Yesterday was a day of novel sensations to me. First came a
letter from mother announcing her determination to return home, and telling us
to be ready next week. Poor mother! she wrote drearily enough of the hardships
we would be obliged to undergo in the dismantled house, and of the new
experience that lay before us; but n’importe! I am ready to follow her
to Yankeeland, or any other place she chooses to go. It is selfish for me to be
so happy here while she leads such a distasteful life in Clinton. In her
postscript, though, she said she would wait a few days longer to see about the
grand battle which is supposed to be impending; so our stay will be
indefinitely prolonged. How thankful I am that we will really get back, though!
I hardly believe it possible, however; it is too good to be believed.
The nightmare of a probable stay in Clinton being removed, I
got in what the boys call a “perfect gale,” and sang all my old songs with a
greater relish than I have experienced for many a long month. My heart was open
to every one. So forgiving and amiable did I feel that I went downstairs to see
Will Carter! I made him so angry last Tuesday that he went home in a fit of
sullen rage. It seems that some time ago, some one, he said, told him such a
joke on me that he had laughed all night at it. Mortified beyond all expression
at the thought of having had my name mentioned between two men, I, who have
thus far fancied myself secure from all remarks good, bad, or indifferent (of
men), I refused to have anything to say to him until he should either explain
me the joke, or, in case it was not fit to be repeated to me, until he
apologized for the insult. He took two minutes to make up a lie. This was the
joke, he said. Our milkman had said that that Sarah Morgan was the proudest
girl he ever saw; that she walked the streets as though the earth was not good
enough for her. My milkman making his remarks! I confess I was perfectly aghast
with surprise, and did not conceal my contempt for the remark, or his authority
either. But one can't fight one's milkman! I did not care for what he or any of
that class could say; I was surprised to find that they thought at all! But I
resented it as an insult as coming from Mr. Carter, until with tears in his
eyes fairly, and in all humility, he swore that, if it had been anything that
could reflect on me in the slightest degree, he would thrash the next man who
mentioned my name. I was not uneasy about a milkman's remarks, so I let it
pass, after making him acknowledge that he had told me a falsehood concerning
the remark which had been made. But I kept my revenge. I had but to cry “Milk!”
in his hearing to make him turn crimson with rage. At last he told me that the
less I said on the subject, the better it would be for me. I could not agree. “Milk”
I insisted was a delightful beverage. I had always been under the impression
that we owned a cow, until he had informed me it was a milkman, but was
perfectly indifferent to the animal so I got the milk. With some such allusion,
I could make him mad in an instant. Either a guilty conscience, or the real
joke, grated harshly on him, and I possessed the power of making it still
worse. Tuesday I pressed it too far. He was furious, and all the family warned
me that I was making a dangerous enemy.
Yesterday he came back in a good humor, and found me in
unimpaired spirits. I had not talked even of “curds,” though I had given him
several hard cuts on other subjects, when an accident happened which frightened
all malicious fun out of me. We were about going out after cane, and Miriam had
already pulled on one of her buckskin gloves, dubbed “old sweety” from the
quantity of cane-juice they contain, when Mr. Carter slipped on its mate, and
held it tauntingly out to her. She tapped it with a case-knife she held, when a
stream of blood shot up through the glove. A vein was cut and was bleeding
profusely.
He laughed, but panic seized the women. Some brought a
basin, some stood around. I ran after cobwebs, while Helen Carter held the vein
and Miriam stood in silent horror, too frightened to move. It was, indeed,
alarming, for no one seemed to know what to do, and the blood flowed rapidly.
Presently he turned a dreadful color, and stopped laughing. I brought a chair,
while the others thrust him into it. His face grew more deathlike, his mouth
trembled, his eyes rolled, his head dropped. I comprehended that these must be
symptoms of fainting, a phenomenon I had never beheld. I rushed after water,
and Lydia after cologne. Between us, it passed away; but for those few moments
I thought it was all over with him, and trembled for Miriam. Presently he
laughed again and said, “Helen, if I die, take all my negroes and money and
prosecute those two girls! Don't let them escape!” Then, seeing my long face,
he commenced teasing me. “Don't ever pretend you don't care for me again! Here
you have been unmerciful to me for months, hurting more than this cut, never
sparing me once, and the moment I get scratched, it's ‘O Mr. Carter!’ and you
fly around like wild and wait on me!” In vain I represented that I would have
done the same for his old lame dog, and that I did not like him a bit better;
he would not believe it, but persisted that I was a humbug and that I liked him
in spite of my protestations. As long as he was in danger of bleeding to death,
I let him have his way; and, frightened out of teasing, spared him for the rest
of the evening.
Just at what would have been twilight but for the moonshine,
when he went home after the blood was stanched and the hand tightly bound, a
carriage drove up to the house, and Colonel Allen was announced. I can't say I
was ever more disappointed. I had fancied him tall, handsome, and elegant; I
had heard of him as a perfect fascinator, a woman-killer. Lo! a wee little man
is carried in, in the arms of two others, — wounded in both legs at Baton
Rouge, he has never yet been able to stand. . . . He was accompanied by a Mr.
Bradford, whose assiduous attentions and boundless admiration for the Colonel
struck me as unusual. . . . I had not
observed him otherwise, until the General whispered, “Do you know that that is
the brother of your old sweetheart?” Though the appellation was by no means
merited, I recognized the one he meant. Brother to our Mr. Bradford of eighteen
months ago! My astonishment was unbounded, and I alluded to it immediately. He
said it was so; that his brother had often spoken to him of us, and the
pleasant evenings he had spent at home.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 266-70
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