War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy/Chapter 3
III
WHAT WAS GOING ON IN VIRGINIA
WELL, it had been unsettled on the border, even before the election of Lincoln, and six months after Dave went away to college in Virginia, the war trouble broke out in earnest. It was about even down our way, till after the battle of Bull Run. Then there were many more secessionists than Unions. There were three fights inside of three weeks at the store, and in every one the Unions got licked. I was in the first one. That's the reason I wasn't in the other two.
Dave used to write funny letters from college, about rebels and Unions and we'd all laugh at 'em. But a little after Bull Run he wrote one which worried me some. He said that his class—all but him—had voted to go into the army of Virginia, but that he'd told 'em he'd have to write home to find out whether he was Union or Democrat. They didn't like that. He hoped we were Democrats so that he could go with the boys and have a good time licking the Black Republicans. It was all he could do, he said, to stay behind when the boys in the slickest uniforms he had ever seen, mostly made by their sweethearts, and with twenty or thirty gold-and-blue officers to each regiment, had gone and taken Harper's Ferry and the navy yard at Gosport—with no deaths. Every one was a separate hero, and all the sweethearts left behind (a good many went along) took the first train to Harper's Ferry to tell them so. Couldn't he go along when they took Washington?—which would be next. Maybe he could find a sweetheart. And, when they had Philadelphia and New York, he'd stop to see how we were getting along before taking the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America—formerly the United States of Ditto—just in fun, of course, as you can see.
But I got Evelyn, who was a better scholar than I, to write back that we were all Union to the backbone and that we were nailing Maryland down so that she couldn't get out of the Union, and not to bother about wars nor rumors of war, but study hard, as he was too young, anyhow, to fight with anybody but me and I could lick him any day—also in fun.
Evelyn was kind of shy and distressed, and finally said:
"Daddy, dear, you oughtn't to ask me to write that."
"Why?" says I.
"Because I ain't Union to the backbone," says she.
"To be sure!" says I. "Not quite through. I forgot. You are most two yards of rebel up and down. They're the most dangerous—the lady rebels. I expect you'd like to be making funny flags and sticking them up on female colleges like they're doing in Dixie. The women's terrible fighters!"
I laughed, but Evelyn cried. It was hard for her to see a joke. Women ain't funny, mostly.
"Yes," she says, dropping tears on the letter, "just a girl rebel. And yes, they are terrible, thank God. And I shan't forget who murdered my father! A woman's vengeance is not like a man's. It never sleeps or dies. And the slayer of my father shall suffer—or his brethren shall—for him!"
Well! I never saw Evelyn like that! I didn't think she had it in her! Just a nice young girl—till I stirred her up. And remember, Henry really wasn't her father, though, remember again, she'd never known any other father. Of course, as I have told you, I don't wonder that she loved our Henry a lot. Everybody did that got near him. Dave—happy little Dave, always reminded me of him. She scribbled fiercely at the letter, dropping more tears, and I sneaked away—for, as I told you, I am no kind of a father.
I could see next day that she was scared about it—and so I scolded her a little. I was never afraid to scold her when she was scared.