"Shall we move our chairs before the fire, Mr. Burton? My dear wife is
but frail," said the old man, after a long silence, and with touching
pathos. "She sees me companioned for the evening, and is glad to seek
her room early; if you were not here she would insist upon our game of
cards. I do not allow myself to dwell upon the past, and I have no
wish for gay company;" he added, in a lower voice, "My daily dread in
life is to be separated from her."
As the evening wore on, the autumn air grew chilly, and again and
again the host replenished his draughty fireplace, and pushed the box
of delicious tobacco toward his guest, and Burton in his turn ventured
to remember a flask in his portmanteau, and begged the Colonel to
taste it, because it had been filled from an old cask in his
grandfather's cellar. The butler's eyes shone with satisfaction when
he was unexpectedly called upon to brew a little punch after the old
Fairford fashion, and the later talk ranged along the youthful
escapades of Thomas Burton the elder to the beauties and the style of
Addison; from the latest improvement in shot-guns to the statesmanship
of Thomas Jefferson, while the Colonel spoke tolerantly, in passing,
of some slight misapprehensions of Virginia life made by a delightful
young writer, too early lost--Mr. Thackeray.
Tom Burton had never enjoyed an evening more; the romance, the pathos
of it, as he found himself more and more taking his grandfather's
place in the mind of this hereditary friend, waked all his sympathy.
The charming talk that never dwelt too long or was hurried too fast,
the exquisite faded beauty of Madam Bellamy, the noble dignity and
manliness of the old planter and soldier, the perfect absence of
reproach for others or whining pity for themselves, made the knowledge
of their regret and loss doubly poignant. Their four sons had all laid
down their lives in what they believed from their hearts to be their
country's service; their daughters had died early, one from sorrow at
her husband's death, and one from exposure in a forced flight across
country; their ancestral home lay in ruins; their beloved cause had
been put to shame and defeat--yet they could bow their heads to every
blast of misfortune, and could make a man welcome at their table whose
every instinct and tradition of loyalty made him their enemy. The owls
might shriek from the chimneys of Fairford, and the timid wild hares
course up and down the weed-grown avenues on an autumn night like
this, but a welcome from the Bellamys was a welcome still. It seemed
to the young imaginative guest that the old motto of the house was
never so full of significance as when he fancied it exchanged between
the Colonel and himself, Southerner and Northerner, elder and younger
man, conquered and conqueror in an unhappy war. The two old portraits,
with their warped frames and bullet-holes, faded and gleamed again in
the firelight; the portrait of an elderly man was like the Colonel
himself, but the woman, who was younger, and who seemed to meet Tom's
eye gayly enough, bore a resemblance which he could only half recall.
It was very late when the two men said good-night. They were each
conscious of the great delight of having found a friend. The candles
had flickered out long before, but the fire still burned, and struck a
ray of light from the cup on the table.