Part 54 (1/2)

”Good-by, my boy,” said Mrs. Ambler, giving him her hand.

”Good-by, my soldier,” said Betty, taking both of his. Then Hosea cracked the whip and the wagon rolled out into the road, scattering the gray dust high into the sunlight.

Dan, standing alone against the pines, looked after it with a gnawing hunger at his heart, seeing first Betty's eyes, next the gleam of her hair, then the dim figures fading into the straw, and at last the wagon caught up in a cloud of dust. Down the curving road, round a green knoll, across a little stream, and into the blue valley it pa.s.sed as a speck upon the landscape. Then the distance closed over it, the sand settled in the road, and the blank purple hills crowded against the sky.

V

”THE PLACE THEREOF”

In the full beams of the sun the wagon turned into the drive between the lilacs and drew up before the Doric columns. Mr. Bill and the two old ladies came out upon the portico, and the Governor was lifted down by Uncle Shadrach and Hosea and laid upon the high tester bed in the room behind the parlour.

As Betty entered the hall, the familiar sights of every day struck her eyes with the smart of a physical blow. The excitement of the shock had pa.s.sed from her; there was no longer need to tighten the nervous strain, and henceforth she must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest--in the place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories. While there was something for her hands to do--or the danger of delay in the long watch upon the road--it had not been so hard to brace her strength against necessity, but here--what was there left that she must bring herself to endure? The torturing round of daily things, the quiet house in which to cherish new regrets, and outside the autumn suns.h.i.+ne on the long white turnpike. The old waiting grown sadder, was begun again; she must put out her hands to take up life where it had stopped, go up and down the s.h.i.+ning staircase and through the unchanged rooms, while her ears were always straining for the sound of the cannon, or the beat of a horse's hoofs upon the road.

The brick wall around the little graveyard was torn down in one corner, and, while the afternoon sun slanted between the aspens, the Governor was laid away in the open grave beneath rank periwinkle. There was no minister to read the service, but as the clods of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs.

Ambler opened her prayer book and Betty, kneeling upon the ground, heard the low words with her eyes on the distant mountains. Overhead the aspens stirred beneath a pa.s.sing breeze, and a few withered leaves drifted slowly down. Aunt Lydia wept softly, and the servants broke into a subdued wailing, but Mrs. Ambler's gentle voice did not falter.

”He, cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”

She read on quietly in the midst of the weeping slaves, who had closed about her. Then, at the last words, her hands dropped to her sides, and she drew back while Uncle Shadrach shovelled in the clay.

”It is but a span,” she repeated, looking out into the suns.h.i.+ne, with a light that was almost unearthly upon her face.

”Come away, mamma,” said Betty, holding out her arms; and when the last spray of life-everlasting was placed upon the finished mound, they went out by the hollow in the wall, turning from time to time to look back at the gray aspens. Down the little hill, through the orchard, and across the meadows filled with waving golden-rod, the procession of white and black filed slowly homeward. When the lawn was reached each went to his accustomed task, and Aunt Lydia to her garden.

An hour later the Major rode over in response to a message which had just reached him.

”I was in town all the morning,” he explained in a trembling voice, ”and I didn't get the news until a half hour ago. The saddest day of my life, madam, is the one upon which I learn that I have outlived him.”

”He loved you, Major,” said Mrs. Ambler, meeting his swimming eyes.

”Loved me!” repeated the old man, quivering in his chair, ”I tell you, madam, I would rather have been Peyton Ambler's friend than President of the Confederacy! Do you remember the time he gave me his last keg of brandy and went without for a month?”

She nodded, smiling, and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands, wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friends.h.i.+p. To Betty these trivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed them eagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in a low voice to herself characteristic stories which she had not heard before.

”I remember that--we had been married six months then,” she would say, with the unearthly light upon her face. ”It is almost like living again to hear you, Major.”

”Well, madam, life is a sad affair, but it is the best we've got,”

responded the old gentleman, gravely.

”He loved it,” returned Mrs. Ambler, and as the Major rose to go, she followed him into the hall and inquired if Mrs. Lightfoot had been successful with her weaving. ”She told me that she intended to have her old looms set up again,” she added, ”and I think that I shall follow her example. Between us we might clothe a regiment of soldiers.”

”She has had the servants brus.h.i.+ng off the cobwebs for a week,” replied the Major, ”and to-day I actually found Car'line at a spinning wheel on the back flagstones. There's not the faintest doubt in my mind that if Molly had been placed in the Commissary department our soldiers would be living to-day on the fat of the land. She has knitted thirty pairs of socks since spring. Good-by, my dear lady, good-by, and may G.o.d sustain you in your double affliction.”

He crossed the portico, bowed as he descended the steps, and, mounting in the drive, rode slowly away upon his dappled mare. When he reached the turnpike he lifted his hat again and pa.s.sed on at an amble.

During the next few months it seemed to Betty that she aged a year each day. The lines closed and opened round them; troops of blue and gray cavalrymen swept up and down the turnpike; the pastures were invaded by each army in its turn, and the hen-house became the spoil of a regiment of stragglers. Uncle Shadrach had buried the silver beneath the floor of his cabin, and Aunt Floretta set her dough to rise each morning under a loose pile of kindling wood. Once a deserter penetrated into Betty's chamber, and the girl drove him out at the point of an old army pistol, which she kept upon her bureau.