XXVII

ON April 29 President Davis called for 100,000 volunteers and 366,000 responded. But it was almost May before a letter came from Duncan. Malcolm Bedford said nothing of his worry but went off hunting with Dock, the Indian. The wild hogs, multiplied from those that escaped from De Soto’s camps in 1543, were no longer plentiful, but there were wild turkeys in abundance. Malcolm, tramping through the woods, had his son on his mind more than the turkeys.

One morning Mrs. Bedford came in from the garden, where she had been directing Uncle Thornton and the two young negroes under him. They were planting garden peas: the two marrowfats, Royal Dwarf and Peruvian Black Eye, the new Tom Thumb, and the Champion of England, which required sticking. Large butter beans, the seeds from Landreth’s in Philadelphia, had been planted, and Tilden tomatoes, curled India and white Cos lettuces, eggplant—every one but the gardeners called it by its other name, the melongona—and broccoli, which she was trying for the second crop from seeds imported by Frères Duval in New Orleans. Squashes, beets, snapbeans, and other vegetables were already on the table; but with the cool season the garden was behind for the last week in April, and Uncle Thornton had been prodding up what he could. The citron and casaba melon vines had benefited from the heavy showers; and she had sent a basket of green pears to the kitchen that morning to be poached.

On the gallery by the guest wing Mrs. Bedford found Valette sitting by the little iron garden-table, where a letter seemed to lie waiting. Valette sat, with a solemn fixed look, like a little animal that will not stir until his master comes.

“My Dumplin’, are you ever coming!”

“What on earth, why, honey? Why ’twon’t bite you,” she said, as Valette pointed to the writing. “Of course I know that hand as well as I do the Lord’s Prayer. And so do you. Whyn’t you call me and tell me there’s a letter from Duncan? Where’s Darlin’?”

“Dock came and put it here just a little while ago, and I just waited.” Valette’s lips quivered as she watched Mrs. Bedford break the seal and open Duncan’s letter. A second letter, also sealed, fell out and on to the floor. Either she stooped to pick it up and saw her name on it, or else had seen her name on it already, for she skipped to the end of the gallery laughing, then back to Mrs. Bedford, and began kissing first the seal and then the other’s shoulder, contriving in the meantime to get the letter open.

“Dear Valette, I have written Father and Mother that I have enlisted for the South but I want to write you too, and tell you I am thinking of you, just as I am always thinking of you. I will write more soon. Your own Duncan.”

Mrs. Bedford sent her to fetch Duncan’s father, and Valette, whirling him out of his chair in the library, flew to tell Mammy Tildy, who was in the kitchen, that Duncan had gone to the War. Four or five of the house servants came out with Mammy and stood in the court at the feet of Sallie Bedford and Malcolm and Valette while he read the letter aloud. It was only at the last, when she caught the look in his mother’s eyes, that Valette thought of the sad part of the news. It had seemed to her perfect happiness to have Duncan’s letter.

“But, My Dumplin’, why do you cry?” she said suddenly, her eyes full of tears as she saw Duncan’s mother receive the letter from Malcolm’s hands and fold it gravely.

“I’m not crying.” The small white hands were clasped before her breast, with the letter in them. “The little rascal! But Duncan oughtn’t to’ve done that.”

“Why, My Dumplin? Why not?”

“I wish he’d waited.”

“Don’t you believe in the South’s cause?” Valette went on, taking one of the small hands into hers and noticing that it was cold.

“I love the South.”

“But Secession, My Dumplin’.”

“If the war comes here, I reckon I’ll get through it as well as anybody.” And Valette, as she felt the hand withdrawn from hers, understood that it would be strong character, pride and anger that would sustain her beloved foster-mother. She gazed in silence for a moment into the gray, direct eyes, and then leaned over to kiss the wrinkling brow.

On the first of the month Malcolm had sent 4000, part of it for books to be added to a library of Duncan’s own, part of it for two of Duncan’s friends, Mr. Hubert’s sons of Plaquemine Parish, cousins of the Natchez family who called themselves Hubbard. From the letter they now learned that Duncan took the money and bought a beach-wagon and a team of mules, loaded it with the Southern boys who wished to join the war, and rode off to the battle of Manassas. Etienne and Jacques Hubert had been among the first. At the top of the letter in pencil was written “Victory is ours,” and at the end Duncan promised to write the very first chance he had.

By the magic of these things and perhaps through the negroes, before that afternoon was spent, all Natchez society knew of Duncan’s putting the money his father had sent him for books and friends into a wagon-load of students from the university to fight in the Army of Virginia. Etienne and Jacques Hubert were just as bad, they said, and that afternoon the Surgets drove over from Clifton, the Oaklands’ carriage arrived, and Mrs. Quitman driving with Mrs. Wilson, who had stopped by Monmouth to pick her up. In the evening, which was cool and starry, nobody sat on the gallery; every one gathered in the parlor. Hugh and Agnes McGehee and Lucinda came and Colonel Harrod, driving a new trap. There would be more people next day. Duncan’s letter was read aloud over and over by his father, who every time, when he came to the end, said that nothing could conquer the Southern spirit and that the war would be over in three months. Very few of the guests during these conversations seemed interested in any of the political questions of the moment, in the proclamations of the two Presidents, North and South, in the news from Europe; nothing was talked of but the leaders of the Southern army, the unheard of Federal generals, and the men who had gone from Natchez or were about to go. A hundred messages were sent to Duncan. “Be sure you tell Duncan for me—” and his father beamed and drank too often with one guest and then another. Sallie Bedford showed them the picture Duncan had sent last month, with that air of a young man of fashion, very quick on the trigger; and repeated to nobody what she had said about Duncan’s waiting until later. Nearly every one had already seen the picture, but all looked at it now smiling, as if to say that Duncan had always been a captain. It was just as true, nevertheless, that Valette and Malcolm, when either of them was a moment alone, grew still and grave, thinking, or would go to a window and stand looking out at the world, where spring was green everywhere and birds were singing, and the sky overhead clear and soft. And it was true that Valette just before supper-time went down to the quarters, where she sharply ordered the two laundresses to mind what they did with her petticoats, the Valenciennes had been ironed yellow that week, and then went to Aunt Tildy’s cabin and sat down, leaning her head against the old woman’s shoulder, sobbing.

“Go way from here, honey, ain’ nothin’ go hurt Marse Duncan!” Aunt Tildy said ten times.

“Do you think so, Mammy?”

“What you talkin’ bout? ’Tain’t in dem Yankees to whip him. Marse Duncan can whip de whole passel of ’em wid a cornstalk.”

That night when Malcolm had settled himself in bed, his wife, putting the white cashmere shawl over her nightgown, took the candle and went into her dressing-room, where a bundle of letters lay on the toilet table. It was like Duncan to write letters daily when he first got to a place, and then let weeks pass without writing a line. That was because at first he felt the strangeness and was lonely and homesick. But if such was his nature, what was there to be said? The first of these letters was already faded with age, it was written from his Connecticut school. “If you can spare an hour from your many duties to write a letter for me I would receive it so thankfully,” it said. “I love every Southern thing with tenfold fervor. There is a pair of Southern mock-birds—rara avis——”

“Yes,” she said to herself, “and I’ve always wondered if that were only a flowery passage. Are there mocking-birds in Connecticut really?”

“Rara avis—that have built their nest in a neighboring orchard and every evening and morning bring their songs fraught with the recollection of home and all I love. If you ever find time please write in return.”

Duncan had written thus piously from the college at Middleton; though, nevertheless, he had stayed but two months and then taken the cars home. That’s how that turned out.

“Wife, what are you up to, it’s late?” Malcolm called to her from the bed in the dark room. He frequently talked from one room to another in the house, as if you sat conversing with him on a sofa. Sometimes he even conversed from the hall to some one upstairs.

“There are things women have to do, Darlin’, you go to sleep,” she answered.

“I hear paper rustling but when you’re putting up your curls you tear it. You’re not tearing it. Don’t you know Duncan’s letter by heart now? You surely do.”

She got up and went into the bedroom. “You’re waking up the whole house, Darlin’.”

“Well, let them hear me.”

“Do you know, I was thinking: we ought to send Duncan money, there must be plenty of things he’s in want of. And your silk scarf would be a good thing, and some of those Paris gloves. You bought New Orleans out of gloves, I always say.”

“Duncan can have anything he wants. You decide.”

She chuckled when she kissed his brow.

“Is that for me or for Duncan?”

“I’ll just read you the next letter, the second he wrote from Middleton.” From her dressing-room he heard her read:

“Since my long & memorable vacation I find that close continued study is not as pleasant as while at Portobello. When I think of years of unremitted labor, love of ease makes me shrink back almost with despair. I find there is a great difference between reading what I please, when I please, and closely tied down to one pursuit for hours day after day. But when I think on the ultimate object to be attained I blush at my supineness & want of energy. I have made few acquaintances and as yet can speak but little of the character of the people. I expect there are as many unmarried ladies in this town as in half our home country. Frequently walking in the evening I have met twenty. The misery of it is they are all young or wish to be.”

There was the essay “Moral Philosophy,” from the University of Virginia, marked Read before the Society, February 16, 1861. She would read that again tonight, or at least the last paragraph, where Duncan made his conclusion:

“Theology and Psychology have frequently gone hand in hand, sometimes towards intelligibility, but more frequently towards mazy obscurity. Among those who advanced highest in these confounding but entrancing speculations, Plato’s name will forever stand first; & it is probable that if he had not so imbued all his thoughts with the spirit of theological inquiry, he would have produced a clearer exposition of the anomalies & intricacies of the soul than has yet seen the light.”

“He’s no fool, now,” she said to herself, and then, “Darlin’, he’s no fool, Duncan.”

“No,” said Malcolm, “and I’ll say the same for Plato.”

“That boy’s sho got sense.” She smiled when this last came into her mind out of long ago. One day when Duncan could barely talk she stood with him in her arms watching old Aunt Tildy’s Thornton pruning a rose-bush. “Son, don’t you like Uncle Thornton?” she said. “I love Uncle Thornton!” said Duncan in his baby voice. “Dat boy’s sho got sense,” Thornton chuckled. Even then how sweet Duncan was!

“Sallie,” her husband’s voice called, “whyn’t you come to bed?”

“Darlin’, I’m coming. It’s not going to kill me reading my child’s letter.”

Valette in her high bed with its blue silk curtains lay awake a long time. And so Duncan had ridden off to the war! It seemed to her that the family did not understand properly how noble Duncan, with his quick ways, really was; and she tried to think of what she could do from now on to make them understand.