She fell suddenly silent, and taking up her needles knitted a row or two, her absorbed eyes, kindling with retrospection, fixed on the far horizon, for Mrs. Knox was in a position to enjoy the melancholy pleasures of a true prophet of evil, and although she had never specifically forewarned Hilary of the precise nature of the disaster that had ensued upon his enlistment, she had sought to defer and prevent it, and at last had consented only because she felt she must. She had her own secret satisfaction that the result was no worse; it lacked much of the ghastly horrors that she had foreboded—death itself, or the terrible uncertainty of hoping against hope, and fearing the uttermost dread that must needs abide with those to whom the “missing” are dear. Never now could the fact be worse, and thus she could reconcile herself, and talk of it with a certain relish of finality, as of a chapter of intense and painful interest but closed forever.
The old man nodded his head with deliberative gravity until she recommenced, when he relapsed into motionless attention.
“An’ Hil’ry fought in a heap o’ battles, and got shot a time or two, an’ war laid up in the horspital, an’ kem out cured, an’ fought agin. An’ one day he got inter a quar’l with one o’ his bes’ frien’s. They war jes’ funnin’ afust, an’ Hil’ry hit him harder’n he liked, an’ he got mad, an’ bein’ a horseback he kicked Hil’ry. An’ Hil’ry jumped on him ez suddint ez a painter, ter pull him out’n his saddle an’ drub him. Hil’ry never drawed no shootin’ irons nor nuthin’, an’ warn’t expectin’ ter hurt him serious. But this hyar Jack Bixby he war full o’ liquor an’ fury; he started his horse a-gallopin’, an’ ez Hil’ry hung on ter the saddle he drawed his bowie-knife an’ slashed Hil’ry’s arm ez war holdin’ ter him agin an’ agin, till they war both soakin’ in blood, an’ at last Hil’ry drapped. An’ the arm fevered, an’ the surgeon tuk it off. An’ so Hil’ry hed his discharge gin him, sence the Confeds hed no mo’ use fur him. An’ he walked home, two hunderd mile, he say.”
During this recital the young mountaineer gave no indication of its effect upon him, and offered no word of correction to conform the details to the facts. His mother had so often told his story with the negligence of the domestic narrator, that little by little it had become thus distorted, and he knew from experience that should he interfere to alter a phase, another as far from reality would be presently substituted, for Mrs. Knox cared little how the event had been precipitated, or for aught except that his arm was gone, that he was well, and that she had him at home again, from which he should no more wander, for she had endeavored to utilize the misfortune to reinforce her authority, and illustrate her favorite dogma of the infallibility of her judgment.
Her words must have renewed bitter reminiscences, but his face was impassive, and not a muscle stirred as he silently watched the ranks of the migrating birds fade into the furthest distance.
“An’ now Hil’ry thinks it air cur’ous ez I ain’t sorrowin’ ’bout’n his arm,” she continued. “Naw, sir! I’m glad he escaped alive an’ that he can’t fight no mo’—not ef the war lasts twenty year, an’ it ’pears like it air powerful persistin’.”
It still raged, but to the denizens of this sequestered district there seemed little menace in its fury. They could hear but an occasional rumor, like the distant rumbling of thunder, and discern, as it were, a vague, transient glimmer as token of the fierce and scathing lightnings far away desolating and destroying all the world beyond these limits of peace.
Episodes of civilized warfare were little dreaded by the few inhabitants of the mountains, the old men, the women and the children, so dominated were they by the terrors of vagrant bands of stragglers and marauders, classed under the generic name of bushwhackers, repudiated by both armies, and given over to the plunder of non-combatants of both factions in this region of divided allegiance. At irregular intervals they infested this neighborhood, foraging where they listed, and housing themselves in the old hotel.
Looking across the gorge from where the three sat in the cabin porch, there was visible on the opposite heights a great white frame building, many-windowed and with wide piazzas. There were sulphur springs hard by, and before the war the place was famous as a health resort. Now it was a melancholy spectacle—silent, tenantless, vacant—infinitely lonely in the vast wilderness. Some of the doors, wrenched from their hinges, had served the raiders for fuel. The glass had been wantonly broken in many of the windows by the jocose thrusts of a saber. The grassy square within surrounded by the buildings was overgrown with weeds, and here lizards basked, and in their season wild things nested. There was never a suggestion of the gayeties of the past—only in the deserted old ball-room when a slant of sunshine would fall athwart the dusty floor, a bluebottle might airily zigzag in the errant gleam, or when the moon was bright on the long piazzas a cobweb, woven dense, would flaunt out between the equidistant shadows of the columns like the flutter of a white dress. The place had a weird aspect, and was reputed haunted. The simple mountaineers did not venture within it, and the ghosts had it much of the time to themselves.
The obscurities of twilight were presently enfolded about it. The white walls rose, vaguely glimmering, against the pine forests in the background, and above the shadowy abysses which it overlooked.