She Thought of the Slow News After Slaughtering Battles
Now, as she was stepping aside to avoid crushing some young white clover-blossoms in the grass where she was walking, she looked up and wondered if she were going blind, or if her mind were giving way.
The vacant space behind the solitary veteran trembled and palpitated before her vision, as if it had been peopled. By what? By whom? Patience was no occultist. She had never seen an apparition in her life. She felt that if she had not lacked a mysterious, unknown gift, she should have seen spirits, as men marching, now. But she did not see them. She was aware of a tremulous, nebulous struggle in the empty air, as of figures that did not form, or of sights from which her eyes were holden. Ah—what? She gasped for the wonder of it. Who was it, that followed the veteran, with the dumb, delighted fidelity that one race only knows of all created? For a wild instant this sane and sensible woman could have taken oath that Reuben Oak was accompanied on his march by his old dog, his dead dog, Tramp. If it had been Tommy— Or if it had been Jabez Trent— And where were they who had gone into the throat of death with him at Antietam, at Bull Run, at Fair Oaks, at Malvern Hill? But there limped along behind Reuben only an old, forgotten dog.
This quaint delusion (if delusion we must call it) aroused her attention, which had wavered from her husband, and concentrated it upon him afresh. Suddenly she saw him stagger.
A dozen persons started, but the wife sprang and reached him first. As she did this, the ghost dog vanished from before her. Only Reuben was there, marching alone, with the unpeopled space between him and the procession.
"Leave go of me!" he gasped. Patience quietly grasped him by the arm, and fell into step beside him. In her heart she was terrified. She was something of a reader in her way, and she thought of magazine stories where the veterans died upon Memorial Day.
"I'll march to decorate the Post—and Tommy—if I drop dead for it!" panted Reuben Oak.
"Then I shall march beside you," answered Patience.
"What 'll folks say?" cried the old soldier, in real anguish.
"They'll say I'm where I belong. Reuben! Reuben! I've earned the right to."
He contended no more, but yielded to her—in fact, gladly, for he felt too weak to stand alone. Inspiring him, and supporting him, and yet seeming (such was the sweet womanliness of her) to lean on him, Patience marched with him before the people; and these saw her through blurred eyes, and their hearts saluted her. With every step she felt that he strengthened. She was conscious of endowing him with her own vitality, as she sometimes did, in her own way—the love way, the wife way, powerfully and mysteriously.
So the veteran and his wife came on together to the cemetery, with the flags and the flowers. Nor was there a man or a woman in the throng who would have separated these comrades.
In the churchyard it was pleasant and expectant. The morning was cool, and the sun climbed gently. Not a flower had wilted; they looked as if they had been planted and were growing on the graves. When they had come to these, Patience Oak held back. She would not take from the old soldier his precious right. She did not offer to help him "decorate" anybody. His trembling mechanic's fingers clutched at the flowers as if he had been handling shot or nails. His breath came short. She watched him anxiously; she was still thinking of those stories she had read.
"Hadn't you better sit down on some monument and rest?" she whispered. But he paid no attention to her, and crawled from mound to mound. She perceived that it was his will to leave the new-made graves until the others had been remembered. Then he tottered across the cemetery with the flowers that he had saved for David Swing and old Mr. Succor and Jabez Trent, and the cheeks of the Charles Darlington Post were wet. Last of all he "decorated Tommy."
The air ached with the military dirge, and the voice of the chaplain faltered when he prayed. The veteran was aware that some persons in the crowd were sobbing. But his own eyes had now grown dry, and burned deep in their sunken sockets. As his sacred task drew to its end he grew remote, elate, and solemn. It was as if he were transfigured before his neighbors into something strange and holy. A village carpenter? A Connecticut tobacco-planter? Rather, say, the glory of the nation, the guardian of a great trust, proudly carried and honored to its end.
Taps were sounding over the old graves and the new, when the veteran slowly sank to one knee and toppled over. Patience, when she got her arms about him, saw that he had fallen across the mound where he had decorated Tommy with her white lilacs. Beyond lay the baby, small and still. The wife sat down on the little grave and drew the old man's head upon her lap. She thought of those Memorial Day stories with a deadly sinking at her heart. But it was a strong heart, all woman and all love.
"You shall not die!" she said.
She gathered him and poured her powerful being upon him—breath, warmth, will, prayer, who could say what it was? She felt as if she took hold of tremendous, unseen forces and moved them by unknown powers.
"Live!" she whispered. "Live!"
Some one called for a doctor, and she assented. But to her own soul she said:
"What's a doctor?"
The flags had fallen from his arms at last; he had clung to them till now. The chaplain reverently lifted them and laid them at his feet.
Once his white lips moved, and the people hushed to hear what outburst of patriotism would issue from them—what tribute to the cause that he had fought for, what final apostrophe to his country or his flag.
"Peter?" he called, feebly. "Peter!"
But Patience had said he should not die. And Patience knew. Had not she always known what he should do, or what he could? He lay upon his bed peacefully when, with tears and smiles, in reverence and in wonder, they had brought him home—and the flags of the Post, too. By a gesture he had asked to have these hung upon the foot-board of his bed.
He turned his head upon his pillow and watched his wife with wide, reflecting eyes. It was a long time before she would let him talk; in fact, the May afternoon was slanting to dusk before he tried to cross her tender will about that matter. When he did, it was to say only this:
"Peter? I was goin' to decorate the baby. I meant to when I took that turn."
Patience nodded.
"It's all done, Reuben."
"And, Peter? I've had the queerest notions about my old dog Tramp to-day. I wonder if there's a johnnyquil left to decorate him?"
"I'll go and see," said Patience. But when she had come back he had forgotten Tramp and the johnnyquil.
"Peter," he muttered, "this has been a great day." He gazed solemnly at the flags.
Patience regarded him poignantly. With a stricture at the heart she thought:
"He has grown old fast since yesterday." Then joyously the elderly wife cried out upon herself: "But I am young! He shall have all my youth. I've got enough for two—and strength!"
She crept beside him and laid her warm cheek to his.
THE END