In the dining-room at Lanarth stood Pocahontas, an expression of
comical dismay upon her face, a pile of dusty volumes on the floor at
her feet. The bookcase in the recess by the fireplace, with yawning
doors and empty shelves, stood swept and garnished, awaiting
re-possession. In a frenzy of untimely cleanliness, she had torn all
the books from the repose of years, and now that the deed was beyond
recall, she was a prey to disgust, and given over to repentance. The
morning promised to be sultry, and the pile was very big; outside bugs
and bees and other wise things hummed and sang in leafy places; the
leaves on the magnolias were motionless, and the air asleep. A
butterfly, passing to his siesta on the bosom of a rose, paused an
instant on the window ledge to contemplate her foolishness; the flowers
in the borders hung their heads. Berkeley passed the open window,
looking cool and fresh in summer clothing, and Pocahontas, catching
sight of him, put her fingers to her lips and whistled sharply to
attract his attention, which being done, she followed up the advantage
with pantomimic gestures, indicative of despair, and need of swift
assistance. Berkeley turned good-naturedly, and came in to the rescue,
but when he discovered the service required of him, he regarded it with
aversion, and showed a mean desire to retreat, which unworthiness was
promptly detected by Pocahontas, and as promptly frustrated.
"Do help me, Berkeley," she entreated. "They must all be put in place
again before dinner, and it only wants a quarter to one now. I can't
do it all before half-past two, to save my life, unless you help me.
You know, mother dislikes a messy, littered room, and I've got your
favorite pudding for dessert. Oh, dear! I'm tired to death already,
and it's _so_ warm!" The rising inflection of her voice conveyed an
impression of heat intense enough to drive an engine.
"What made you do it?" inquired Berkeley, in a tone calculated to make
her sensible of folly.
"Mother asked me to dust the books sometime ago, but I neglected it,
and this morning when the sun shone on them I saw that their condition
was disgraceful. I was so much disgusted with my untidiness, that I
dragged them all out on the impulse of the moment, and only realized
how hot it was, and how I hated it, after the deed was done. Come,
Berke, do help me. I'm so tired."
Thus adjured, Berkeley laid aside his coat, for lifting is warm work
with the sun at the meridian. The empty shirt sleeve had a forlorn and
piteous look as it hung crumpled and slightly twisted by his side.
Berkeley caught it with his other hand and thrust the cuff in the
waistband of his trowsers. He was well used to his loss, and
apparently indifferent to it, but the dangling of the empty sleeve
worried him; the arm was gone close up at the shoulder.
Then the pair fell to work briskly, dusting, arranging, re-arranging
and chatting pleasantly. Pocahontas plied the duster and her brother
sorted the books and replaced them on the shelves. The sun shone in
royally, until Pocahontas served a writ of ejectment on his majesty by
closing all the shutters; and the sun promptly eluded it by peeping in
between the bars. A little vagrant breeze stole in, full of idleness
and mischief, and meddled with the books--fluttering the leaves of "The
Faery Queen," which lay on its back wide open, lifting up the pages,
and flirting them over roguishly as though bent on finding secrets.
The little noise attracted the girl's attention, and she raised the
book and wiped the covers with her duster. As she slapped it lightly
with her hand to get out all the dust, a letter slipped from among the
leaves and fell to the floor near Berkeley's feet.
"Where did this come from?" he inquired, as he picked it up.
"Out of this book," she answered, holding up the volume in her hand.
"It fell out while I was dusting; some one must have left it in to mark
a place. It must have been in the book for years; see how soiled it
is. Whose is it?"
There is something in the unexpected finding of a stray letter which
stimulates curiosity, and Berkeley turned it in his hand to read the
address. The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the
letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The
writing was distinct and clerkly. "Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen,
---- Co., Virginia." Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct
postmark. "Point"--something, it seemed to be; and on the other side,
Washington, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865. What letter had
been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of '65?
Then memory unfolded itself like a map whose spring is loosened.
Seating himself in an easy chair, he drew the letter from its envelope,
unfolding it slowly against his knee. It was a half-sheet of ordinary
commercial paper and the lines upon it numbered, perhaps, a dozen.
Mason winced at sight of the heading as though an old wound had been
pressed. His sister, leaning over the back of his chair, read with
him; putting out a hand across his shoulder to help him straighten the
page. It ran thus:
POINT LOOKOUT,
May --, 1865.
TO BERKELEY MASON, ESQ., Virginia.
SIR--A Confederate soldier, now a prisoner of war at this place, giving
his name as Temple Mason, is lying in the prison hospital at the point
of death. He was too ill to be sent south with the general transfer,
and in compliance with his urgent request, I write again--the third
time, to inform you of his condition. He can't last much longer, and
in event of his dying without hearing from his friends, he will be
buried in the common cemetery connected with the prison, and his
identity, in all probability, lost. This is what he appears to dread,
and he entreats that you will come to him, in God's name, if you are
still alive. The utmost dispatch will be necessary.
Respectfully,
PERCIVAL SMITH, B. G. U. S. A.
Comdt., U. S. P., Point Lookout.
Mason returned the letter to its envelope and leaned back in his chair
thinking. It was one of the many messages of sorrow that had winged
their way through the country in the weeks following the close of the
war; one of the murmurs of pain that had swelled the funeral dirge
vibrating through the land.
Pocahontas came and seated herself on her brother's knee, gazing at him
with wide gray eyes filled with inquiry. "When did this come? I never
saw it before," she questioned, gravely.
Then with troubled brow, and voice that grew husky at times, he went
over for her the sad story of the last months of the last year of that
unhappy and fateful struggle. In the autumn of '64 their brother
Temple, a lad of seventeen, had been taken prisoner, with others of his
troop, while making a reconnoissance, and they had been unable to
discover either his condition or place of incarceration. Mason,
himself, had been at home on sick leave, weak and worn with the loss of
his arm and a saber cut across his head. All through the winter and
spring, while calamity followed calamity with stunning rapidity, the
wearing anxiety about Temple continued, made more intolerable by the
contradictory reports of his fate brought by passing soldiers.
Finally, this letter had arrived and converted a dread fear into a
worse certainty.
It had been handed to Roy Garnett by a Federal officer at Richmond, and
Roy had ridden straight down with it all those weary miles, feeling
curiously certain that it contained news of Temple, and sharing their
anxiety to the full. Roy had been stanch and helpful in their trouble,
aiding in the hurried preparations for the journey, and accompanying
the wounded man, and the pale, resolute mother on their desperate
mission. Then came the hideous journey, the arrival at the prison, the
fearful questioning, the relief akin to pain of the reply; the
interview with the bluff, kindly commandant, who took their hands
heartily and rendered them every assistance in his power. Then, in the
rough hospital of the hostile prison, the strange, sad waiting for the
end, followed by the stranger, sadder home-coming. It was a pitiful
story, common enough both north and south--but none the less pitiful
for its commonness.
With her head down on her brother's shoulder, Pocahontas sobbed
convulsively. She was familiar with the outlines of the tale, and knew
vaguely of the weeks of anxiety that had lined her mother's gentle face
and silvered her brown hair, but of all particulars she was ignorant.
She had been very young at the time these sad events occurred; the
young brother sleeping in the shadow of the cedars in the old
burying-ground was scarcely more than a name to her, and the memories
of her childhood had faded somewhat, crowded out by the cheerful
realities of her glad girl-life.
When she broke the silence, it was very softly. "Berkeley," she said,
"it was kindly done of that Federal officer to let us know. This is
the third letter he wrote about poor Temple; the others must have
miscarried."
"They did; and this one only reached us just in time. You see,
communication with the south in those early days was more than
uncertain. If Roy hadn't happened to be in Richmond, it's a question
whether I should have received this one. It was kindly done, as you
say, and this General Smith was a kindly man. I shall never forget his
consideration for my mother, nor the kindness he showed poor Temple.
But for his aid we could hardly have managed at the last, in spite of
Roy's efforts. We owe him a debt of gratitude I'd fain repay. God
bless him!"
"Amen!" echoed Pocahontas, softly.