CHAPTER LXV.
In those days, before the mail-delivery system had been introduced, we had to send to the post-office for our letters.
If we were in love, we went in person, of course.
“Where are you going?” called out Alice across the street.
Mary came over to her. “I am going to the post-office,” said she, in a low voice.
“I will go part of the way with you,” said Alice.
The two girls walked on for a little while in silence.
“Mary,” said Alice, presently, “tell me,—what do you expect him to say?”
“Don’t ask me that,” she said, with a shiver.
“I think I can tell you. Your letter, as you quoted it to me, severed all relations between you. But have you not a kind of dim, unacknowledged hope that he will recant his heresies and bridge the chasm between you?”
Mary walked on in silence.
“It is natural that you should nourish such a hope. But suppose it should prove delusive?”
“The die is cast. I must abide the issue. And, Alice,—though you think I have been hasty,—I feel a profound conviction that it is best as it is.”
“Well, good-by! Be brave.” And more than once, as she hastened homeward, Alice passed her hand across her eyes.
Mary stood before the little square window at the post-office.
“Any letters?”
The clerk knew who she was, and the sight of her pretty, pale face lent a certain alacrity to his calm, official legs. Briskly diving into her father’s box, he handed her half a dozen letters. As she passed them nervously between thumb and finger, glancing at the addresses, he held his steady, postmasterish eye upon her. What else had he to do? Could not that other woman who stood there, could not she wait? Was not her nose red; and her chin, was not her chin (by a mysterious dispensation of Providence) bumpy? Let her stand there, then, craning her anatomical neck to catch his stony gaze. Let her wait till pretty little Miss Rolfe sorts her letters. Ah, that’s the one she hoped to get,—that with the distinct, yet bold and jagged address, that I have noticed so often. Ah, that’s the one—What name, madam? Adkins? Miss Elizabeth Ann? One for Miss Elizabeth Adkins. Beg your pardon,—five cents due, Miss Adkins.
My reader, be pretty. Let me entreat you—be pretty, if you can in anywise compass it. If not, be good. Even that is better than nothing. It will be a comfort to you in your declining years.
And your little nephews and nieces will rise up, some day, and call you blessed.
“Will you be so kind as to put these back in the box?”
The clerk bowed with a gracious smile; and Mary, placing three or four letters in her pocket, left the building, and turned in the direction of the Capitol Square. She passed in through the first gate, and hurried along the gravel path. By the time she had reached the first seat she had grown so weak that she was glad to throw herself upon it.
Had Mary had her eyes about her, she would have been struck with the unwonted aspect of the Square. Our pretty little park, usually the resort of merry children, wore, on this particular day, a rather serious look. Men, in earnest conversation, stood about in groups. Others hurried past, without even giving her pretty face the tribute of a glance. But she saw nothing, heeded nothing; not even the dark, gathering throng which crowned the summit of the green slope in front of the Capitol; though it was not a stone’s throw from where she sat.
She drew her letters from her pocket, placing the one with the jagged address quickly beneath the others. She tore open an envelope and began to read. The letter was from a former schoolmate,—a bright girl, but its cleverness gave Mary no pleasure now, but seemed frivolity, rather; and as for the cordial invitation (on the eighth page), before she got to that she had thrust the letter back into its cover. She gave but a glance at the contents of the next. The third made her forget herself, for an instant. It was a large, business-looking envelope, stamped New York; and she gave a quick little start, when, upon opening it, a cheque fluttered down before her feet. As she read the accompanying letter, a sudden flash of joyful surprise illumined her face when she found that her article (mailed with many misgivings two months ago, and long since forgotten) had been accepted. A sudden flash of joyous surprise, followed by quick gathering clouds; for, as she stooped to pick up the cheque, a fourth letter slid from her lap and fell upon it. The characteristic hand in which it was addressed she had often admired; it was so firm and bold. Was it her imagination that transformed it now? Was it changed? Was it more than firm now, and had its boldness become ferocity? A sudden revulsion came over Mary; and upon the words of the publishers—words of commendation and encouragement, which, a fortnight since, would have filled her young heart with exultation,—for would not he be proud?—more than one big tear fell.
But that fourth letter remained unread. She held it in her hand, as one does a telegram, sometimes, dreading to open it.
Her own to him had been brief and to the point; giving him to understand that their engagement was at an end, without betraying the fact that her heart, too, was broken. She had even dried the tears that fell upon the paper, you remember. She had begged his pardon, of course, but had purposely excluded from her language all traces of feeling. As the thing had to be done, it should be done effectually.
What would he do? What would he say? A thousand possibilities had been dancing through Mary’s mind.
First and foremost, would he recant?
Inconceivable! Still, this hope refused to vanish.
Would he be violent? Would his reply be a burst of fierce indignation? Very likely. Yes, that was just what one might expect from such a man.
Would he be sarcastic? Will he sneer at a religion which can make me break my word? That was what she dreaded most of all. Not, oh male reader (if I shall have any such), not lest his flings and gibes should wound her. If you think that, sir, you have never penetrated into the mysteries of the female heart. It was a dread lest he—lest HE should descend to such weapons,—lest this soaring eagle of her imagination should stoop to be a mousing owl. A Hero may not use poisoned arrows; least of all against a woman. She had never known the Don to use a sarcastic word. He was too earnest, too fearfully earnest to be satirical. He left that to triflers, male and female. He was never witty, even. He is above it, Mary used to say, within her heart, with that blessed alchemy whereby women know how to convert into virtues the blemishes of those whom they love. No, thought she; let him upbraid me; let him tell me that I have been false to my word; let him even say that I have proven myself unworthy to link my destiny with his (and am I worthy of the homage of such a heart? Did not even unsentimental Alice say that a true woman would follow the man she loved to the ends of the earth?); no; let him cover me with fierce reproaches,—but let him not be little! It is enough, and more than enough, that I have to give him up. Let his image remain untarnished in my heart!
Or, would his letter be a broken-hearted wail? She hoped not,—so she said, at least; and let us try to believe her.
Pressing her hand upon her heart for a moment, to calm its tumultuous throbbing, she broke the seal of the letter, took in the first page at one mad, ravenous glance, and the hand that held the sheet fell upon her lap.
No sarcasms, no fierce reproaches, no wail of a broken heart!—no anything that she had thought possible.
Brief, yet not curt, he accepted her decree without a murmur; as though a prisoner bowed in silence under the sentence of the judge. No commonplace, no rhetoric; no trace of feeling; and yet no flippant suggestion of the want of it. In a word, his letter was an absolutely impenetrable veil. As though he had not written. Mary was stunned.
She had seen, as she drew the letter from the envelope, that the top of the second page contained little more than the signature. She had not strength, just yet, to read the dozen concluding words. She leaned back upon the bench, resting her poor, dizzy head upon her hand. She heard nothing, saw nothing. Yet there was something to see and something to hear.
The craunching of many feet upon the gravel walk,—the feet of strong, earnest men. And every now and then women passed, with faces pale but resolute. And here, close beside her, a mob of boys, with eager eyes, sweep across the greensward, unmindful of the injunction to keep off the grass. Movement everywhere. The very air of the peaceful little park seemed to palpitate.
Then a sudden hush!
She turned the page and read,—
“It is not probable that we shall ever meet again, and I therefore bid you an eternal farewell.”
A shiver ran through her frame. A moment afterwards she leaped from her seat with a piercing shriek; for almost at the very instant that those cruel words froze her heart a terrific sound smote upon her ear.
A few feet from where she sat the fierce throats of cannon proclaimed to the city and the world that old Virginia was no longer one of the United States of America.