Agatha had been for more than a week at Baillie Pegram"s bedside before he manifested any consciousness of her presence. But from the very first her ministrations had seemed to soothe him.
Even when his fever brought active delirium with it, a word from his soft-voiced French nurse quieted him, and each day showed less of fever and more of strength.
At last one day he lay quiet, and Agatha sat st.i.tching at something near the foot of the bed. Her face was bent over her work, so that she did not see when he opened his eyes and gazed steadily at her for a time.
Not until she looked up, as she was accustomed watchfully to do every little while, did he fully recognise her. Then, in a feeble voice, he spoke her name--nothing more.
She gently readjusted his pillows, and he fell into a more natural sleep than he had known since his relapse had befallen him.
When he waked again, Sam was sitting by, Agatha having left the room for a brief while.
"Who has been here, Sam?" the sick man asked.
"n.o.body, Mas" Baillie, on"y de French lady what"s a-nussin" of yo","
replied Sam, lying with the utmost equanimity, in accordance with what he believed to be the spirit of his instructions.
"I dreamed it, then. Tell me where I am, Sam."
"I ain"t Sam an" yo" ain"t Mas" Baillie; I"se jes" _garshong_, an" yo"se a French gentleman, an" yo" cawn"t talk nuffin" but French, an" so "tain"t no use fer yo" to try to talk to me. Yo" mus" jes" go to sleep, now, an" when de French nuss comes back, yo" kin ax her in French like whatsomever yo" wants to know."
Baillie"s bewildered wits struggled for a moment with the problem of his own ident.i.ty, but before the French nurse returned he had fallen asleep again. It was not until the next day, therefore, that he had opportunity to ask Agatha anything, but his fever had abated by that time, and his mind was rapidly clearing.
"Tell me about it all, please," he said to her.
"Sh--speak only in French," she replied, herself speaking in that tongue. "It is very necessary, and address me as Mademoiselle Roland."
Then she told him so much as was necessary to prevent him from exercising his imagination in an exciting way. When she had explained that he was still in the house of the doctor who had aided him in his escape, and that the pretence of his being a French gentleman and she a French nurse was necessary for safety, she added:
"I came to you when you were very ill and needed me, and I shall stay with you so long as you need me. You mustn"t talk now. Wait a few days, and you will be strong enough."
The prediction was fulfilled, and a few days later Agatha told him the whole story of her own and Sam"s search for him, dwelling particularly upon Sam"s devotion and the ingenuity he had brought to bear upon the problem of rescue. For at times when there was no possibility that anybody should overhear, Agatha had made Sam tell her all the details of that affair, until she knew as well as he did every word he had spoken and every step he had taken in the execution of his purpose.
Baillie"s progress toward recovery was necessarily slow, but it was steady and continuous, and after many weeks, when he was permitted to sit up for awhile each day, he begged to hear about the progress of the war.
It was now September, 1862, and what she had to tell him was one of the most dramatic stories that the history of our American war has to relate.
McClellan had proved himself to be a great organiser and a masterful engineer, and he had at last tried to prove himself to be also a great general.
He had so perfectly fortified the city of Washington that a brigade or a division or two might easily hold it against the most determined hosts.
He had organised the "regiments cowering upon the Potomac," and the scores of other regiments that had come pouring into the capital, into one of the finest armies that had ever taken the field in any country in the world. He had multiplied his artillery, and swelled his cavalry force to proportions that rendered it numerically superior to Stuart"s "Mamelukes." He had so perfected his supply departments--quartermaster"s, commissary"s, medical, and ordnance--that their work was accomplished with the precision, the certainty, and the smoothness of well-ordered machinery.
He had brought under his immediate command a perfectly organised army, numbering nearly or quite two hundred thousand men.[1] The Confederates had in Virginia about one-fourth that number available for the defence of Richmond. Nor could this army of defence be reinforced from other parts of the South, for during the long waiting-time in Virginia, events of the most vital importance had been occurring at the West. Chief of these in importance, though the government at Washington was slow to recognise the fact, was the discovery there of a really capable commander--General Grant. He had captured Forts Henry and Donelson, thus gaining control of the Tennessee and c.u.mberland Rivers, breaking the Confederate line of defence, and pushing the Southern armies completely out of Kentucky, and almost out of Tennessee. He was preparing, when McClellan moved, to complete that part of his work by fighting the tremendous battle of Shiloh.
[Footnote 1: Rossiter Johnson, in his "History of the War of Secession,"
says that 121,000 were sent to Fortress Monroe and seventy thousand left at Washington, besides McDowell"s corps and Bleuker"s division.]
Thus the Confederates could not afford to draw so much as a single regiment or battery from that field for the strengthening of Johnston"s force in Virginia. Finally, early in March, Johnston had withdrawn from Centreville and Mana.s.sas to the immediate neighbourhood of Richmond.
It was in such circ.u.mstances that McClellan at last undertook to use the great army he had created, for the purpose it was meant to accomplish.
Early in the spring, he transferred 120,000 men by water to Fortress Monroe, leaving seventy thousand at and near Washington, to hold that capital secure. Somewhat more than half of this force at Washington was to advance upon Richmond by way of Fredericksburg, and add forty thousand men to McClellan"s great army when he should sit down before the Confederate capital. He, meanwhile, was to march up the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers, supported by the navy on either side.
Richmond was seemingly doomed, and everywhere at the North the expectation was that McClellan, with his overwhelming forces and his well-nigh perfect organisation, would make an end of the war before the first anniversary of the battle of Mana.s.sas.
If McClellan had been half as capable in the field as he had proved himself to be in the work of organisation, this might easily have happened. But he was cautious to a positively paralysing degree. It was his habit of mind to overestimate his enemy"s strength to his own undoing. Thus when he began his advance up the peninsula, with nearly sixty thousand men, to be almost immediately reinforced to one hundred thousand and more, he found a Confederate line stretched across the peninsula at Yorktown. It consisted of thirteen thousand men under Magruder, and with his enormous superiority of numbers, McClellan might have run over it in a day, while with his transports, protected by gunboats, he might easily have carried his army by it on either side, compelling its retreat or surrender. But in his excessive caution he a.s.sumed that the entire Confederate force was concentrated there, and his imagination doubled the strength of that force. He confidently believed that the Yorktown lines were defended by an army of eighty thousand or more, and instead of finding out the facts by an a.s.sault, he wasted nearly a month in scientifically besieging the little force of thirteen thousand men, with an army six or eight times as great, and a siege train of enormous strength.
When at last he had pushed his siege parallels near enough for an a.s.sault, he found his enemy gone, and discovered that the great frowning cannon in their works were nothing more than wooden logs, painted black, and mounted like heavy guns.
The North had not yet found a general capable of commanding the superb army it had created, or of making effective use of those enormously superior resources which from the beginning had been at its disposal.
Grant had splendidly demonstrated his capacity at Shiloh, but Halleck had immediately superseded him, and completely thrown away the opportunity there presented. Grant was still denied any but volunteer rank, and for many weeks after Shiloh he was left, as he has himself recorded, with none but nominal command, and was not even consulted by his immeasurably inferior superior.
McClellan at last reached the neighbourhood of Richmond, and placed his great army on the eastern and northern fronts of the Confederate capital. But still permitting his imagination to mislead him, he confidently believed the Confederate forces to be quite twice as numerous as they were in fact. So instead of pressing them vigorously, as a more enterprising and less excessively cautious commander would have done, he proceeded to fortify and for weeks kept his splendid army idle in a pestilential swamp, whose miasms were far deadlier than bullets and sh.e.l.ls could have been.
At the end of May the Confederates a.s.sailed his left wing, believing that a flood in the river had isolated it from the rest of the army, and a b.l.o.o.d.y five days" battle ensued, with no decisive results, except to demonstrate the fighting quality of the troops under McClellan"s command.
Still he hesitated and fortified, and urgently called for reinforcements. These to the number of forty thousand were on their way to join him, marching directly southward from Washington.
But the Confederates had been more fortunate than their foes. They had found their great commander, a piece of good fortune which did not happen to the Federal armies until nearly two years later. After the battle of Seven Pines at the end of May and the beginning of June, Robert E. Lee a.s.sumed personal command of the forces defending Richmond, and from that hour the great game of war was played by him with a sagacity and a boldness that had not been seen before.
Lee"s problem was to drive McClellan"s army away from Richmond, and transfer the scene of active hostilities to some more distant point. To that end he must prevent the coming of McDowell with his army to McClellan"s a.s.sistance. Accordingly he ordered Jackson to sweep down the Shenandoah valley, threatening an advance upon Washington in its rear, thus putting the Federals there upon their defence. He rightly believed that the excessive concern felt at the North for the safety of the capital would make Jackson"s operations an occasion of great alarm.
The result was precisely what Lee had intended. Jackson swept like a hurricane through the valley, moving so rapidly and appearing so suddenly at unexpected and widely separated points as to seem both ubiquitous and irresistible. The Federal army which was marching to reinforce McClellan was promptly turned aside and sent over the mountains to meet and check Jackson. While it was hurrying westward, Jackson suddenly slipped out of the valley and carried his "foot cavalry"--as his rapidly marching corps had come to be called--to the neighbourhood of Richmond, where Lee was ready to fall upon his adversary in full force, striking his right flank like a thunderbolt, pushing into his rear, pressing him back in successive encounters, threatening his base of supplies on the York River, and finally compelling him to retreat to the cover of his gunboats at Harrison"s Landing on the James.
All this const.i.tuted what is known as the "Seven Days" Battles." It was a brilliant operation, attended at every step by heroic fighting on both sides, and by consummate skill on both--for if Lee"s successful operation for his enemy"s dislodgment was good strategy, McClellan"s successful withdrawal of his army from its imperilled position to one in which it could not be a.s.sailed, was scarcely less so.
But still more dramatic events were to follow. McClellan had been driven away from the immediate neighbourhood of the Confederate capital, but his new position at Harrison"s Landing was one from which he might at any moment advance again either upon Richmond or upon Petersburg, which was afterward proved to be the military key to the capital. His army was still numerically stronger than Lee"s, and it might be reinforced at any time, and to any desired extent, while Lee had already under his command every man that could be spared from other points. More important still, the fighting strength of McClellan"s forces had been bettered by the battling they had done. The men were inured to war work now, and had improved in steadiness and discipline under the tutelage of experience.
Except that its confidence in its general was somewhat impaired, the Army of the Potomac was a stronger and more trustworthy war implement than it had been at the beginning. So long as it should remain where it was, Lee must keep the greater part of his own force in the intrenchments in front of Richmond, and the seat of war must remain discouragingly near the Confederate capital. In the meanwhile a new Federal force, called the Army of Virginia, had been sent out from Washington under General John Pope, to a.s.sail Richmond from the north and west, while securely covering Washington. Pope"s base was at Mana.s.sas, and his army had been pushed forward to the line of the Rappahannock, where there was no army to meet it and check its advance upon Richmond.
Lee must act quickly. For should Pope come within striking-distance of Richmond on the northwest, McClellan"s army would very certainly advance from the east, and Richmond would be threatened by a stronger force than ever before.
But Lee could not move in adequate force to meet and check Pope"s advance, without leaving Richmond undefended against any advance that McClellan might see fit to make. His perplexing problem was to compel the withdrawal of McClellan, and the transfer of his army to Washington.
To effect this, Lee again played upon the nervous apprehension felt in Washington for the safety of that city. He detached Jackson, and sent him to the Rappahannock to threaten Pope, while remaining within reach of Richmond in case of need. This movement increased the apprehension in Washington, and a considerable part of McClellan"s force was withdrawn by water. Thereupon Lee sent another corps to the Rappahannock, a proceeding which led to the withdrawal of pretty nearly all that remained of McClellan"s army, to reinforce Pope, and the abandonment of the campaign by way of the peninsula. Lee instantly transferred the remainder of his army to the Rappahannock, leaving only a small garrison in the works at Richmond.
Pope was alert to meet Lee at every point, and he was being strengthened by daily reinforcements from what had been McClellan"s army. But in Pope, with all his energy and dash and extraordinary self-confidence, the Federal government had not found a leader capable of playing the great war game on equal terms with Robert E. Lee. Grant and Sherman were still in subordinate commands at the West, while Halleck, who believed in neither of them, had been brought to Washington and placed in supreme control of all the Union armies.
Lee quickly proved himself greatly more than a match for Pope in the art of war. Making a brave show of intending to force his way across the river at a point where Pope could easily hold his own, Lee detached Jackson and sent him around Bull Run Mountains and through Thoroughfare Gap to fall upon his adversary"s base at Mana.s.sas. As soon as Jackson was well on his way, Lee sent other forces to join him, while still keeping up his pretence of a purpose to force a crossing.
It was not until the head of Jackson"s column appeared near Mana.s.sas that Pope suspected his adversary"s purpose. He then hastily fell back from the river, and concentrated all his forces at Mana.s.sas, while Lee, with equal haste, moved, with the rest of his army, to join Jackson.
His strategy had completely succeeded, and he promptly a.s.sailed Pope, with his entire force, on the very field where the first great battle of the war had been fought, a little more than a year before.
Pope struggled desperately, but after two days of battle, he was completely beaten and forced to take refuge behind the defences of Washington.
This was at the beginning of September, just three months after Lee had taken personal command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Within that brief time he had done things, the simplest statement of which reads like a wonder-story. At the beginning of June a Federal army of 120,000 men lay almost within cannon-shot of the Confederate capital, while another Federal force about one-third as large was marching unopposed to form a junction with it, and still other Federal armies occupied the valley and sent raiders at will throughout Northern Virginia. At the beginning of September there remained no Federal army at all in Virginia to oppose Lee"s will, whatever it might chance to be. McClellan with his grand army had been beaten in battle, and driven into a retreat which ended in his complete withdrawal, after a disastrous campaign, which at its beginning had seemed certain of success. Jackson had cleared the valley of armies superior to his own in numbers. Pope had been outwitted in strategy, beaten in battle, and driven to cover at Washington.
That was the story that Agatha related to Baillie early in September, when he was fit to hear it. It stirred his blood with enthusiasm, and bred in him an eagerness almost dangerous, to be at the head of his battery again, and a sharer in this splendid work of war.
"Your story is not ended yet," he said, when Agatha had finished. "It is "to be continued,"--be very sure of that. Lee will not rest content with what he has done, marvellous as it is. He took the offensive as soon as he had disposed of McClellan. He will surely not now a.s.sume the defensive again, as our army did a year ago after the battle of Mana.s.sas. He is obviously made of quite other stuff than that of his predecessors in command. And here am I losing my share in it all,--a convalescent in charge of a nurse, and in hiding in the enemy"s country.