I am half sorry I went. It was an unsuccessful visit. The barren little mountain village had changed not at all in the years I had been away. There were a few more battle monuments on the hillside and the people still talked of little beside the war. The big parsonage beside the barn-like church was just as I had left it. The Father's wants were looked after by the numerous progeny of Barnabas, the negro body servant who had followed him through the war.
I had been thrown out for my Godlessness and had been expected to go to the dogs. It was something of an affront to the traditions that I had not. To have written a book was a matter of fame in that little village. I found that the Father with childlike pride had boasted far and wide of my having been chosen as delegate to the prison congress at Rome. It was not to be accounted for that instead of coming back as the prodigal I should return as a "distinguished son." The minor prophets of the place were disappointed in me.
Even the Father was bewildered. He came down to the gateway to meet me—a fine old figure, leaning on his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes shining from under his shaggy white eyebrows. He put his arm over my shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he was glad of someone to lean upon. And all through supper he talked to me about my father and mother. He told me again how my father had died bravely at the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville. And he told me with great charm about the time when they had been children. We sat out on the porch for a while and he went on with his reminiscencing. Then suddenly he stopped.
"Oh," he said, "how I ramble. You will be wanting to go and call on Margot."
It was like visiting the ghosts. Margot had aged more than any of my generation. We were still under forty but her hair was quite gray. Her face had lost its beauty—pinched out by her narrow, empty life. And yet as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I came up the walk to her house, there was much of the old charm about her. There are few women like her nowadays. I knew many in my childhood—the real heroes of the great war. The women who in the bitter days of reconstruction, bound up the wounds of defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the foundations of the new South. They were gracious women, in spite of their arrogant pride in their breed. They knew how to suffer and smile.
We sat side by side on the porch—leagues and leagues apart. I found it strangely hard to talk with her. She told, in her quiet colorless voice, all her news. Her mother had died several years before. Al was married and established in Memphis and so forth. Just as the supply of news ran out, a rooster awoke from some bad dream and crowed sleepily.
"Margot," I said, "do you still steal eggs?"
"O Arnold," she laughed, "haven't you forgotten that? I have—almost. A long time ago I paid mother back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my allowance and sent it to the Presbyterian church."
I had always considered myself a fairly honest man, but it had never occurred to me to make restitution for these childish thefts.
"It was awful," she went on, "why did we do it?"