Part 28 (1/2)
”How I shrink from taking your place,” interrupted the sister. ”Poor George! He will readily perceive the difference, I fear.”
Anna's heart sank within her as she listened to the words of her companions, who were all unconscious of the wounds they were probing.
Ellen must not know it; and then she was so soon to leave him! This would be harder now, but he was to fight no more and they might yet be happy! It was a grief to her that she had ever neglected him and brought sorrow instead of joy into his hours of suffering. She opened the door of the sick man's chamber, and as the father and sister pa.s.sed in reclosed it and retired to her own room. More than one reason prompted her to do this, yet they must know in time that a great joy had been amid her throes of bereavement. She would not have them grieved by her seeming idiosyncrasies. They might blame her for apparent neglect; and O if it had not been! Still he had not suffered as had she; her heart a.s.sured her of this, and it pressed the thought as a consolation over the bleeding fissure as the wounded bird attempts to hide its ebbing life's blood beneath its fluttering wing! But it was over, and now the phantom had been driven, ah whither? Would it ever haunt her again? He had said: ”There is a G.o.d somewhere who will make it all right in His own good time,” and she would wait.
Tea was ready and the three sat down together, Mr. St. Clair and Ellen to satisfy a sharpened appet.i.te after a long and tiresome journey, and Anna to do the honors of the table after their home style in the north.
”George is looking so much better than I had hoped to find him,” said the father. ”I think I shall be obliged to bless you Miss Anna for his rapid improvement. It has been so kind in you to think of others, although you were so heavily burdened with your own bitter sorrow! What a debt of grat.i.tude you and yours are heaping upon us!” he continued, musingly. ”But war must always bear its 'apples of ashes' and G.o.d only knows where the ax should be laid!”
There were tears in Anna's eyes, for the fountain of grief had been for so many days open that the liquid drops flowed now almost unconsciously when the angel of pity stirred the bitter waters. Ellen saw them and the dew-drops of sympathy moistened her own dark ones. ”It would be so hard to lose a brother,” she thought. ”How glad she was that George was better!”
”You must go with us,” said Ellen as they arose from the table and went out into the hall. ”You must begin to initiate me in your skill of hygiene; beside, George inquired for you. I see how it will be, you are to be sadly missed when only my poor inexperienced hands are brought into service!” She noticed the agitation of her companion, and placing an arm affectionately around her said, soothingly: ”You know my heart, dear girl, and that it is full of sympathy, but my tongue is a miserable medium with which to communicate it to another! Let it be sufficient that I can feel that you are sure of this and will never doubt me!”
”Doubt you, Ellen? Never for a moment! But my mother; how is she?”
”Sorrow-stricken, of course, but strangely resigned. There is something n.o.ble in such a grief as hers, Anna! No, you need not shrink from meeting her; she will comfort you! I see by your face, poor sufferer, that you need it! She will do you good, never fear!”
”Just step in my room for a moment, Ellen; I would not have him see me tear-stained again. I have wept so much for the last few days. You speak truly, I do need my mother, for I am very weak. Ellen, there has been more gall in the cup I have been draining than you can ever know! A darker wave has rolled over my soul than can ever lift your bark, my precious friend; but what matters it after all, when we find ourselves sinking we are led to cry out 'save or I perish?' We shall be chided some day for our faithlessness and doubtings, and it is better that we should receive it while yet on the sea, for the calm, Ellen, is peaceful after the storm.” She had been bathing her face and arranging her hair while speaking, and now turned toward her companion with the old smile wreathing her lips.
”You are like your mother,” and again the arm of affection drew them closer together as they proceeded to the room where the father and brother were awaiting them.
That night, contrary to the doctor's instructions, there was a long conversation in the sick man's chamber, in which he earnestly joined.
”Let it be settled, Father, that you return with Anna,” he said at length. ”I shall get along all right with Ellen and Mrs. Howard, with what Toby can help, I have not the least doubt; and, besides, we rebels must not be too exacting or expect too much.” His eyes were upon Anna, and she knew it. Her cheeks flushed, but the great hope in her heart kept back the haunting spectre his words might otherwise have summoned.
”He is a rebel no more,” she thought. His voice recalled her.
”Besides, you will be needed in the widow's home to a.s.sist and cheer. It will not be a great while before I shall be able to join you all there, for immediately on being well enough to sit up for a few hours I shall leave for the North--through my convalescence at least.”
There were quick glances into each other's faces, but he was silent.
”I will do as you say, my son,” was the father's conclusion, ”but I fear we are tiring you. Yes, you will feel better after a rest, and to-morrow we will talk farther on the subject.”
Four days afterward a solemn cortege wended its way through the little village of Glendale, bearing its dead from the station to the home of bereavement and sorrow. There were warm hand claspings, and words of sympathy and condolence, and tears, such as mothers alone can shed, when maternal love is stricken; when heart answers to heart with the sad echo of loneliness and desolation.
And so they laid Edward Pierson away upon the hillside; the first martyr in all the region on the altar of freedom!
[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCENE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP, VIRGINIA.]
CHAPTER XXVII.
NEW RESOLVES--AND NEW ADVENTURES.
”Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.”
These words Lillian Belmont repeated to herself as the carriage that was bearing her away from home and early a.s.sociations rolled down the highway leading to the depot, where she with her cousin Grace Stanley were to take the cars for New Orleans. Mrs. Stanley was the youngest sister of the deceased master of Rosedale, but since his death very little intimacy had been continued between the families, until Mrs.
Belmont meeting the vivacious, merry-hearted Grace had conceived the idea of using her for a purpose, and so had invited her to spend a few weeks with her ”morbid” cousin. All things, however, had not worked to that lady's satisfaction, as we have learned, and now with a mother's curse weighing her down the daughter had joined with David in the supplication, ”lead me in a plain path.” Was He leading her? The path as yet was dark and overshadowed, but she had clasped the gentle hand and the promise was, ”I will never leave or forsake thee”; and with simple, childlike trust she walked forward. During the winter she had written several times to her mother, pleading she would clear away the mysteries of the past, remove the maternal edicts, so that over the debris of broken hopes and shattered ambitions they might again come together, reconciled and loving. But no response to these pleadings came to her.
To be sure there were letters from loved ones telling of the early removal of her family to the city, of the visit to the Washburn's, of the sudden death of little Shady, with poor old Vina's wail of anguish, but not a word of sympathy from the heart where the maternal love lay buried.