"THE ROSE ABOVE THE MOULD."
The convalescence of Mollie Ainslie was very rapid, and a few days
after the crisis of her disease her attendants were able to return
to their homes at Red Wing. Great was the rejoicing there over
the recovery of their favorite teacher. The school had been greatly
crippled by her absence and showed, even in that brief period, how
much was due to her ability and skill. Everybody was clamorous for
her immediate return--everybody except Eliab Hill, who after an
almost sleepless night sent a letter begging her not to return for
a considerable time.
It was a strangely earnest letter for one of its apparent import.
The writer dwelt at considerable length upon the insidious and
treacherous character of the disease from which she was recovering.
He grew eloquent as he detailed all that the people of Red Wing
owed to her exertions in their behalf, and told how, year after
year, without any vacation, she had labored for them. He showed that
this must have been a strain upon her vital energies, and pointed
out the danger of relapse should she resume her duties before she
had fully recovered. He begged her, therefore, to remain at Mulberry
Hill at least a month longer; and, to support his request, informed
her that with the advice and consent of the Superintendent he had
dismissed the school until that time. He took especial pains, too,
to prevent the report of the threatened difficulty from coming
to her ears. This was the more easily accomplished from the fact
that those who had apprehended trouble were afraid of being deemed
cowardly if they acknowledged their belief. So, while the greater
number of the men in the little hamlet were accustomed to sleep in
the neighboring thickets, in order to be out of harm's way should
the Ku Klux come to make good their decree, very little was said,
even among themselves, about the threatened attack.
In utter unconsciousness, therefore, of the fate that brooded
over those in whom she took so deep an interest, Mollie abandoned
herself to the restful delights of convalescence. She soon found
herself able to visit the room of the confirmed invalid below, and
though she seemed to detect a sort of coolness in her manner she
did not dream of associating the change with herself. She attributed
it entirely to the sore affliction which had fallen upon the
household since her arrival, and which, she charitably reasoned,
her own recovery must revive in their minds in full force. So she
pardoned the fair, frail invalid who, reclining languidly upon
the couch, asked as to her health and congratulated her in cool,
set phrases upon her recovery.
Such was not the case, however, with her host. There were tears in
his eyes when he met her on the landing for the first time after
she left her sick-bed. She knew they were for the little Hildreth
whom she had nursed and whom her presence recalled. And yet there
was a gleam in his eyes which was not altogether of sorrow. She,
too, mourned for the sweet child whom she had learned to love, and
her eyes responded to the tender challenge with copious tears. Yet
her own feelings were not entirely sad. She did not know why. She
did not stop to analyze or reason. She only gave him her hand--how
thin and white it was compared with the first time he had seen her
and had noted its soft plumpness!
Their lips quivered so that they could not speak. He held her hand
and assisted the servant in leading her into the parlor. She was
still so weak that they had to lay her on the sofa. Hesden Le Moyne
bent over her for a little while, and then hurried away. He had not
said a word, and both had wept; yet, as she closed her eyes after
he had gone she was vaguely conscious that she had never been so
happy before in her life. So the days wore on, quietly and swiftly,
full of a tender sorrow tempered with an undefined joy. Day by
day she grew stronger and brighter, needing less of assistance but
receiving even more of attention from the stricken father of her
late charge.
"You have not asked about Satan," said Mr. Le Moyne suddenly one
day.
"Why should I?" she replied, with an arch look. "If that personage
will be equally forgetful of me I am sure I shall be very glad."
"Oh, I mean your horse--Midnight, as you call him," laughed Hesden.
"So I supposed," she replied. "I have a dim notion that you applied
that eipthet to him on the night of my arrival. Your mother, too,
said something about 'Satan,' that night, which I remember puzzled
me very greatly at the moment, but I was too much flustered to ask
about it just then. Thinking of it afterward, I concluded that she
intended to refer to my black-skinned pet. But why do you give him
that name?"
"Because that was the first name he ever knew," answered Hesden,
with an amused smile.
"The first name he ever knew? I don't understand you," she replied.
"My brother captured him at Appomattox, or near there, and named
him Midnight, and Midnight he has been ever since."
"Very true," said Hesden, "but he was Satan before that, and very
well earned this name, in his young days." "In his young days?"
she asked, turning towards him in surprise. "Did you know him then?"
"Very well, indeed," he replied, smiling at her eagerness. "He was
raised on this plantation and never knew any other master than me
until that day at Rouse's Bridge."
"Why, that is the very place my brother captured him. I remember
the name now that you mention it!" she exclaimed.
"Is it anything surprising," said he, "that the day I lost him
should be the day he captured him?"
"No--not exactly--but then"--she paused in confusion as she glanced
at the empty sleeve which was pinned across his breast.
"Yes," said he, noticing her look, "I lost that there," pointing
to the empty sleeve as he spoke; "and though it was a sore loss to
a young man who prided himself somewhat on his physical activity,
I believe I mourned the horse more than I did the arm."
"But my brother--" she began with a frightened look into his face.
"Well, he must have been in my immediate vicinity, for Satan was the
best-trained horse in the squadron. Even after I was dismounted,
he would not have failed to keep his place in the ranks when the
retreat was sounded, unless an unusually good horseman were on his
back."
"My brother said he had as hard a struggle with him then as he had
with his rider before," she said, looking shyly up.
"Indeed! I am obliged to him," he responded with a smile. "The
commendation of an enemy is always pleasant to a soldier."
"Oh, he said you were terribly bloodthirsty and rode at him as
if nothing would satisfy you but his life," she said, with great
eagerness.
"Very likely," he answered, lightly. "I have some reputation for
directness of purpose, and that was a moment of desperation. We
did not know whether we should come back or not, and did not care.
We knew that the end was very near, and few of us wished to outlive
it. Not that we cared so much--many of us at least--for the cause
we fought for; but we dreaded the humiliation of surrender and the
stigma of defeat. We felt the disgrace to our people with a keenness
that no one can appreciate who has not been in like circumstances.
I was opposed to the war myself, but I would rather have died than
have lived to see the surrender."
"It must have been hard," she said, softly.
"Hard!" he exclaimed. "I should think it was! But then," he
added, his brow suddenly clearing, "next to the fact of surrender
I dreaded the loss of my horse. I even contemplated shooting him
to prevent his falling into the hands of the enemy."
"My brother thought you were rather anxious to throw away your own
life," she said, musingly.
"No," he answered, "just indifferent. I wonder if I saw him at
all."
"Oh, you must, for you-" she began eagerly, but stopped in confusion.
"Well, what did I do? Nothing very bad, I hope?" he asked.
"Well, you left an ugly scar on a very smooth forehead, if you
call that bad, sir," she said, archly.
"Indeed! Of course I do," was the reply, but his tone indicated
that he was thinking less of the atrocity which she had laid to
his charge than of the events of that last day of battle. "Let me
see," said he, musingly. "I had a sharp turn with a fellow on a
gray horse. He was a slender, fair-haired man"--looking down at
the figure on the sofa behind which he stood as if to note if there
were any resemblance. "He was tall, as tall as I am, I should say,
and I thought--I was of the impression--that he was of higher rank
than a captain. He was somewhat in advance of his line and right in
my path. I remember thinking, as I crossed swords with him that
if--if we were both killed, the odds would be in favor of our
side. He must have been a colonel at least, or I was mistaken in
his shoulder-straps."
"My brother was a colonel of volunteers," she said, quietly. "He was
only a captain, however, after his transfer to the regular army."
"Indeed!" said he with new interest. "What was he like?"
For answer Mollie put her hand to her throat, and opening a gold
locket which she wore, held up the case so far as the chain would
allow while Hesden bent over to look at it. His face was very near
her own, and she noted the eagerness with which he scanned the
picture.
"Yes, that is the man!" he said at length, with something like a
sigh. "I hope I did not injure him seriously."
"Only his beauty," she replied, pleasantly.
"Of which, judging from what I see," he said saucily, letting his
eyes wander from the miniature to her face, "he could afford to
lose a good deal and yet not suffer by comparison with others."
It was a bold, blunt compliment, yet it was uttered with evident
sincerity; but she had turned the locket so that she could see the
likeness and did not catch the double meaning of his words. So she
only answered calmly and earnestly, "He was a good brother."
A shadow passed over his face as he noticed her inattention to
his compliment, but he added heartily,
"And a gallant one. I am glad that my horse fell into his hands."
She looked at him and said,
"You were very fond of your horse?"
"Yes, indeed!" he answered. "He was a great pet before we went into
the service, and my constant companion for nearly three years of
that struggle. But come out on the porch, and let me show you some
of the tricks I taught him, and you will not only understand how I
prized him, but will appreciate his sagacity more than you do now."
He assisted her to a rocking-chair upon the porch, and, bidding a
servant to bring out the horse, said:
"You must remember that I have but one arm and have not seen him,
until lately, at least, for five years.
"Poor old fellow!" he added, as he went down the steps of the
porch, and told the servant to turn him loose. He called him up with
a snap of his thumb and finger as he entered the yard and patted
his head which was stretched out to receive the caress. "Poor
fellow! he is not so young as he was then, though he has had good
care. The gray hairs are beginning to show on his muzzle, and I can
detect, though no one else might notice them, the wrinkles coming
about his eyes. Let me see, you are only nine years old, though,--nine
past. But it's the war that tells--tells on horses just as well as
men. You ought to be credited with about five years for what you
went through then, old fellow. And a man--Do you know, Miss Mollie,"
he said, breaking suddenly off--"that a man who was in that war,
even if he did not get a shot, discounted his life about ten years?
It was the wear and tear of the struggle. We are different from
other nations. We have no professional soldiers--at least none to
speak of. To such, war is merely a business and peace an interlude.
There is no mental strain in their case. But in our war we were
all volunteers. Every man, on both sides, went into the army with
the fate of a nation resting on his shoulders, and because he felt
the burden of responsibility. It was that which killed--killed
and weakened--more than shot and shell and frost and heat together.
And then--what came afterward?"
He turned towards her as he spoke, his hand still resting on
the neck of the horse which was rubbing against him and playfully
nipping at him with his teeth, in manifestation of his delight.
Her face had settled into firm, hard lines. She seemed to be
looking beyond him, and the gray coldness which we saw about her
face when she read the telegram in the far-away Bankshire hills,
settled on cheek and brow again, as she slowly repeated, as though
unconscious of their meaning, the lines:
"In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!"
Hesden Le Moyne gazed at her a moment in confused wonder. Then
he turned to the horse and made him perform various tricks at his
bidding. He made him back away from him as far as he chose by the
motion of his hand, and then, by reversing the gesture, brought him
bounding back again. The horse lifted either foot at his instance,
lay down, rolled over, stood upon his hind feet, and finally knelt
upon the edge of the porch in obeisance to his mistress, who sat
looking, although in a preoccupied manner, at all that was done.
Hesden Le Moyne was surprised and somewhat disappointed at her lack
of enthusiasm over what he thought would give her so much pleasure.
She thanked him absently when it was over, and retired to her own
room.