I consider myself outrageously imposed upon! I am so
indignant that I have spent a whole evening making faces at myself. “Please,
Miss Sarah, look natural!” William petitions. “I never saw you look cross
before.” Good reason! I never had more cause! However, I stop in the midst of a
hideous grimace, and join in a game of hide the switch with the children to
forget my annoyance.
Of course a woman is at the bottom of it. Last night while
Ada and Marie were here, a young lady whose name I decline to reveal for the
sake of the sex, stopped at the door with an English officer, and asked to see
me in the entry. I had met her once before. Remember this, for that is the
chief cause of my anger. Of course they were invited in; but she declined,
saying she had but a moment, and had a message to deliver to me alone, so led
me apart. “Of course you know who it is from?” she began. I told a deliberate
falsehood, and said no, though I guessed instantly. She told me the name then.
She had visited the prison the day before, and there had met the individual
whose name, joined to mine, has given me more trouble and annoyance during the
last few months than it would be possible to mention. “And our entire
conversation was about you,” she said, as though to flatter my vanity
immensely. He told her then that he had written repeatedly to me, without
receiving an answer, and at last had written again, in which he had used some
expressions which he feared had offended my reserved disposition. Something had
made me angry, for without returning letter or message to say I was not
displeased, I had maintained a resolute silence, which had given him more pain
and uneasiness than he could say. That during all this time he had had no
opportunity of explaining it to me, and that now he begged her to tell me that
he would not offend me for worlds — that he admired me more than any one he had
ever met, that he could not help saying what he did, but was distressed at
offending me, etc. The longest explanation! And she was directed to beg me to
explain my silence, and let him know if I was really offended, and also leave
no entreaty or argument untried to induce me to visit the prison; he must see
me.
As to visiting the prison, I told her that was impossible.
(O how glad I am that I never did!) But as to the letters, told her “to assure
him that I had not thought of them in that light, and had passed over the
expressions he referred to as idle words it would be ridiculous to take offense
at; and that my only reason for persevering in this silence had been that
Brother disapproved of my writing to gentlemen, and I had promised that I would
not write to him. That I had feared he would misconstrue my silence, and had
wished to explain it to him, but I had no means of doing so except by breaking
my promise; and so had preferred leaving all explanation to time, and some
future opportunity.”
“But you did not mean to pain him, did you?” the dear little
creature coaxingly lisped, standing on tiptoe to kiss me as she spoke. I
assured her that I had not. “He has been dangerously ill,” she continued,
apologizingly, “and sickness has made him more morbid and more unhappy about it
than he would otherwise have been. It has distressed him a great deal.”
I felt awkwardly. How was it that this girl, meeting him for
the first and only time in her life, had contrived to learn so much that she
had no right to know, and appeared here as mediator between two who were
strangers to her, so far usurping a place she was not entitled to, as to
apologize to me for his sensitiveness, and to entreat me to tell him he
had not forfeited my esteem, as though she was his most intimate friend,
and I a passing acquaintance? Failing to comprehend it, I deferred it to a
leisure moment to think over, and in the mean time exerted myself to be
affable.
I can't say half she spoke of, but as she was going she
said, “Then will you give me permission to say as many sweet things for you as
I can think of? I'm going there to-morrow.” I told her I would be afraid to
give her carte blanche on such a subject; but that she would really
oblige me by explaining about the letters. She promised, and after another
kiss, and a few whispered words, left me.
Maybe she exaggerated, though! Uncharitable as the
supposition was, it was a consolation. I was unwilling to believe that any one
who professed to esteem me would make me the subject of conversation with a
stranger — and such a conversation! So my comfort was only in hoping that she
had related a combination of truth and fiction, and that he had not been guilty
of such folly.
Presently it grew clearer to me. I must be growing in
wickedness, to fathom that of others, I who so short a time ago disbelieved in
the very existence of such a thing. I remembered having heard that the young
lady and her family were extremely anxious to form his acquaintance, and that
her cousin had coolly informed Ada that she had selected him among all others,
and meant to have him for a “beau” as soon as she could be introduced to him; I
remembered that the young lady herself had been very anxious to discover
whether the reputation common report had given me had any foundation.
As soon as we were alone, I told mother of our conversation
in the entry, and said, “And now I am certain that this girl has made use of my
name to become acquainted with him.”
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 410-3
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