’t a bit like a church, Nell,” laughed Willie. “But he is a splendid fellow, generous to a fault – and then, you know, Dan is the handsomest man in town.”

“Oh, no!” I retorted, “I left the handsomest man in town in Norfolk.”

I can’t begin to tell how terribly tired I got of “You ought to meet Dan Grey,” “Haven’t you met Dan Grey?” Evidently Dan Grey was in no hurry to meet me. I knew that he was the toast of our set and that he ignored me as completely as if I were not in it – and I had never been ignored before. I also knew, without being continually told, that he was a broad-shouldered, magnificent-looking fellow, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and “the handsomest man in town.” My girl friends talked about him almost as much as the men did. And I did not even know the lion! I took great pains not to want to know him. I impressed it upon Willie and Charlie and George and the rest that they were not to bring Dan Grey to see me.

“Why, what will we say if he asks us to bring him? You are unreasonable, Nell. How did you ever pick up such a prejudice against Dan? Nobody can object to Dan Grey. If he asks any of us to bring him, I don’t know what we can do.”

“Oh, of course you can’t be rude. If you are asked to bring him, you will have to do as you are asked, but I don’t think you will be asked. I’m sure I hope you won’t, for I have heard of Dan Grey until I am sick of the very name.”

Meanwhile I resolved privately if I ever did lay my hands on Dan Grey I would wreak a full vengeance. He says that I have done it.

A Catholic fair was to be held in Petersburg, but as dearly as we loved Father Mulvey (all Petersburg loved him), and as much as we longed to do everything possible for our poor little Church of St. Joseph, we could not go to the fair rooms and sell things and make merry. We were in deep mourning; mother said that our going was out of the question. Then her old friend, Mrs. Winton, came out to persuade and convince.

“I really can not let the girls go,” mother protested. “They can make fancy articles and send them to the fair, or do any home work that you can put them to; we are willing to help just as much as we can. I will send pickled oysters and shrimp salad after my Norfolk recipes, and cake and cream and anything you like that I can make.”

“We want the oysters and the salad and the cake and everything else you choose to send, but above all things we want the girls. I didn’t come here for your pickled oysters and shrimp salad, if they are the best I ever tasted. I want Milicent and Nell – I want Nell for my booth and Milicent for Mrs. Lynn’s. Mrs. Lynn has set her heart on Milicent – but, there! Mrs. Lynn may do her own begging. Do let me have Nell.”

“My dear, I don’t see how I can.”

“Oh, you must! We really need them. You know how few girls there are in our little congregation.”

Mother was too good a Catholic not to yield – Milicent and I were given over to the cause of St. Joseph’s.

“But they are to work, not to amuse themselves,” she stipulated. “They are not to promenade – just to stand behind tables and sell things.”

“Just send them,” pleaded Mrs. Winton. “I’ll promise not to let them enjoy themselves. I’ll keep Nell busy, and Mrs. Lynn will do her duty by Milicent.”

But work is fun when you are young enough, and there was plenty of both in getting the booths ready. The old Library Hall on Bollingbrook Street was a gay and busy scene for several days before it was formally opened to the public who came to spend money and make merry.

On one never-forgotten morning the hall was filled with matrons and maidens weaving festoons of pine-beard, running cedar, and ivy. I had purposely donned my worst dress, and was sitting on the floor Turkish fashion, with evergreens heaped around me, when I saw a party of gentlemen entering the hall.

I tried to sink out of sight, but they saw me, demolished my barricade, and began to tease me. The quartet were Charlie Murray, George Van B – , Willie, and Page. Behind them came a fifth gentleman, and before this fifth gentleman and I knew what was happening we were being presented to each other. And that is how I met Dan Grey – sitting on the floor in my shabbiest dress and half hidden by evergreens. I soon had the whole party hard at work festooning the hall, and what a good, if late, laborer, Dan Grey made in my vineyard!

“You see how useful I am,” he said – he was standing on a box and I was handing up wreaths of cedar which he was arranging on the wall. “Now, why didn’t you let me come to see you?”

“Me?” I asked in utter bewilderment.

“Yes, ‘me’!”

“Why, I never had a thing to do with your not coming to see me.”

He gave George, Charlie, and Willie a withering look.

“I reckon somebody else didn’t want me to.”

The boys looked dumfounded.

“I heard,” said Dan from his box, “that you didn’t want me to come to see you, that you had an unaccountable prejudice against me because you didn’t like Dick, that you asked all your friends by no means to bring me to see you.”

I was as mad as I could be with George, Willie, and Charlie.

“Why,” I said, “you are not your brother Dick. And then, I don’t dislike Dick at all.”

Again the trio looked at me as if they doubted the evidence of their senses.

“Nell, what did you tell such a story for?” George asked me privately later.

“Why, I didn’t tell any story at all,” I declared. “He isn’t his brother Dick, is he? And I don’t dislike Dick now.”

The night of the fair I wore a black bombazine, cut low in the neck and with long angel sleeves falling away from my arms above the elbow to the hem of my dress, and around my neck a band of black velvet with a black onyx cross. I sat or stood behind Mrs. Winton’s booth, and Mr. Grey haunted the booth all the evening, and bought quantities of things he had no use for.

After the fair he saw me or reminded me of his existence in some way every day. Mother took me, about this time, on a visit to some cousins in Birdville, and every day Mr. Grey rode out on Dare Devil, the horse that he was to ride into his first fight. There was another fair. I went in from Birdville to help, and had the same coterie of assistants. “Ben Bolt” was a great favorite then. It was a new song and divided honors with “Sweet Nellie is by my Side.” My assistants used to sit on a goods box that was later to be converted into an ornamental stand, and sing, “O don’t you Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?”

Well, to make a long story short – as Dan and I did – we were married in exactly four months and a half from the day on which he was introduced to me as I sat cross-legged among the evergreens; and when Willie and George and Charlie came up to congratulate us, every wretch of them said, “Didn’t I tell you you ought to meet Dan Grey?”