I must tell you of the Major's Last Love. I had thought I would leave
it in my note book, but a letter, which I can only read through a mist
of tears, has changed my mind.
Strolling out as the sun was setting, on the first evening of my stay
at a village hotel last summer, I saw two shadows cast across the
street; one so very long, and one so very short, as to look ridiculous.
They were the shadows of the Major and his Last Love. The Major,
hatless, was swinging musingly the torn straw hat of his love, while
the little three-year-old lady herself was struggling along with the
Major's hat piled with flowers and toys and teacups on her return from
having "a party" on the river edge. The little feet stumbled, the party
crockery flew, and the two shadows melted in one as the prattling owner
and the tall Major knelt together to gather them up. That was my first
sight of the Major and his love.
I cannot say that any of us knew, or came to know, all about the Major;
always excepting that we loved him. He was tall, straight, and
frost-haired. His regular features were of that sort that might have
belonged to a man of forty-five or a man of sixty, and he was a
changeable sort of a person who one day would look one age and the
next another. Of his means, we knew absolutely nothing. It was said
that his wealth had been carried away by the civil war and that he was
living on a small but sufficient remainder, which was doubtless true.
Over his gray moustache there was a blue eye that sometimes looked as
it might belong to a boy of eighteen and sometimes had the weary look
of a man long acquainted with grief. His skin was as soft as a woman's
and often suffused with a faint blush which would have better become
a woman. He was the very spirit of gentleness to both men and women,
and it seemed hard to realize, looking at him, that, as we heard
afterwards, this man had been wounded and captured in a battle and set
apart to be executed in reprisal. We did not learn that from him, for
he never talked about himself, but from an old army comrade who met
him and was the only man that we boarders ever saw the Major familiar
with. Not that he was distant, but after a gentle smile of salutation
or recognition he never seemed anxious to converse, and like most men,
silence gave him an air of mystery. There were many solutions of the
mystery by the lady boarders, particularly by Mrs. Pointlace, a restless
little widow, who was never at peace unless she was in love with
somebody or somebody was in love with her. Her theory was that the
Major had suffered, at some period or other, a great shock to his
affections--a supposition that failed to find confirmation in the
regular appetite and the eccentric neatness of the person who had
received the shock. Whether the lady's theory was correct or not, none
of us had an opportunity to know, for we would as soon have expected
to see the Major come into the dining-room without his coat as to have
heard him speak of his personal affairs. The widow was a new boarder;
if she had been there as long as the rest of us she would have known
that whatever he might have suffered in the past, the Major's heart
was now full to the brim of affection for a female, and that female
not longer than his arm.
She couldn't have been over three years old, and was the only girl
among four boys, running up like stair steps. I can see her now under
a broad summer hat that would have covered the top of a barrel. The
crown had given away and her little blue eyes would be oftener looking
out through the gap than from under the brim. Her stockings were never
both tied up at the same time, except when her mother turned her over,
fresh dressed, in the morning to the Major, or when she put on her
"tose" in the evening to walk with him. How the Major had gotten such
possession of her, I think even her father and mother hardly knew, but
certain it was that she had become his personal property. They went
the rounds of the town stores every day, and took long walks from which
the little lady always came back tired and asleep in the arms of the
"Mady," as she called him. I suppose sometimes the Major had carried
her for miles, and he would mount the steps of the hotel veranda in
those sultry days, mopping his face wet from fatigue. And then he would
unload his pockets of all the shells and rocks and sticks and strings
that the little one had gathered in the waking part of her walk, and
put them away for her carefully. One day the usual load had a marked
variety in the shape of a large watermelon and three kittens. In
managing all of which the little lady was assisting by bringing one
kitten tail foremost under each arm. Much time was spent by the little
tyrant in directing the Major as to where each article of that
remarkable load was to go. If she had become, the Major's property,
I think I may say that the Major had also become her property. I think
that on rainy days from his vest to his heels, the Major's clothing
was marked with little muddy foot prints; that his hat was used as a
carryall for all manner of toys and sweetmeats; that his watch was
demanded at all hours of the day to see if it was "bekfus time" yet,
and that his cane served as an Arab steed for races around the porch
without limit. The "Mady" and all he had were the undisturbed possession
of the little one.
It was the close of the summer that, one morning, the little one did
not appear. She was sick of fever, they said. At breakfast, the Major
looked disturbed. But in a hotel we are not apt to think seriously of
the troubles of our neighbors, even if they are next door to us, and
few of us thought to ask about the baby. One night coming in late from
the theatre, I saw a large rocking chair at the end of the floor on
which the baby slept, and I was astonished on looking closer to see
the Major in it. His gentle face had a worn and weary look on it, and
the waiter told me next morning that the Major had walked the hall
pretty much all night for several nights, and that he had carried the
chair there for him to rest in. The baby, the waiter said, was not
likely to live. As I went up after breakfast, I stopped to inquire,
and the little one's mother, whose eyes were red with weeping, said
I could come in, adding, "It would hardly make any difference, now."
There sat the Major by the bed, with all manner of toys and dolls
spread out on the coverlet, before the sick child's eyes. Like a man's
idea of doing something, he had bought them. Poor fellow! it was all
he could think of to do. The little blue eyes were changed and the
thin little hands were restless. They would pick out a toy and lay it
aside, and then the dear old Major would arrange them freshly, so as
to attract her attention. I think she was delirious, for she asked
that her "tose" be given her, that she might talk with the "Mady." And
then the poor fellow would look up to the mother, and say: "I think
she can to-morrow, madam; I think she can to-morrow, don't you?"
I think he hardly knew what he said it for, except with the vague idea
of giving somebody hope. Anyhow, his voice seemed to arouse the little
one, and she drew her little thin hand over his face, and said, in an
inquiring tone, "Mady?" I think the world was floating out of sight
and she wasn't certain. The Major turned, with a look of alarm, to the
mother at the window, and said, "Oh, do you think--" But whatever he
was going to ask was answered before he asked it, for the mother leaned
her head against the window pane and sobbed. He looked around the room
quickly, as one who would look for help from somewhere, he knew not
where, and then slipping out of his chair to his knees by the bedside,
took the child's hand and laid his head on the coverlet. It seemed to
stop the fast going spirit for a moment, and the other little thin
hand wandered to the gray head and nestled there, and once more the
weak voice said "Mady." As I softly closed the door, I could hear the
poor old Major, between his sobs, repeating over and over, "Oh, my
little one! my little one!"
The next night several of us went to the Ladies' Parlor to set up with
baby. At the head of the little coffin sat the Major. He was in full
evening dress--none of us had seen him in evening dress before--and
in his lapel was a bouquet of white flowers, evidently arranged by
himself. He looked years older; indeed, about all there was left of
his old look was the patient gentleness that had won us all. In the
coffin, in the little hand, was another bouquet of white flowers, as
awkwardly arranged as the one the Major wore. We did not need to be
told where it came from. Always shy, he was even more so that night,
from the unaccustomed duty he seemed struggling to perform. As the
boarders dropped in, to look at the child, he seemed glad of the
opportunity to go up again and look into the coffin, but he never went
by himself. He had nothing to say, but if spoken to, replied with his
never-failing sweetness of manner. Often during that night he was out
for water, but those of us who saw his wet lashes, knew what took him
out. Towards morning a lady watcher found lying on the centre table
a broken doll which had belonged to the little one and which she had
named after the "Mady." The Major went out quickly and came back no
more.
At the funeral next day it looked to us, though the parents of the
little one were there, as if the chief mourner was not, for the Major
was absent. Indeed, he was not at the hotel during the day, and it was
late in the evening before he came home. He still had the dress suit
on, but the bouquet was gone. It needed no one tell us on what little
mound of earth it had been left. I think I have said that the Major
was not easy to be intimate with, and to that fact I ascribe none of
us trying to console his grief by reference to his little love. He
resumed his every day suit--he wore his full dress suit for several
days, I think, as a sort of silent expression of mourning--and resumed
his old seat in the corner of the veranda, where he and the little one
had such gay larks and which was their headquarters when they came
from walk. He was the same gentle, sweet old man, except if anything
a shade gentler to all and especially to children. When I came away
he walked to the depot with me, and as we walked, told me he expected
always to live where--well, where he lived now. That was the nearest
he ever came to speaking of what filled his heart. I can see him now,
as the cars started, waving his hand and his blue eyes lighted up.
And now to the letter. It is just a few days since I got it. In writing
to one of my hotel acquaintances I had sent my regards to the old
Major, and asked if he had kept his promise to live there always. The
answer shocked me. He had not kept his promise, the writer said, but
he had gone to live in a another and Better Country. His health of
late had not been strong, and a few weeks ago it had become clear that
he was fast going. His last walk was out to the resting place of his
little love. As he grew worse and weaker he asked that the rector be
sent for. When he came, the Major told him that he had long ago placed
his hopes on the Heavenly Father and tried to live as a child of His,
and--with his old time gentle hesitation--he added, "as a poor unworthy
child of His." But it was not for that he had sent for him, it was
this, and here the Major took from under his pillow a letter addressed
to baby's parents, which he asked the rector to deliver. It had been
written just after her death and was a simple request that he might
be buried by her side. One thing he questioned the rector anxiously
about: as to whether in the Better Country we would know each other.
The letter was delivered and the next day baby's father and mother
came to see her old friend. He was fast going, and lay with his eyes
closed. Somehow, it seemed to cross his mind that they would know, and
as they were leaving, he said, "You think I'll know the little one?
Oh, I hope I will know her." After he was buried, adds the writer, we
found some of her broken toys in his desk, and a list, written way
back in the fall, of Christmas gifts to buy for her.
Has he seen her again? It cannot be that the loving Father has not
taken this simple hearted of His by the hand and led him to the little
one who went before. And that in this blessed Christmas time, in that
far off and better land, listening to the songs of angels and gazing
at the glories of a brighter world, there walk, once more, hand in
hand, the Major and his Last Love.