V
"THE PLACE THEREOF"
In the full beams of the sun the wagon turned into the drive between thelilacs and drew up before the Doric columns. Mr. Bill and the two oldladies came out upon the portico, and the Governor was lifted down by UncleShadrach and Hosea and laid upon the high tester bed in the room behind theparlour.
As Betty entered the hall, the familiar sights of every day struck her eyeswith the smart of a physical blow. The excitement of the shock had passedfrom her; there was no longer need to tighten the nervous strain, andhenceforth she must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest--inthe place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories. Whilethere was something for her hands to do--or the danger of delay in the longwatch upon the road--it had not been so hard to brace her strength againstnecessity, but here--what was there left that she must bring herself toendure? The torturing round of daily things, the quiet house in which tocherish new regrets, and outside the autumn sunshine on the long whiteturnpike. The old waiting grown sadder, was begun again; she must put outher hands to take up life where it had stopped, go up and down the shiningstaircase and through the unchanged rooms, while her ears were alwaysstraining for the sound of the cannon, or the beat of a horse's hoofs uponthe 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 waslaid away in the open grave beneath rank periwinkle. There was no ministerto 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, heardthe low words with her eyes on the distant mountains. Overhead the aspensstirred beneath a passing breeze, and a few withered leaves drifted slowlydown. Aunt Lydia wept softly, and the servants broke into a subduedwailing, but Mrs. Ambler's gentle voice did not falter.
"He, cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were ashadow, and never continueth in one stay."
She read on quietly in the midst of the weeping slaves, who had closedabout her. Then, at the last words, her hands dropped to her sides, and shedrew back while Uncle Shadrach shovelled in the clay.
"It is but a span," she repeated, looking out into the sunshine, with alight that was almost unearthly upon her face.
"Come away, mamma," said Betty, holding out her arms; and when the lastspray of life-everlasting was placed upon the finished mound, they went outby the hollow in the wall, turning from time to time to look back at thegray aspens. Down the little hill, through the orchard, and across themeadows filled with waving golden-rod, the procession of white and blackfiled slowly homeward. When the lawn was reached each went to hisaccustomed task, and Aunt Lydia to her garden.
An hour later the Major rode over in response to a message which had justreached him.
"I was in town all the morning," he explained in a trembling voice, "and Ididn'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 ofthe Confederacy! Do you remember the time he gave me his last keg of brandyand went without for a month?"
She nodded, smiling, and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands,wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friendship. To Betty thesetrivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed themeagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in alow voice to herself characteristic stories which she had not heard before.
"I remember that--we had been married six months then," she would say, withthe unearthly light upon her face. "It is almost like living again to hearyou, 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, shefollowed him into the hall and inquired if Mrs. Lightfoot had beensuccessful with her weaving. "She told me that she intended to have her oldlooms set up again," she added, "and I think that I shall follow herexample. Between us we might clothe a regiment of soldiers."
"She has had the servants brushing off the cobwebs for a week," replied theMajor, "and to-day I actually found Car'line at a spinning wheel on theback flagstones. There's not the faintest doubt in my mind that if Mollyhad been placed in the Commissary department our soldiers would be livingto-day on the fat of the land. She has knitted thirty pairs of socks sincespring. Good-by, my dear lady, good-by, and may God sustain you in yourdouble affliction."
He crossed the portico, bowed as he descended the steps, and, mounting inthe drive, rode slowly away upon his dappled mare. When he reached theturnpike he lifted his hat again and passed on at an amble.
During the next few months it seemed to Betty that she aged a year eachday. The lines closed and opened round them; troops of blue and graycavalrymen swept up and down the turnpike; the pastures were invaded byeach army in its turn, and the hen-house became the spoil of a regiment ofstragglers. Uncle Shadrach had buried the silver beneath the floor of hiscabin, and Aunt Floretta set her dough to rise each morning under a loosepile of kindling wood. Once a deserter penetrated into Betty's chamber, andthe girl drove him out at the point of an old army pistol, which she keptupon her bureau.
"If you think I am afraid of you come a step nearer," she had said coolly,and the man had turned to run into the arms of a Federal officer, who wassweeping up the stragglers. He was a blue-eyed young Northerner, and forthree days after that he had set a guard upon the portico at Uplands. Thememory of the small white-faced girl, with her big army pistol and theblazing eyes haunted him from that hour until Appomattox, when he heaved asigh of relief and dismissed it from his thoughts. "She would have shot therascal in another second," he said afterward, "and, by George, I wish shehad."
The Governor's wine cellar was emptied long ago, the rare old wine flowingfrom broken casks across the hall.
"What does it matter?" Mrs. Ambler had asked wearily, watching the redstream drip upon the portico. "What is wine when our soldiers are starvingfor bread? And besides, war lives off the soil, as your father used tosay."
Betty lifted her skirts and stepped over the bright puddles, glancingdisdainfully after the Hessian stragglers, who went singing down the drive.
"I hope their officers will get them," she remarked vindictively, "and thenext time they offer us a guard, I shall accept him for good and all, if hehappens to have been born on American soil. I don't mind Yankees somuch--you can usually quiet them with the molasses jug--but theseforeigners are awful. From a Hessian or a renegade Virginian, good Lorddeliver us."
"Some of them have kind hearts," remarked Mrs. Ambler, wonderingly. "Idon't see how they can bear to come down to fight us. The Major met GeneralMcClellan, you know, and he admitted afterwards that he shouldn't haveknown from his manner that he was not a Southern gentleman."
"Well, I hope he has left us a shoulder of bacon in the smokehouse,"replied Betty, laughing. "You haven't eaten a mouthful for two days,mamma."
"I don't feel that I have a right to eat, my dear," said Mrs. Ambler. "Itseems a useless extravagance when every little bit helps the army."
"Well, I can't support the army, but I mean to feed you," returned Bettydecisively, and she went out to ask Hosea if he had found a new hidingplace for the cattle. Except upon the rare mornings when Mr. Bill left hisfishing, the direction of the farm had fallen entirely upon Betty'sshoulders. Wilson, the overseer, was in the army, and Hosea had graduallyrisen to take his place. "We must keep things up," the girl had insisted,"don't let us go to rack and ruin--papa would have hated it so," and, withthe negro's aid, she had struggled to keep up the common tenor of the oldcountry life.
Rising at daybreak, she went each morning to overlook the milking of thecows, hidden in their retreat among the hills; and as the s
un rose higher,she came back to start the field hands to the ploughing and the women tothe looms in one of the detached wings. Then there was the big storehouseto go into, the rations of the servants to be drawn from their secretcorners, the meal to be measured, and the bacon to be sliced with the carewhich fretted her lavish hands. After this there came the shucking of thecorn, a negro frolic even in war years, so long as there was any corn toshuck, and lastly the counting of the full bags of grain before the heavywagon was sent to the little mill beside the river. From sunrise to sunsetthe girl's hands were not idle for an instant, and in the long evenings, bythe light of the home-made tallow dips, which served for candles, she woulddraw out a gray yarn stocking and knit busily for the army, while shetried, with an aching heart, to cheer her mother. Her sunny humour had madeplay of a man's work as of a woman's anxiety.
Sometimes, on bright mornings, Mr. Bill would stroll over with his rod uponhis shoulder and a string of silver perch in his hand. He had grown old andvery feeble, and his angling had become a passion mightier than an armywith bayonets. He took small interest in the war--at times he seemed almostunconscious of the suffering around him--but he enjoyed his chats withUnion officers upon the road, who occasionally capped his stories of bigsport with tales of mountain trout which they had drawn from Northernstreams. He would sit for hours motionless under the willows by the river,and once when his house was fired, during a raid up the valley, he washeard to remark regretfully that the messenger had "scared away his firstbite in an hour." Placid, wide-girthed, dull-faced, innocent as a child, hesat in the midst of war dangling his line above the silver perch.