For a long time he remained motionless, with the letter in his hand. Then he arose, ordered his horse, and galloped away.
There was little difficulty in finding the cemetery of Three Pines Crossing—a hillside slope, hearsed with pine and cypress, and starred with white crosses, that in the distance looked like flowers. Still less was there in finding the newer marble shaft among the older lichen-spotted slabs, which bore the simple words: “Alice Benham, Martyr.” A few Confederate soldiers, under still plainer and newer wooden headstones, carved only with initials, lay at her feet. Brant sank on his knees beside the grave, but he was shocked to see that the base of the marble was stained with the red pollen of the fateful lily, whose blossoms had been heaped upon her mound, but whose fallen petals lay dark and sodden in decay.
How long he remained there he did not know. And then a solitary bugle from the camp seemed to summon him, as it had once before summoned him, and he went away—as he had gone before—to a separation that he now knew was for all time.
Then followed a month of superintendence and drill, and the infusing into the little camp under his instruction the spirit which seemed to be passing out of his own life forever. Shut in by alien hills on the borderland of the great struggle, from time to time reports reached him of the bitter fighting, and almost disastrous successes of his old division commander. Orders came from Washington to hurry the preparation of his raw levies to the field, and a faint hope sprang up in his mind. But following it came another dispatch ordering his return to the Capital.
He reached it with neither hope nor fear—so benumbed had become his spirit under this last trial, and what seemed to be now the mockery of this last sacrifice to his wife. Though it was no longer a question of her life and safety, he knew that he could still preserve her memory from stain by keeping her secret, even though its divulgings might clear his own. For that reason, he had even hesitated to inform Susy of her death, in the fear that, in her thoughtless irresponsibility and impulsiveness, she might be tempted to use it in his favor. He had made his late appointment a plea for her withholding any present efforts to assist him. He even avoided the Boompointers' house, in what he believed was partly a duty to the memory of his wife. But he saw no inconsistency in occasionally extending his lonely walks to the vicinity of a foreign Legation, or in being lifted with a certain expectation at the sight of its liveries on the Avenue. There was a craving for sympathy in his heart, which Miss Faulkner's letter had awakened.
Meantime, he had reported himself for duty at the War Department—with little hope, however, in that formality. But he was surprised the next day when the chief of the bureau informed him that his claim was before the President.
“I was not aware that I had presented any claim,” he said, a little haughtily.
The bureau chief looked up with some surprise. This quiet, patient, reserved man had puzzled him once or twice before.
“Perhaps I should say 'case,' General,” he said, drily. “But the personal interest of the highest executive in the land strikes me as being desirable in anything.”
“I only mean that I have obeyed the orders of the department in reporting myself here, as I have done,” said Brant, with less feeling, but none the less firmness; “and I should imagine it was not the duty of a soldier to question them. Which I fancy a 'claim' or a 'case' would imply.”