It was in the twilight of a late autumn day in the same year that
nature gave the colonel the first direct intimation to prepare for the
last summons. They had been passing along the garden walks, where a few
pale flowers were trying to flourish up to the very winter's edge, and
where the dry leaves had gathered unswept and rustled beneath their
feet. All at once the colonel turned to Peter, who was a yard and a
half behind, as usual, and said:
"Give me your arm, Peter, I feel tired;" and thus the two, for the
first time in all their lifetime walking abreast, passed slowly on.
"Peter," said the colonel, gravely, a minute or two later, "we are
like two dried-up stalks of fodder. I wonder the Lord lets us live any
longer."
"I reck'n He's managin' to use us _some_ way, or we wouldn' be heah,"
said Peter.
"Well, all I have to say is, that if He's using me, He can't be in much
of a hurry for his work," replied the colonel.
"He uses snails, en I _know_ we ain' ez slow ez _dem_," argued Peter,
composedly.
"I don't know. I think a snail must have made more progress since the
war than I have."
The idea of his uselessness seemed to weigh on him, for a little later
he remarked, with a sort of mortified smile:
"Do you think, Peter, that we would pass for what they call
representative men of the New South?"
"We done _had_ ou' day, Marse Rom," replied Peter. "We got to pass fur
what we _wuz_. Mebbe de _Lohd's_ got mo' use fur us yit 'n _people_
has," he added, after a pause.
From this time on the colonel's strength gradually failed him; but it
was not until the following spring that the end came.
A night or two before his death his mind wandered backward, after the
familiar manner of the dying, and his delirious dreams showed the
shifting, faded pictures that renewed themselves for the last time on
his wasting memory. It must have been that he was once more amid the
scenes of his active farm life, for his broken snatches of talk ran
thus:
"Come, boys, get your cradles! Look where the sun is! You are late
getting to work this morning. That is the finest field of wheat in the
county. Be careful about the bundles! Make them the same size and tie
them tight. That swath is too wide, and you don't hold your cradle
right, Tom....
"Sell _Peter_! _Sell Peter Cotton!_ No, sir! You might buy _me_ some
day and work _me_ in your cotton-field; but as long as he's mine, you
can't buy Peter, and you can't buy any of _my_ negroes....
"Boys! boys! If you don't work faster, you won't finish this field
to-day.... You'd better go in the shade and rest now. The sun's very
hot. Don't drink too much ice-water. There's a jug of whisky in the
fence-corner. Give them a good dram around, and tell them to work slow
till the sun gets lower."...
Once during the night a sweet smile played over his features as he
repeated a few words that were part of an old rustic song and dance.
Arranged, not as they came broken and incoherent from his lips, but as
he once had sung them, they were as follows:
"O Sister Phœbe! How merry were we
When we sat under the juniper-tree,
The juniper-tree, heigho!
Put this hat on your head! Keep your head warm;
Take a sweet kiss! It will do you no harm,
Do you no harm, I know!"
After this he sank into a quieter sleep, but soon stirred with a look
of intense pain.
"Helen! Helen!" he murmured. "Will you break your promise? Have you
changed in your feelings towards me? I have brought you the pinks.
Won't you take the pinks, Helen?"
Then he sighed as he added, "It wasn't her fault. If she had only
known--"
Who was the Helen of that far-away time? Was this the colonel's
love-story?
But during all the night, whithersoever his mind wandered, at intervals
it returned to the burden of a single strain--the harvesting. Towards
daybreak he took it up again for the last time:
"O boys, boys, _boys_! If you don't work faster you won't finish the
field to-day. Look how low the sun is!... I am going to the house. They
can't finish the field to-day. Let them do what they can, but don't let
them work late. I want Peter to go to the house with me. Tell him to
come on."...
In the faint gray of the morning, Peter, who had been watching by the
bedside all night, stole out of the room, and going into the garden
pulled a handful of pinks--a thing he had never done before--and,
re-entering the colonel's bedroom, put them in a vase near his sleeping
face. Soon afterwards the colonel opened his eyes and looked around
him. At the foot of the bed stood Peter, and on one side sat the
physician and a friend. The night-lamp burned low, and through the
folds of the curtains came the white light of early day.
"Put out the lamp and open the curtains," he said, feebly. "It's day."
When they had drawn the curtains aside, his eyes fell on the pinks,
sweet and fresh with the dew on them. He stretched out his hand and
touched them caressingly, and his eyes sought Peter's with a look of
grateful understanding.
"I want to be alone with Peter for a while," he said, turning his face
towards the others.
When they were left alone, it was some minutes before anything was
said. Peter, not knowing what he did, but knowing what was coming, had
gone to the window and hid himself behind the curtains, drawing them
tightly around his form as though to shroud himself from sorrow.