‘Really, Mama, it is more than time that we had the battle which will end this war,’ announced Sophie. ‘All the eligible men have left to fight it and only the dull and the crippled remain behind. Thank God Jack hasn’t gone to New York yet. At least I have one healthy partner left to dance with.’
July had arrived and Jack was still in Washington. Despite the President’s cutting of constitutional corners, it had taken quite a long time for designs for a new iron-clad warship to be submitted and examined. Neither had the war progressed in any material fashion. General Beauregard still sat and faced Washington, maintaining an ever-present threat. He was waiting for General Joe Johnston to bring up enough troops from the South by using the nearby railroad to make an assault on the capital possible.
Mrs Hamilton Hope said indulgently, ‘Well, count your blessings then, my dear. Your papa tells me that the committee are near to reaching a conclusion and it may not be long before Mr Dilhorne leaves Washington.’
‘What a bore,’ wailed Sophie angrily. Marietta, sitting in a corner, engaged in canvas work, was grateful that she was no longer responsible for her. Sophie’s parents, Mr and Mrs Hamilton Hope, had retreated to the capital from their Maryland estate whose safety they thought was threatened by the nearness of raiding Southern troops. Senator Hope had left for Boston on business while Aunt Percival had been called upon to act as midwife for yet another Percival relation, so that she, too, was absent from Washington.
Consequently Marietta had moved in to the Hamilton Hopes’ residence at their request. ‘You cannot be left on your own in that great house, child,’ Mrs Hope had exclaimed, as though Marietta was no older, nor more responsible, than Sophie herself. ‘You must come and stay with us.’
It would have been impolite to refuse, little though Marietta wished to leave her own well-run, comfortable home. She also missed Aunt Percival’s earthy common sense, which had little patience with Sophie’s whim whams, as she called them.
Aunt Percival, indeed, would have had little truck with Sophie’s latest proposal with which she was now bombarding her parents. She had been visiting Senator Eakins’s daughter Charlotte and was big with news.
‘The Senator says that at last something exciting is going to happen. It is nothing less than a great battle near Centerville which will end this horrid war. General McDowell is on the march and the Senator is going to take Charlotte and her mama to watch the battle, and he has suggested that Papa might like to take us all along with them. Do say yes, Papa, we may never get the chance again if we whip the Rebs straight away, for the Senator says that if we do—and we’re sure to—the war will end immediately.’
Neither Sophie’s father nor her mother ever opposed her wishes in anything, not even when it concerned such a dubious scheme as Marietta thought this to be. Like most of their friends, they had no notion of what war, or a battle, was really like, and when it became apparent that the majority of their circle was preparing to ride out to watch one they, too, decided to have a ringside seat. This was a frequent expression which Hamilton Hope used when he was talking to his friends in what he thought was a manly fashion.
Marietta’s protests were in vain. She had no wish to see the battle herself, and thought that it was neither safe nor proper for the Hopes to indulge themselves in undertaking such a dangerous expedition.
‘People will be killed,’ she said earnestly. ‘We might even get caught up in the battle itself. I am sure that when we have arrived there—if we arrive there safely—we shall not like what we are sure to see.’
‘Oh, you are always a spoilsport,’ exclaimed Sophie crossly. ‘The first time anything interesting happens you wish to put a damper on it. You really are a wet blanket, Marietta.’
Her annoyance with Marietta since Jack had defected to her could not be contained: it burst out all the time.
It was useless for Marietta to argue, to talk of blood, broken limbs and death.
‘We shall not really be very near,’ said Hamilton Hope comfortably, ‘and if it looks as though it may be growing dangerous we shall leave instanter, you may be sure of that.’
‘But it is not an entertainment,’ said Marietta desperately. ‘Young men will be dying, real young men shedding real blood. It will not be a play.’
‘Pooh, then,’ said Sophie rudely. ‘You need not come. I would never have thought that you would be a coward, Marietta, but then, you have never done anything exciting in your whole life, have you? Life, in fact, has passed you by.’ The look which she then gave Marietta was both patronising and scornful.
This stung. ‘I am not a coward,’ said Marietta stiffly. ‘But I find the whole thing unseemly and immoral.’
‘Immoral!’ said Sophie, raising her eyes to heaven. ‘We are fighting a war to end slavery and Marietta finds it immoral!’
The urge to slap Sophie had never been so strong, and only the presence of Sophie’s doting parents restrained Marietta.
‘I am sure,’ said Hamilton Hope, ‘that you will wish to accompany us, Marietta. It will be something for you to tell your grandchildren.’ Privately, though, he thought that his ramrod-straight niece was highly unlikely to have any. What man would want such a cold piece?
It was useless, thought Marietta wearily, quite useless to continue to protest. The Hamilton Hopes were plainly going to consider it an insult to Sophie and themselves if she did not accompany them.
‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘I will go with you, but under protest, mind. I think that the whole expedition is quite mistaken.’
‘Whoever would have thought that my brother Jacobus would have such a self-righteous and plain old maid for a daughter,’ said Hamilton Hope to his wife later. ‘Really, the woman is impossible. She is so sure of herself that she will be prating about Womens’ Rights next!’
‘I must own that I, too, am a little worried about going on such an expedition. It could be dangerous,’ said his wife hesitantly, but she was not allowed to continue: Mr Hope was not to be deprived of his pleasure.
‘Nonsense,’ he returned robustly. ‘Sophie has more spirit than both of you put together. I don’t wonder that Marietta has never married. Who would want such a rigid opinionated stick? Sophie is right. And when I think of her lovely mother!’ He sighed and shook his head.
Marietta wished that she could have had Jack’s advice, but he had been out of Washington on business with Ezra and so had not visited the Hamilton Hopes in the week since she had been their guest. She was not to know that Jack, on his return that day, had decided to make the journey to watch the battle, not as an entertainment but because he wished to see artillery in action.
He had asked Ezra to accompany him, but Ezra had drily replied that it was enough for him to make weapons of war without wishing to watch them in action, but if Jack thought it useful to go then he wished him well.
‘You are not worried about being caught up in the battle?’ he asked.
‘Do you think that there’s much chance of that?’ said Jack, who possessed a cheerful optimism which his father and older brothers had sometimes deplored.
‘Depends,’ said Ezra. ‘Battles aren’t chess games, you know. They’re not orderly things. They stray about, I’m told, and are liable to start in one place and finish in another.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ said Jack. ‘I shan’t be fighting myself, and I would like to see how what we make is used. It may give me ideas for further developments.’
Later in the war he was to look back at his foolish self in some wonder: he had learned to take as few risks as possible. He would, however, have been horrified to learn that the Hamilton Hopes were going and intended to take Sophie and Marietta with them.
Fortunately for his peace of mind he remained unaware of their plans. He packed a meal of sandwiches and fruit in a canvas bag, together with a sketch book, pencils and coloured chalks. When he made his way to the livery stables to hire a carriage, he discovered that half Washington, or so it appeared, was determined to see the battle, and consequently the price of hire had risen to great heights.
Russell of The Times was there, trying to make his way to the battle. He was arguing vigorously with the keeper of the stables, and finally had to settle for a sum far higher than he had originally hoped for.
The keeper, however, knew Jack, and let him have something more reasonable, whispering behind his hand after Russell had gone that ‘damned insolent Britishers who write unpleasant stories about our great and free nation deserve to pay over the odds for anything they want’.
Jack counted himself fortunate to end up with a buggy, a coloured boy for a driver, and a frayed-looking animal which proved to be more reliable than it looked at first sight.
The boy was a cheerful young chap who remained optimistic throughout the ups and downs of the rest of the day. He assured Jack that ‘our side’ would whip the Rebels so thoroughly that the war would be over before it had started, and that he wanted to be there to see this famous victory.
Jack was a little troubled by all the careless optimism flowing so freely around Washington. He thought of what Russell had privately told him and would publicly write: that the North still had no real idea of how harsh and bitter the war would inevitably be.
He was astonished by the number of carts, carriages, buggies and wagons, both privately owned and hired, which set out from Washington in the early morning sun in the wake of McDowell’s troops.
He had taken the opportunity to have a private word with Russell before The Times man left. Russell had told him of his reservations about the civilians who were setting out so cheerfully to enjoy what they thought was going to be a day’s fun.
‘They should have been in the Crimea,’ he said morosely, ‘and have seen what happened there to civilians silly enough to want to watch a battle. War’s not a picnic or a spectacle to be enjoyed, whatever ignorant fools who have never experienced it may think.’
He had already said something similar to his Washington acquaintances who had arranged to go, and they had jeered at him for being an over-cautious Brit. After that he had held his tongue. Time would show them who was right, he thought.
Riding in the middle of the concourse which was setting out so gaily were Hamilton Hope, his wife, his daughter and his niece. It was pleasant in the clear early-morning air before the day grew hot. They had had to make a prompt start to ensure that their long journey would be safely completed, leaving time for both horses and passengers to rest before returning home.
Marietta had decided that, if she were compelled to join what she thought of as an ill-advised expedition, she would at least try to savour the experience even if she thought it regrettable. Sophie had dressed herself impressively for the trip, as though she were going to a ball. She was wearing an elaborate white dress over a crinoline cage so large that she took up most of the carriage. Her shoes were of light kid, almost slippers.
She jeered openly at Marietta who was wearing a plain dark dress with few skirts and no crinoline cage, as well as sturdy, sensible walking shoes. Marietta said quietly in reply to her cousin’s criticisms that it was possible that she might need to be able to walk unhampered.
‘We are riding in a carriage,’ said Sophie severely. ‘I do not intend to walk.’
‘Who knows what we might need to do before the day is over?’ countered Marietta.
The Hopes had taken an enormous amount of food with them, enough for a banquet, and Marietta privately thought that the whole thing was most improper, never mind the fact that many others, including Senators and Congressmen as well as their wives and children, had come along on the outing similarly laden.
The day grew hotter as they rolled along the dusty roads, and she tried not to think of all the vibrant young men who would be dead by nightfall. They were still some distance from the supposed site of the battle when they first heard the distant thunder of cannon. Although low and muted, it was insistent and non-stop.
Nothing deterred the sensation-seekers from Washington. They pressed on towards Centerville, finding when at last they reached it that it was a small sleepy hamlet, barely a town, which had been elevated into history by the chance of the main Confederate attack being near it.
Like many of the small towns in the district it had been looted by the very Union troops supposedly sent to protect it, but this didn’t stop its inhabitants from cheering everyone and everything which passed through, including the many civilians who had been arriving since early morning.
Sophie looked around her. Her face, which had been one smile when they set out, had grown increasingly worried when the noise of the cannon grew louder and louder. She was relieved to discover that beyond Centerville was a hill, the only high ground in the area, and it was here that the Hope party found that the spectators’ carriages were already drawn up. Below the hill the battle was already raging, and a mob of men stood around the carriages trying to make out exactly what was happening through the trees, the scrub and the several miles which stood between them and the armies of the North and the South.
‘Time to get out and stretch our legs,’ said Hamilton Hope cheerfully, ‘and have a bite to eat.’
‘Oh, need I get down, Papa?’ wailed Sophie. ‘I would much prefer to stay where I am. They are saying that there is little to see as yet. I do so hope that we’ve not come all this way for nothing.’
Marietta, despite her reservations, was curious enough to be helped down to walk to the point where most of the spectators were gathered, talking, eating and drinking as though they were at a ball or a reception. She had expected to see blood and destruction everywhere, but Sophie was right: little was visible from where they stood.
An observation balloon, tethered to a cart, was the subject of much interest and comment, much of it ribald—but its occupants could probably see more than the representatives of Washington society who had made this long and tiring journey apparently only to admire the scenery.
Suddenly puffs of smoke, both black and white, rose above the trees and the cannons’ roar grew louder and louder. Lines of soldiers, clad in blue and grey, appeared out of the murk below them, only to disappear again.
‘How very disappointing,’ drawled one middle-aged Senator. ‘It’s almost impossible to tell what, if anything, is happening.’
Sophie and Aunt Serena Hope had joined them from the carriage. Aunt Serena had brought her opera glasses with her, and occasionally passed them to Marietta and her daughter, but little more could be seen with them than without them. After a time some of the men offered learned—and patronising—explanations of the course of the battle to the women, although how accurate they were, since little could be seen, Marietta found it hard to tell.
Sophie was no happier out of the carriage than in it. She could hardly have said herself what it was that she had expected to see, but, as was common with her, she soon became bored.
Marietta, on the other hand, was trying to understand everything about her. Among the growing crowd of spectators were foreign diplomats, as well as many of her Washington friends, who had made this hazardous trip. Unlike Sophie, they were determined to enjoy themselves even though, in their ignorance of the unseen death and mutilation below them, they found the whole experience anti-climactic.
Sophie, indeed, complained bitterly that so far she had seen nothing but puffs of smoke and trees, as well as a few men vanishing into the distance. ‘If it were not for the trees,’ she sighed, ‘we might have had a better notion of what was happening.’
Marietta, however, was grateful at not having to witness the gory details of the actual fighting, and could only wonder how Sophie, who screamed at a bleeding finger, would react if the battle drew near enough for her to make out the shattered limbs and the broken bodies which must surely lie below them.
What none of them understood when they opened their hampers and picnicked on the grass was that the battle was beginning to move towards them while the Northern troops fell slowly back.
Jack and Russell were now on the edge of the battle area itself, which was being fought around Bull Run stream, or Manassas as it was sometimes called. Russell had led a horse with him and was determined to get into the thick of things, particularly since various senior officers had confidently informed him that ‘our side is whipping Johnny Reb’ when his experiences in the recent Crimean War led him to believe that quite the opposite was happening!
Jack, being an innocent in these matters, had no idea who was in the right, but he was worried that the noise of battle was growing nearer and nearer when, if the North was winning, it ought to be diminishing. What surprised him, as it surprised the watchers on the hill, was how aimless it seemed to be. He had, quite wrongly, visualised something neat and tidy taking place. Instead, all was haphazard: parties of men ran across his line of sight; occasionally a troop of horsemen emerged from the grey and black smoke—only to disappear again.
A little time later Russell disappeared, too. He mounted his horse and rode off into the thick of things in order to have something tangible to put in his despatch. When, in the early afternoon, it became quite plain that the battle was drawing nearer and nearer, Jack ordered his horse and buggy to be ready for a rapid departure. He was beginning to suspect that Russell had been right and that the rebels were winning.
Above him the spectators were still in a state of innocent optimism, believing that the battle was almost won. They were joined by a group of senior officers who assured Hamilton Hope that all was well.
‘We shall shortly have them on the run,’ one of them said importantly, ‘and after that, the way to Virginia and victory will lie clear before us. It won’t be long before we can all go home.’
Everyone around him began to cheer, quite unaware that at that very moment the Southern troops had broken Northern resistance, and that the home army was retreating across the turnpike road which they had crossed to get at the Rebels’ batteries. Instead, it was the Northern batteries which had been captured and consequently a massive general retreat had begun; a retreat which neither General McDowell nor his officers could control.
Once started, the retreat took on a life of its own. Shell-shocked officers and men began to make for the rear, carrying all before them: caissons, supply wagons, the commissariat, medical carts and orderlies, everything streaming madly back towards Centerville and the hope of safety.
The spectators from Washington lay directly in their path and were quite unaware that a massive retreat, involving the whole Union Army, had begun. At first they merely saw small groups of men walking listlessly away from the action, heads hanging. An odd wagon careered by. So far the battle had seemed so inconsequential that no one realised exactly what was happening.
Suddenly a group of men, mixed up with every different kind of conveyance, came towards them at the run, shouting, ‘Git, darn yer, git. We’re whipped, we’re whipped.’
Men were throwing their weapons away in order to make their flight from certain death the more rapid. Some of them, hampered by the spectators who still did not fully understand what was happening, shook their fists at them as they passed, cursing them for their presence, for being in the way of their retreat from the intolerable which lay behind them.
The spectators, realising at last that the supposed victory had turned into a rout, ran towards their carriages, shouting to the drivers to point them towards home and prepare to leave at once.
Marietta’s party had been sitting at some distance from the Hopes’ carriage when the unthinkable began to happen. They dashed towards it; Hamilton Hope was the first to reach it. He climbed in and, taking the reins from the driver, began to wheel it rapidly in the direction of Washington, shouting to the others to hurry up and jump aboard.
Marietta, already prepared, pushed her Aunt Serena into the carriage, before turning back for Sophie—only to discover that she had mislaid her bonnet, taken off when the sun had moved away from them, and was hunting about for it.
‘Leave it,’ exclaimed Marietta impatiently. ‘We’ve no time to lose,’ and when Sophie wailed ‘No’ and ran away from her, she seized her hand and began to drag her towards the carriage and safety. She was hampered in this not only by Sophie’s crinoline cage, which restrained her movements, but also by Sophie’s determination to take her time since she was more annoyed by Marietta’s urgency than by the approaching danger.
So much so that, although Hamilton Hope was shouting to them to hurry, they were still outside the carriage when a wagon, out of control, careered by with soldiers hanging out of it. Its driver was purple in the face and desperate, and on seeing that the Hopes’ carriage was directly in its path he shouted, ‘Out of my way, damn you,’ and brought his whip down, hard, on the flank of the nearest Hope horse.
With a shrill neigh the horse bolted, taking the carriage with it, instantly to be carried away in the midst of the struggling mass of men and wagons. Within seconds it was lost to Sophie’s and Marietta’s sight, its driver unable to return to help or to collect them.
Sophie began to scream, only for the sound to be lost in the thunder of the retreat gathering pace around them. Marietta, terrified that the pair of them would be trampled underfoot, tried to push Sophie off the road. Behind them the bellowing guns had moved up, and were now firing directly at them. Sophie screamed again when a shell landed among the crowd of men and conveyances in their rear, leaving the dead and dying sprawling on the road.
Marietta, indeed, tried to keep her head while Sophie progressively lost hers. There was no question of regaining the Hopes’ carriage, and chivalry had died in the sauve qui peut of the general retreat. Holding Sophie firmly by the hand, she pushed and shoved her way through the cursing mob, trying to avoid being run down by men on horseback, and by men driving carts and carriages of all description.
In the general panic no one made any attempt to assist the two helpless women: it was doubtful, indeed, whether anyone actually registered their presence. In the end Marietta forced the pair of them off the road in an attempt to reach the open fields beyond, where they might not be trampled in the rush.
Sophie’s screaming, alternated with sobbing, was now continuous but somehow Marietta managed to drag her to the edge of a cornfield through which parties of frantic soldiers were running in an attempt to escape from the dreadful battle which had been raging since dawn.
As soon as they stopped Sophie sat down, shouting at Marietta, ‘Whatever you say, I can’t run any more. I can’t, I can’t. I shall wait here until Papa comes for me.’
‘You must carry on walking,’ said Marietta, still panting from the effort of trying to save them both. ‘If you want to escape death or dishonour—or perhaps both, since your father is, by now, far ahead of us and unable to turn back. You will find it easier to run if you take off your crinoline cage and gather up your skirts.’
Far from calming Sophie, this useful advice set her screaming again. The tears running down her face, she demanded her father, her mother, anyone and anything which would deliver her from this nightmare.
Exasperated, Marietta said, as reasonably as she could, ‘Since there is no one here to save us, Sophie, we must try to save ourselves and we shan’t do that by crying and lamenting. We must try to be practical.’
This didn’t answer, either. The bravado which Sophie had assumed since dawn, and before the rout began, had quite disappeared. It had been lost at the moment when she was confronted with the stark realities of war. Left to herself, she would have stayed on the ground and refused to rise. Someone else must save her, preferably a man, and certainly not Marietta, whom she resented more bitterly than ever for her brave attempts to save them both from a terrible fate.
She underestimated her cousin’s determination to survive. Marietta pulled Sophie to her feet, slapped her hard on the cheek and began to lift her skirts in order to rip the crinoline cage from her.
Sophie’s screams stopped. She shrieked at her cousin, ‘You beast, you beast, you hit me,’ but she consented at last to help Marietta to untie her crinoline cage. She stepped out of it and, complaining bitterly, allowed Marietta to use her sash to tie up her skirts so that she could walk more freely.
They set off again. Marietta gripped Sophie’s hand as firmly as she could, while Sophie howled at her, ‘I shall never forgive you for hitting me, never. No, never,’ before wrenching her hand away and sitting down again.
‘Oh, damn that,’ said Marietta, forgetting everything ladylike by which she had always lived. ‘Think rather how we are to get home again—and we shan’t do that by cursing each other.’
She took Sophie’s hand again, pulled her to her feet, and began to drag her along in the direction in which she thought Centerville lay. If they could reach there they might yet survive—but it would have to be by their own efforts: the retreating troops were ignoring their plight, concerned only with trying to save themselves.
They walked and stumbled for about a mile with Marietta taking progressively more and more of Sophie’s weight, occasionally half-carrying her. The further Marietta led them away from the road where they might be trapped, the rougher the ground grew until they came to one of the many shallow streams for which the district was famous.
Sophie collapsed on to the bank. Exhaustion was preventing her from screaming. She whispered in a dull, defeated voice, ‘I really can’t go any further. You can’t ask me to. Someone will have to carry me across the water.’
Marietta’s patience snapped again. Dragging Sophie along was tiring her to the point of collapse, but somehow she had, so far, managed to find a reserve of strength which she had not known she possessed. Despite her dislike for her cousin, she had no wish to save herself and return to Washington on her own, leaving Sophie behind to suffer whatever doom awaited her.
She hauled Sophie to her feet, and shook her violently, shouting into her face, ‘If you won’t try to save your own life, at least think a little of mine. I didn’t even want to come on this stupid expedition, and if you won’t help yourself I shall leave you here to be a plaything for the Rebel soldiers when they capture you.’
Sophie was so astonished by Marietta’s ferocity that she allowed herself to be dragged into the water. Both of them slipped and stumbled on the stones, their skirts growing progressively heavier as they worked their way across the stream. Sophie’s light shoes were useless for this sort of work and Marietta’s own strong pair fared little better: they were not intended for a forced march across open country.
Their dreadful walk now began to take its toll on Marietta. Her strength was gradually being drained by the efforts of supporting her cousin, who was still making so little effort to help herself. Both women were bathed in sweat; their wet hair clung to their heads and faces, their clothing to their bodies; their feet were blistered and their breathing had turned into a desperate loud panting.
Marietta dared not allow them to rest, for she was fearful that if they stopped Sophie would not be able to start again; only the knowledge that the Confederate Army was hard on their heels kept her going. Once they had left the stream behind she saw that the traffic on the road had slackened a little.
There had been a break in the retreat, caused later, she was to find, by the road bridge, further downstream from where they had crossed, being hit by a shell, thus splitting the retreat into two. It also meant that gun and private carriages were stranded on the wrong side from Washington. At the time, seeing that the retreating crowd had thinned, Marietta steered Sophie back towards the road where walking would be easier for them.
And then the unbelievable happened.
Marietta heard her name being called.
She turned in the direction of the sound to see, of all people in the world, Jack Dilhorne.
Jack, who had left the field when it became apparent that the Union Army had lost the battle, had been caught up in the mêlée, but had fortunately managed to cross the bridge just before it was hit. He had stopped for a moment in order to allow both his horse and driver to rest when he had seen two women walking in the cornfield adjacent to the road.
To his horror he recognised Marietta and Sophie. He stood up and waved and shouted to them, calling Marietta’s name in desperation. How, in God’s name, and by what means, had they come to be here, caught in the general rout—and alone?
The feeling of relief which swept over him when he finally caught Marietta’s attention was almost overwhelming in its strength. Sophie he barely recognised, so bedraggled and filthy was her appearance.
Jack’s face was white with shock. It was bad enough to find himself caught up in the retreat, being fired at by the enemy, but to discover that Marietta was lost in it, too, almost overwhelmed him.
‘What in the world are you doing here, Marietta?’ he exclaimed when the two women reached the buggy. ‘And Sophie, also,’ he added the last almost as an afterthought as he jumped from the buggy to help the two exhausted women into it.
‘Too long a story to tell you now,’ panted Marietta, helping him to lift Sophie into the vehicle, using her last reserves of strength to do so. Sophie could not speak at all. The sight of Jack had set her crying, from relief this time, for here at last was the saviour for whom she had been waiting: a man to see her safely home—and save her from Marietta.
All three of them were light-headed from relief and exhaustion after the terrible events of the long day. Marietta clung to Jack’s hand when he helped her into the carriage: seeing him was manna in the desert for her. She now had someone who would help her to reach home safely—God willing.
She explained briefly that Hamilton Hope had brought them to see the battle and how they had come to be lost and abandoned in the thick of the rout.
‘You are not hurt, Marietta?’ he said when she had finished, again adding as an afterthought, ‘And Sophie, too.’
Sophie who was beginning to recover a little, was enraged that he had taken so little notice of her—he seemed to have eyes only for Marietta. She said in an angry voice, ‘Oh, do let us get away. This is no time for billing and cooing. We are not safe; the enemy is almost upon us.’
Jack ignored her until he saw Marietta comfortably seated before ordering the boy to drive on. His evident concern for her cousin started Sophie sobbing again. He turned to her, saying, ‘Are you hurt, Sophie? I wouldn’t like to stop the carriage, but if its motion troubles you—’
She interrupted him, muttering, ‘Only my face. It’s only my face which hurts me. She hit me. Marietta hit me—here,’ and put her hand on to her cheek.
‘Oh, goodness,’ exclaimed Marietta. ‘I only did so to make you take off your crinoline cage so that you would be able to walk more easily. If I hadn’t, we should both have been captured by the rebels by now, and what do you think would have happened to us then?’
Sophie ignored this, putting out her hand to show it to Jack. ‘And she hurt my wrist when she pulled me along—look, she bruised it.’
It was true that her hand and wrist were scarlet, but that was because of the strength which Marietta had needed to use to drag her to safety since she had refused to help herself.
Jack, who had seen Marietta pulling her along when he had first caught sight of them, said to her as gently as he could, ‘I’m sure that Marietta was doing all she could to get you safely home.’
Sophie’s sniffles grew louder and she began to shiver dramatically. ‘And I’m so cold and wet because she dragged me through the stream as well.’
Nothing would silence her. Jack took off his coat and put it around her shoulders in order to quieten her as much as to warm her. He ordered the boy to take off his jacket and give it to Marietta so that she could be protected as well. He was quite aware that only Marietta’s courage and determination had brought the two women to a place where they could be rescued, and that she had succeeded in doing so without Sophie’s co-operation.
More and more he was coming to admire her as well as love her: it was difficult to tell where one feeling ended and the other began. How could the Hopes have been so foolish as to take her to watch a battle—and then lose her? She was sitting quietly now, still composed, her face white except for the mauve smudges of exhaustion about her eyes and mouth.
After a time Sophie fell into a dazed sleep, worn out by the long day and its horrors. Jack took Marietta’s hand into his own, and when she, too, slept, it was on his shoulder, his arm now around hers, until they reached the outskirts of Washington where he gently roused her, leaving Sophie to sleep until they reached the Hamilton Hopes’ doorway.
When, carried along by the rout, they arrived back in Washington, the Hopes had been almost beside themselves. Hamilton Hope had tried to turn back when they had reached Centerville, only to be prevented by the military. Belatedly they had now recognised that the presence of civilians on the battlefield had been a mistake, and were busily engaged in moving them on without consideration for wealth, position or senatorial rank.
To Hamilton’s plea that his daughter and niece were lost, he was told that even more dead and wounded had been left behind on the battlefield and in the general rout, and that to try to find two females in the general disorder would be a hopeless task.
‘Doubtless someone will rescue them, if they are seen,’ said the harassed staff officer whom Sophie’s distracted father had approached, waving his rank as a State Senator and his brother Jacobus’s as a senior member of Lincoln’s government. Neither brought him any assistance. Instead, he was told, roughly, to be on his way at once; he was merely holding up the Army’s intention to regroup before the rebels marched on Washington—for such was the immediate fear.
They had reached home shortly before nine o’clock at night to find the town buzzing with rumours of the hideous defeat which the arrival of the demoralised remnants of the Union Army and the civilian refugees merely confirmed. The notion that the Unionists had simply to show themselves to defeat the damned rebels lay in ruins. No one now doubted that the enemy was formidable, and that the war would be long and hard.
So complete had the South’s victory been, so utter the rout, that if, in those last days of July, the Southern Armies had advanced on the panic-stricken capital the possibility of victory was theirs. They were never to be so near to it again.
Hamilton and Serena Hope sat, numb with despair in their drawing-room, denied the possibility of return to search for Sophie and Marietta—fearful that they were dead or dying.
‘Or worse,’ said Hamilton, who was beginning to think the unthinkable—that he might never see his daughter again.
‘What shall I say to Jacobus if his daughter is lost?’ he said. ‘Who could have thought that such a disaster would be possible? They should all be shot, all of them, generals and private soldiers alike. Shameful, their behaviour was shameful. It is only God’s mercy that they have not taken the capital itself.’
He had forgotten the euphoric mood of the morning when they had set out so gaily to see the battle.
The journey back to Washington was long and hard, not only for Jack and his companions but for all the struggling crowds who walked and rode towards salvation. Somewhere among them Russell sat on his horse, mentally composing his dismal tale of rout and panic for his Times despatch. It was an account which was to enrage the entire North since it told of incompetence, cowardice and failure. The greater the truth the more it hurt. The infant Republic writhed beneath the scorn of Europe. The sheer ferocity with which the North later fought the war owed a great deal to the derision which it had earned at Bull Run or First Manassas, as the battle was also known.
During the long drive home, Jack wondered how long the North would hold out after such an unforeseen and stunning defeat. He remembered, though, that Alan had told him that the war would be a long one and that the North’s victory would not be easily achieved, but that they would certainly win in the end.
His main consideration was to see the cousins safely home. Later, when they reached harbour, as it were, at one in the morning, beneath a splendid moon, and he handed them over to the Hopes, they could not say or do enough to thank him for rescuing them.
‘No,’ he said to Hamilton Hope, drinking the brandy and eating the food which the Hopes had forced on him, ‘I didn’t rescue them. Marietta had done that long before I arrived on the scene. They were clear of the enemy then, thanks to the bridge being blown up behind them. One way or another, Marietta would have made sure they reached home again: her courage was exemplary.’
He said nothing of Sophie for there was nothing to say. He had watched the two women being taken up to bed to be bathed and cosseted, but not before, unseen, while they waited for the Hopes’ butler to answer the door, he had kissed Marietta on the cheek in return for her gallantry, and had whispered to her that he hoped that it would be the first of many more yet to come.