AT Montrose those very first days in April there was a strange air of suspense, even of commotion. Nothing was being moved, the house was the same, Aleck and his assistants were busy in the south garden with the second planting of peas and lettuces sown already in February. Hugh McGehee was to be absent from home for some days at one of his plantations near Bayou Sara, which for months he had neglected because he had thought the times too unsafe to be away from home overnight. But all over this river country the air was full of strain. People had known from the newspapers of the march of the Union Army across Tennessee. General Albert Sidney Johnston retired before it, gathering recruits as he went. General Grant, as the Natchez Gazette reported it, had halted at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River with 33,000 men, 5000 more some miles away, and 20,000 marching down from Nashville. General Albert Sidney Johnston, General Beauregard second in command, with 40,000 men was at Corinth. People in the Natchez country knew only too well what was at stake. Unless the Federal movement was checked the cotton states would be invaded.
Every day for some time when Dave came back from his trip to town, Agnes had waited for a letter, but none came. Edward was too busy to write, she would say, knowing that he was on the march. But on April 6 there came a letter. Edward was at Corinth, with General Beauregard, under General Johnston. Governors of the nearby states were sending in recruits. On the Confederate side, and the Yankee side, from what Edward heard, they called for a battle. Some trial must be made. In three days General Johnston would be at Pittsburg Landing for a surprise attack, or so it was hoped. A battle had to be, the letter said and ended:
“When I write my mother again I hope it will be a victory to tell you of.
Your loving son,
Agnes MeGehee read the letter twice and, holding it still open in her hand, rang for a maid to send Lucy to her.
“Darling,” she said, “you know Dave has brought the mail, and there’s a letter from Buddie. He was at Corinth. That was the third, this is the sixth of the month. He says here, there would be a battle in three days.” She held out the open letter and Lucy read it. The end of it said that Charlie Taliaferro and General Beauregard talked sometimes about the old days in Louisiana, for General Beauregard followed the French practice of mingling with his men, he would stroll sometimes from one camp fire to another, smoking a cigar, talking with them, as Napoleon used to do.
Her mother had said only that there was going to be a battle. Now she heard her saying, “Lucy, I know what it means, Edward’s dead. I’m going and bring him home.”
“Do you think you can see him, Mamma?”
“Not alive, I know.”
“No, no, Mamma precious! I don’t see how you fed so sure of this.”
“Lucy, I know it.”
Arguments would get nowhere, Lucy knew; and if her father had been there, it would have been the same. There was something you could not discuss; and without comment, she heard her mother say that she would set out in two hours, in the wagon with William Veal. They would leave the wagon to wait at Jackson, where they would take the train north.
“Yes.”
With trembling lips and half closed eyes Lucy turned away and left the room.
A telegram was to be sent off to Hugh McGehee and Dave went to town with it. On the street he met Dock, and so it was that Sallie Bedford learned at Portobello of Agnes’ intention. She was at Montrose within a hour. Miss Whipple, the seamstress, was on the gallery walking up and down, and Sallie, who could never bear the sight of her, stopped only to say, “Why, Miss Whipple, I thought you were always sewing like forty.” She went on into the hall without waiting to hear a reply from Miss Whipple, who was already making her familiar motion of swallowing, but had not her reply ready.
“Sister Agnes,” Mrs. Bedford said, when Lucy had shown her the letter and they stood watching the small travelling box which Edna was packing for the journey. “Are you really goin’? Of course you are going, but don’t go. It’s not given to human beings to know these things.”
“Given or not given, I know,” said Agnes.
“Mamma,” said Lucy, “do you think we know what Papa would think?”
“He would ask me if I must go. That would be all. If I said I must, he would know.”
The tears filled Lucy’s eyes as she heard her mother say this beautiful thing; it would have been beautiful if said about any one.
Mrs. Bedford stuck to the point: “I don’t propose to believe Duncan is killed, oh, no.”
“ ‘Loved thee with an everlasting love,’ ” said Agnes simply.
Sallie Bedford folded her hands and was silent. “She will go. It’s exactly like her,” she said to herself.
In her own way she knew women and the tragic nature of their desires, wise or foolish. Her own spirit, downright mind and loyal impulses could not comprehend the fact that in Agnes it was a certain deep power of feeling, almost a monotony of passionate devotion, that gave those who loved her the sense of judging her tenderly. It was a preposterous thing for Agnes to set out like this on a sheer whim or foreboding. Why should Edward any more than anybody else be killed, even if there was a battle now being fought? And to come out with that line from the Bible: “Love thee with an everlasting love.” As she thought these things, she heard Agnes’ voice saying:
“Sis Sallie, you’re mighty good to me.”
“No, honey, the very idea.”
“You are, and thank you,” said Agnes.
“Thank me your foot, you just hush up, Agnes McGehee.”
Agnes only smiled, as if at a naughty child.
“But dear Sister Agnes, let me say to you, nothing could make me believe my son was dead; I’d have to know it. And I don’t believe there’s anything inside me would know—know something had happened to Duncan—they’d have to tell me.”
She got no reply, and all at once, as if there were some choir heard singing when a door is opened, she heard the birds outside in the trees; it would soon be spring; life was new, not ended. Then she saw those arms unclasp from Agnes McGehee’s lap and rest on the chair arms; and, though she could not have told why, the idea came to her that in life always are both the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, as the Bible says. Going over to Agnes, she dropped down kneeling and buried her face in the other’s lap. For a moment Agnes gazed with surprise at this, then she began to pass her fingers gently over the little round head, with its smooth hair.
There was an early dinner and Agnes set off with William Veal, on the spring seat to the wagon. Work on the fields near the house had stopped, and a crowd of negroes gathered at the entrance gate to watch the departure; they were silent and stood with their heads bare as William Veal drove out. He wore an old pair of riding gloves that Lucy had brought to him, and looked straight ahead down the road. Mrs. Bedford had stayed on, and she and Lucy when they had said goodbye and the wagon had started, went back from the lawn up the gallery steps and stood watching. Everywhere was green. The trees and shrubs, the garden, the orchard, stood under a bright sky, with soft clouds like summer drifting round its rim. For a time you could hear the sound of the wagon as it went along the road, then suddenly it was the doves calling. In some field, some wood or grove, the doves called. The soft wind from the south stirred the foliage.
And so her mother was gone, where Edward and Charles were; and Lucy, with her temple resting against one of the columns, stood gazing at the stir among the leaves, as she heard them, and beyond them the doves calling, and then again at the green lawn.