The Burial of the Guns | Page 9

wild aeolian lyre Is but a silken string, Till summer winds inspire,
And softest music bring. Psyche, thou wast but stone Till his inspiring
came: The sculptor's hand alone Made not that soul-touched frame.
They have lain by me for years, and are pretty good for one who didn't
write. I think, however, she was young when she addressed them to the
"soul-touched" work of the young sculptor, who laid his genius and
everything at Virginia's feet. They were friends, I believe, when she
was a girl, before she caught that cold, and her eyes got bad.
Among her eccentricities was her absurd cowardice. She was afraid of
cows, afraid of horses, afraid even of sheep. And bugs, and anything
that crawled, used to give her a fit. If we drove her anywhere, and the
horses cut up the least bit, she would jump out and walk, even in the
mud; and I remember once seeing her cross the yard, where a young
cow that had a calf asleep in the weeds, over in a corner beyond her,
started toward it at a little trot with a whimper of motherly solicitude.
Cousin Fanny took it into her head that the cow was coming at her, and
just screamed, and sat down flat on the ground, carrying on as if she
were a baby. Of course, we boys used to tease her, and tell her the cows
were coming after her. You could not help teasing anybody like that.
I do not see how she managed to do what she did when the enemy got
to Woodside in the war. That was quite remarkable, considering what a
coward she was. During 1864 the Yankees on a raid got to her house
one evening in the summer. As it happened, a young soldier, one of her
cousins (she had no end of cousins), had got a leave of absence, and

had come there sick with fever just the day before (the house was
always a sort of hospital). He was in the boys' room in bed when the
Yankees arrived, and they were all around the house before she knew it.
She went downstairs to meet them. They had been informed by one of
the negroes that Cousin Charlie was there, and they told her that they
wanted him. She told them they could not get him. They asked her,
"Why? Is he not there?" (I heard her tell of it once.) She said:
"You know, I thought when I told them they could not get him that they
would go away, but when they asked me if he was not there, of course I
could not tell them a story; so I said I declined to answer impertinent
questions. You know poor Charlie was at that moment lying curled up
under the bed in the boys' room with a roll of carpet a foot thick around
him, and it was as hot as an oven. Well, they insisted on going through
the house, and I let them go all through the lower stories; but when they
started up the staircase I was ready for them. I had always kept, you
know, one of papa's old horse-pistols as a protection. Of course, it was
not loaded. I would not have had it loaded for anything in the world. I
always kept it safely locked up, and I was dreadfully afraid of it even
then. But you have no idea what a moral support it gave me, and I used
to unlock the drawer every afternoon to see if it was still there all right,
and then lock it again, and put the key away carefully. Well, as it
happened, I had just been looking at it -- which I called `inspecting my
garrison'. I used to feel just like Lady Margaret in Tillietudlam Castle.
Well, I had just been looking at it that afternoon when I heard the
Yankees were coming, and by a sudden inspiration -- I cannot tell for
my life how I did it -- I seized the pistol, and hid it under my apron. I
held on to it with both hands, I was so afraid of it, and all the time those
wretches were going through the rooms down-stairs I was quaking with
terror. But when they started up the stairs I had a new feeling. I knew
they were bound to get poor Charlie if he had not melted and run away,
-- no, he would never have run away; I mean evaporated, -- and I
suddenly ran up the stairway a few steps before them, and, hauling out
my big pistol, pointed it at them, and told them that if they came one
step higher I would certainly pull the trigger. I could not say I