Part 3 (1/2)

CHAPTER V.

In the dining-room at Lanarth stood Pocahontas, an expression of comical dismay upon her face, a pile of dusty volumes on the floor at her feet. The bookcase in the recess by the fireplace, with yawning doors and empty shelves, stood swept and garnished, awaiting re-possession. In a frenzy of untimely cleanliness, she had torn all the books from the repose of years, and now that the deed was beyond recall, she was a prey to disgust, and given over to repentance. The morning promised to be sultry, and the pile was very big; outside bugs and bees and other wise things hummed and sang in leafy places; the leaves on the magnolias were motionless, and the air asleep. A b.u.t.terfly, pa.s.sing to his siesta on the bosom of a rose, paused an instant on the window ledge to contemplate her foolishness; the flowers in the borders hung their heads. Berkeley pa.s.sed the open window, looking cool and fresh in summer clothing, and Pocahontas, catching sight of him, put her fingers to her lips and whistled sharply to attract his attention, which being done, she followed up the advantage with pantomimic gestures, indicative of despair, and need of swift a.s.sistance. Berkeley turned good-naturedly, and came in to the rescue, but when he discovered the service required of him, he regarded it with aversion, and showed a mean desire to retreat, which unworthiness was promptly detected by Pocahontas, and as promptly frustrated.

”Do help me, Berkeley,” she entreated. ”They must all be put in place again before dinner, and it only wants a quarter to one now. I can't do it all before half-past two, to save my life, unless you help me.

You know, mother dislikes a messy, littered room, and I've got your favorite pudding for dessert. Oh, dear! I'm tired to death already, and it's _so_ warm!” The rising inflection of her voice conveyed an impression of heat intense enough to drive an engine.

”What made you do it?” inquired Berkeley, in a tone calculated to make her sensible of folly.

”Mother asked me to dust the books sometime ago, but I neglected it, and this morning when the sun shone on them I saw that their condition was disgraceful. I was so much disgusted with my untidiness, that I dragged them all out on the impulse of the moment, and only realized how hot it was, and how I hated it, after the deed was done. Come, Berke, do help me. I'm so tired.”

Thus adjured, Berkeley laid aside his coat, for lifting is warm work with the sun at the meridian. The empty s.h.i.+rt sleeve had a forlorn and piteous look as it hung crumpled and slightly twisted by his side.

Berkeley caught it with his other hand and thrust the cuff in the waistband of his trowsers. He was well used to his loss, and apparently indifferent to it, but the dangling of the empty sleeve worried him; the arm was gone close up at the shoulder.

Then the pair fell to work briskly, dusting, arranging, re-arranging and chatting pleasantly. Pocahontas plied the duster and her brother sorted the books and replaced them on the shelves. The sun shone in royally, until Pocahontas served a writ of ejectment on his majesty by closing all the shutters; and the sun promptly eluded it by peeping in between the bars. A little vagrant breeze stole in, full of idleness and mischief, and meddled with the books--fluttering the leaves of ”The Faery Queen,” which lay on its back wide open, lifting up the pages, and flirting them over roguishly as though bent on finding secrets.

The little noise attracted the girl's attention, and she raised the book and wiped the covers with her duster. As she slapped it lightly with her hand to get out all the dust, a letter slipped from among the leaves and fell to the floor near Berkeley's feet.

”Where did this come from?” he inquired, as he picked it up.

”Out of this book,” she answered, holding up the volume in her hand.

”It fell out while I was dusting; some one must have left it in to mark a place. It must have been in the book for years; see how soiled it is. Whose is it?”

There is something in the unexpected finding of a stray letter which stimulates curiosity, and Berkeley turned it in his hand to read the address. The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The writing was distinct and clerkly. ”Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen, ---- Co., Virginia.” Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct postmark. ”Point”--something, it seemed to be; and on the other side, Was.h.i.+ngton, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865. What letter had been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of '65?

Then memory unfolded itself like a map whose spring is loosened.

Seating himself in an easy chair, he drew the letter from its envelope, unfolding it slowly against his knee. It was a half-sheet of ordinary commercial paper and the lines upon it numbered, perhaps, a dozen.

Mason winced at sight of the heading as though an old wound had been pressed. His sister, leaning over the back of his chair, read with him; putting out a hand across his shoulder to help him straighten the page. It ran thus:

POINT LOOKOUT,

May --, 1865.

TO BERKELEY MASON, ESQ., Virginia.

SIR--A Confederate soldier, now a prisoner of war at this place, giving his name as Temple Mason, is lying in the prison hospital at the point of death. He was too ill to be sent south with the general transfer, and in compliance with his urgent request, I write again--the third time, to inform you of his condition. He can't last much longer, and in event of his dying without hearing from his friends, he will be buried in the common cemetery connected with the prison, and his ident.i.ty, in all probability, lost. This is what he appears to dread, and he entreats that you will come to him, in G.o.d's name, if you are still alive. The utmost dispatch will be necessary.

Respectfully,

PERCIVAL SMITH, B. G. U. S. A.

Comdt., U. S. P., Point Lookout.

Mason returned the letter to its envelope and leaned back in his chair thinking. It was one of the many messages of sorrow that had winged their way through the country in the weeks following the close of the war; one of the murmurs of pain that had swelled the funeral dirge vibrating through the land.

Pocahontas came and seated herself on her brother's knee, gazing at him with wide gray eyes filled with inquiry. ”When did this come? I never saw it before,” she questioned, gravely.

Then with troubled brow, and voice that grew husky at times, he went over for her the sad story of the last months of the last year of that unhappy and fateful struggle. In the autumn of '64 their brother Temple, a lad of seventeen, had been taken prisoner, with others of his troop, while making a reconnoissance, and they had been unable to discover either his condition or place of incarceration. Mason, himself, had been at home on sick leave, weak and worn with the loss of his arm and a saber cut across his head. All through the winter and spring, while calamity followed calamity with stunning rapidity, the wearing anxiety about Temple continued, made more intolerable by the contradictory reports of his fate brought by pa.s.sing soldiers.

Finally, this letter had arrived and converted a dread fear into a worse certainty.