CLEO'S CRY
The decision once made was carried out without delay. He placed an editor permanently in charge of his paper, closed the tall green shutters of the stately old house, sold his horses, and bought tickets for himself and mammy for New York.
He paused at the gate and looked back at the white pillars of which he had once been so proud. He hadn't a single regret at leaving.
"A house doesn't make a home, after all!" he sighed with a lingering look.
He took the boy to the cemetery for a last hour beside the mother's grave before he should turn his back on the scenes of his old life forever.
The cemetery was the most beautiful spot in the county. At this period of the life of the South, it was the one spot where every home had its little plot. The war had killed the flower of Southern manhood. The bravest and the noblest boys never surrendered. They died with a shout and a smile on their lips and Southern women came daily now to keep their love watches on these solemn bivouacs of the dead. The girls got the habit of going there to plant flowers and to tend them and grew to love the shaded walks, the deep boxwood hedges, the quiet, sweetly perfumed air. Sweethearts were always strolling among the flowers and from every nook and corner peeped a rustic seat that could tell its story of the first stammering words from lovers' lips.
Norton saw them everywhere this beautiful spring afternoon, the girls in their white, clean dresses, the boys bashful and self-conscious. A throb of pain gripped his heart and he hurried through the wilderness of flowers to the spot beneath a great oak where he had laid the tired body of the first and only woman he had ever loved.
He placed the child on the grass and led him to the newly-made mound, put into his tiny hand the roses he had brought and guided him while he placed them on her grave.
"This is where little mother sleeps, my boy," he said softly. "Remember it now—it will be a long, long time before we shall see it again. You won't forget——"
"No—dad-ee," he lisped sweetly. "I'll not fordet, the big tree——"
The man rose and stood in silence seeing again the last beautiful day of their life together and forgot the swift moments. He stood as in a trance from which he was suddenly awakened by the child's voice calling him excitedly from another walkway into which he had wandered:
"Dad-ee!" he called again.
"Yes, baby," he answered.
"Oh, come quick! Dad-ee—here's C-l-e-o!"
Norton turned and with angry steps measured the distance between them.
He came upon them suddenly behind a boxwood hedge. The girl was kneeling with the child's arms around her neck, clinging to her with all the yearning of his hungry little heart, and she was muttering half articulate words of love and tenderness. She held him from her a moment, looked into his eyes and cried:
"And you missed me, darling?"
"Oh—C-l-e-o!" he cried, "I thought 'oo'd nev-er tum!"
The angry words died in the man's lips as he watched the scene in silence.
He stooped and drew the child away:
"Come, baby, we must go——"
"Tum on, C-l-e-o, we do now," he cried.
The girl shook her head and turned away.
"Tum on, C-l-e-o!" he cried tenderly.
She waved him a kiss, and the child said excitedly:
"Oh, dad-ee, wait!—wait for C-l-e-o!"
"No, my baby, she can't come with us——"
The little head sank to his shoulder, a sob rose from his heart and he burst into weeping. And through the storm of tears one word only came out clear and soft and plaintive:
"C-l-e-o! C-l-e-o!"
The girl watched them until they reached the gate and then, on a sudden impulse, ran swiftly up, caught the child's hand that hung limply down his father's back, covered it with kisses and cried in cheerful, half-laughing tones:
"Don't cry, darling! Cleo will come again!"
And in the long journey to the North the man brooded over the strange tones of joyous assurance with which the girl had spoken.