Winter came, and the two trunks and the picture had not been removed. The neighbors had fallen into a sort of torpor. Then, one day, one rushed to the others, declaring: “They call each other by their first names! Yes, Mrs. Swift said: ‘Marion, there must be double windows for your room this winter!’ and that Southern woman answers up: ‘Oh, no, Martha, that’s not necessary!’ What do you think of that?” Evidently there was no use in watching the house, after that, for the departure of the Southern woman.
During the long winter evenings, this elderly couple used to talk unceasingly of the war, and they would tell one another of this or that engagement, illustrating the positions of the troops with spools of thread, the scissors always coming handy for streams that had to be crossed. Then Mrs. Swift never tired of hearing what the war had meant to the women of the South. She wept over the burned houses, the looted property, the hunger, the make-shift for clothing, and would draw her rocker closer to Mrs. Wallace, as she told how the last precious ounces of real coffee had been hidden—as people hide gold or jewels—only to be brought forth in tiny portions for a sick or wounded soldier—told how she had cut up old garments of her husband’s to make herself shoes, and had worn skirts made from her sitting-room curtains!
When spring came again, and Decoration Day arrived, Mrs. Wallace felt that Mrs. Swift, for the first time, showed a lack of tact—of proper feeling—in insisting upon having her accompany her to the cemetery that day. It would be very painful to see the graves, all flower-covered, and to think of her own dear, unhonored dead, lying so far away. This insistence was so unlike Mrs. Swift’s usual manner, too! Well, she must bear it! and so she entered the carriage, with a heavy heart, to drive to the cemetery, and wondered a little why Mrs. Swift had two great wreaths, instead of one, to lay upon the grave.
When they arrived, she wished to remain in the carriage, but again Mrs. Swift insisted upon having her company, and together they made their way to the family plot, and there stood the explanation of Mrs. Swift’s strange conduct—a fair, white stone, bearing the name of Wallace instead of Swift. And Mrs. Wallace knelt humbly down to read that this monument was in memory of the young captain, Marion Wallace, whose body lay in the distant State where he had fallen fighting for the “cause” he loved! As she pressed her lips upon the name on the stone, she solemnly vowed that the welfare of the woman who had done this thing should be the one object of her life hereafter.
And so they faced the world together. A gentle pair, helping the poor or the troubled; trusting and admiring each other; Mrs. Swift honestly believing Mrs. Wallace was the greatest pianist in the city, and that her feeble little sketches were remarkable works of art, while Mrs. Wallace stood in speechless wonder at Mrs. Swift’s ability, with only the help of an inch or two of stubby pencil and a morsel of paper, to bring perfect order out of the chaos of her accounts. And though she had something less than three hundred a year, it was really astonishing the muddle she could get her affairs into! So it’s no wonder that she respected Mrs. Swift as an mathematician of parts.
The shawl was worn by one as often as the other, though it was acknowledged to be Mrs. Wallace’s property, since she owned it for years before that day when young Lieutenant Swift had purchased it from a soldier who declared he had bought it for a few dollars from an old contraband camp-follower. And as they shared the shawl, so they shared everything—duties, pleasures, or personal belongings. Each acted as housekeeper, month about. If one was daintier, the other had more executive ability. They came to understand each other so perfectly that when Mrs. Wallace sometimes sat completely lost in thought, Mrs. Swift could tell, from the expression of her face, whether she was thinking of her son’s young manhood and soldierly death or of his baby days when within the tender circle of her arms he found a very tower of defence against the world.
The last time I saw them they were in church—the same church where they first saw each other. Two sweet-faced, old women; one blue-eyed, one dark-eyed, but both with whitened hair, each anxious to serve the other; Mrs. Swift a trifle quicker about wraps and foot-stools, but Mrs. Wallace smilingly ahead in the finding of places in hymnal or prayer book. As they sat with attentive, uplifted faces, I thought they looked like two ancient children who had walked hand in hand over a long, rough road that alone either would have shrunk from.
True sympathy had drawn all bitterness from their grief, while their unshakable faith in the resurrection of the body and the Life everlasting, had kept Hope alive in their souls! Hope for that “Life of the world to come”! And Hope’s sweetness was in their old eyes and about their paled, tremulous lips, as they worshipped there.
The last prayer said, each instinctively put out her hand to assist the other to rise. Their hands met; so did their eyes, and they smiled at each other, and at that very moment the sunlight, striking on the stained-glass window, flung a very halo of splendid color about their dear, white heads, the church thus smiling upon them as they smiled upon each other; and I said to myself: “The Aftermath—truly they have garnered their Life’s Aftermath!”
PRINTED AT THE WINTHROP PRESS
NEW YORK, FOR BRENTANO’S
MDCCCXCIX