After saying good-by to General Stuart I returned to the house. Esten Cooke sat at a table writing. He was preparing some official papers for General Stuart, I think, and had been left behind for that purpose. I understood him to answer one of my questions to the effect that he was going to follow the cavalry presently.
“Colonel Cooke,” I asked humbly enough, for I was ready then to take information and advice from anybody, “how long do you think it will be before the army comes back?”
“Would you advise me to wait here until its return?”
“Madam, I would advise you to go to Richmond.”
“You think then it will be some time before the army returns?”
I felt like shaking him and asking: “What _can_ you say?” He may have been a brave soldier and written nice books and all that, but I think John Esten Cooke was a very dull, disagreeable man.
I waited several days, but as I got nothing further from Dan than the little note--which was bare of advice because, perhaps, he didn’t have time to write more, and because he may not have known how to advise me--I took John Esten Cooke’s advice and went to Richmond. I stopped there only a very short time, and then went on to Petersburg, where mother was. Reunion with her was compensation for many troubles, and then, too, she needed me. She had not heard from Milicent since my departure for Culpeper. Then a letter had reached us through the agency of Mr. Cridland, in which Milicent had stated her purpose of coming to us as soon as she could get a pass--a thing it was every day becoming more difficult to secure--for she was determined upon reaching us before the cold weather came again. Since that letter there had been absolute silence.
Then came upon us that awful July of 1863, and the battle of Gettysburg, the beginning of the end. Virginians fell by hundreds in that fight, and Pickett’s charge goes down to history along with Balaklava and Thermopylæ. There were more vacant chairs in Virginia, already desolate--there were more broken hearts for which Heaven alone held balm. “When Italy’s made, for what good is it done if we have not a son?” Again the angel of death had passed me by. But my heart bled for my friends who were dead on that red field far away--for my friends who mourned and could not be comforted.