“We consider Northerners foreigners, you know.”
Again I felt that hurt which hearing the ode had given me, but I now
knew how I was going to take it, and where we were presently coming out;
and I knew she didn’t mean quite all that--didn’t mean it every day, at
least--and that my speech had driven her to saying it.
“No, Miss La Heu; you don’t consider Northerners, who understand you, to
be foreigners.”
“We have never met any of that sort.”
(“Yes,” I thought, “but you really want to. Didn’t you say you hoped I
was one? Away down deep there’s a cry of kinship in you; and that you
don’t hear it, and that we don’t hear it, has been as much our fault as
yours. I see that very well now, but I’m afraid to tell you so, yet.”)
What I said was: “We’re handing the ‘sacred trust’ down, I hope.”
“I understood you to say you weren’t.”
“I said we were not handing ‘it’ down.”
I didn’t wonder that irritation again moulded her reply. “You must
excuse a daughter of Dixie if she finds the words of a son of the Union
beyond her. We haven’t had so many advantages.”
There she touched what I had thought over during my wakeful hours: the
tale of the ashes, the desolate ashes! The war had not prevented my
parents from sending me to school and college, but here the old had seen
the young grow up starved of what their fathers had given them, and the
young had looked to the old and known their stripped heritage.
“Miss La Heu,” I said, “I could not tell you, you would not wish me to
tell you, what the sight of Kings Port has made me feel. But you will
let me say this: I have understood for a long while about your old
people, your old ladies, whose faces are so fine and sad.”