CHAPTER XXXV.THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.
Of all Paul Haverill’s comfortable buildings, house, stables, barn and negro quarters, there was left him only one cabin which the fire had not consumed. That stood a little distant from the rest, and had been occupied by Lois before her husband died. It was superior to the other cabins then; it was neat and tidy now, and there they laid the dead lieutenant, in his grey uniform, with a little flag of stars and bars across his breast. This was Charlie’s thought, and it was very mete that he who to the last had believed in the righteousness of the Confederacy should have her sign above him. There was no other spot except the cabin where Maude could stay, and the entire day and night she sat by her dead Arthur, whom, now that hewasdead, she cherished in her heart as a martyr and a hero, questioning even the ground on which she had hitherto stood so firmly, and asking herself if, after all, the South was so very far out of the way, or if the Union were worth the fearful price the Southern people were paying for it. Maude did not know herself in this mood. It was so unlike all her former theories, and more than once shepressed her hot hands to her still hotter head, and asked if she was going mad.
Crouched beside Maude, with his blue eyes fixed upon her with a pitying, remorseful look, was Charlie.
“Poor Maude,—poor sister! I am so sorry. I never thought,—I did not know; you used to laugh about him so to Uncle Paul. I’d give my life to bring him back for you. Did you love him so very much?” Charlie said, in broken sentences, and then Maude shivered from head to foot, but made him no reply.
She had not loved him so very much, but his violent death and all the horrors attending it had shaken her terribly, and could he have come back to life she would have tried to love him, and with her iron will would have crushed that other love, the very knowledge of which had made her heart throb with so much joy.
But the dead come not to life again, and the next morning they buried Arthur Tunbridge in the grassy enclosure where Paul Haverill’s wife was sleeping with the infant son who, had he lived, would have been just Arthur’s age. The blue coated soldiery, who had been his deadly foes, paid him every military honor possible within their means, even marching to his grave behind the stars and bars which lay upon his coffin; but when they came back from the burial, they bore the national flag, whose folds that peaceful summer night floated in the breeze from the top of Lois’s cabin.
Very kind, and gentle, and pitiful was Tom’s demeanor toward Maude. During the day and the night, when she had sat by Arthur in Lois’s cabin, he had not been near her; but, after all was over, he went to her, and, with the authority of a friend and brother, insisted that she should take the rest she needed so much. And Maude gave way at the sound of his soothing, quietingvoice, and, with a flood of tears, did what he bade her do. And then Tom sat by her, and bathed her throbbing head, and smoothed her beautiful hair, and paid back in part the services she had rendered him when he lay sick in Squire Tunbridge’s house.
Maude was not ill,—only exhausted,—both physically and mentally the exhaustion showing itself in the quiet, listless state into which she lapsed, paying but little attention to what was passing around her, and offering no suggestion or remonstrance when told of her uncle’s plan to accompany Captain Simms and his men to Knoxville.
Over Paul Haverill, too, a change had passed. The attack upon him by his old friends and neighbors, though long expected, had been sudden and terrible when it came, and as he watched the burning of the house which had been his so long, he felt that every tie which bound him to the old place was severed. Then came swiftly the fearful tragedy of the mountains, when Arthur was brought to him dead. Stunned and bewildered by the startling events which had followed each other so rapidly, Paul was hardly able to counsel for himself, and assented readily to the plan which had really originated with Captain Carleton, who had another scheme underlying that, but who suggested both so skillfully that Paul Haverill fancied they were his own ideas, and gave them as such to Maude. They would go to Knoxville with the soldiers, he said; thence to Nashville. They had some relatives living there, and, after resting for a little, they would continue their journeyings North, going, perhaps, as far as New York.
“I always wanted to travel North,” he said, “but my affairs kept me at home. Now I have no affairs. My neighbors have relieved me of such commoditiesand I want to get away from a spot where I have witnessed such dreadful things. We all need change. You, Maude, more than I, and Charlie more than either. I don’t know what has come over the boy. That horrible night and morning were too much for him.”
Maude knew that so far as Charlie was concerned, her uncle had spoken truly. Charlie was greatly changed, and his eyes had in them a scared look, as if every detail of the horrors of the fight on the mountain had stamped itself indelibly upon his mind, and was never for an instant forgotten.
He needed a change of place and scene; and as she could not return to Arthur’s desolate home, whither the sad news had been sent at once, Maude assented to the Nashville arrangement, and in three weeks was comfortably settled at a Nashville hotel, with Lois as her attendant. Her uncle, Charlie, and Captain Carleton were with her, the latter constantly putting off his journey to Rockland, where they were so anxiously waiting for him. He had written to Rose immediately after his arrival at Nashville, telling her of all that had transpired, and speaking of Maude De Vere as one whom he hoped to make his wife. This time the letter went safely, and Rose replied at once, urging Tom to come, and insisting that Mr. Haverill, Maude and Charlie should accompany him.
“They saved Will’s life as well as yours,” Rose wrote. “I have a right to them all, and especially to the noble Maude. Bring her to me, Tom, and let me coax back the color to her dear face and the brightness to her eyes. I shall come myself and get her if she refuses.”
Maude had never known the companionship of a sister,—had never had a single intimate girl friend exceptNettie Tunbridge, who died. Independent, strong willed and self-reliant, she had cared but little for any society except that which she found with nature in the wild mountains of Tennessee; but now, broken and shocked, and shorn of some of her strength, she longed for sympathy and companionship, and something in Rose Mather’s sprightly letter made her heart yearn toward the little lady who had written it, and the pleasant home which Rose described as beautiful with the summer bloom.
“I will think about it by and by,” she said to her uncle; “but for the present it is nice to rest here in Nashville.”
So for a time longer they lingered in Tennessee, while Rose waited impatiently for them and fretted at the delay.