When, a few days later, he said good-bye to her before the door of the great house, he tried to mutter some words about “thanks for her great kindness” and “sincere hopes for her welfare always,” but both he and she fell into desperate confusion and, in the end, he strode away down the steps, his farewells only half said. Clotilde watched him mount his grey horse and ride away down the driveway. She saw him disappear beyond the turn and felt, all of a sudden, very little and lonely in the midst of a very big, dreary, empty world.
It seemed to her, poor child, that for an absolutely unlimited time thereafter she had spent all her days in the dullest and weariest of tasks, of which the most unwelcome was the tending of cabbages. She grew to hate the great, coarse, clumsy vegetables that filled Master Simon’s garden and that must continue to grow there, for the feeding of the poor, as long as the war should last. And the war dragged on endlessly, winter, summer, winter again and another summer: would it never cease? Stephen grew frailer and his face was often sharp with suffering, but still he jested over all his ills. He would not even allow Clotilde to complain that it was unjust that he should undergo so much.
“Every one suffers in war time,” he would say. “We can expect nothing else.”
“And will the war never end?” she exclaimed one day.
“Ay, some day, my dear,” he answered, so gently that she was ashamed of her vehemence. “Remember that Jacob served for Rachel seven years; would you have us, who are serving for Liberty, stop at only five?”
“If seven years were all,” she could not help replying, “but it looks now as though it were to be seven hundred.”
There came at last a bright autumn morning that she was never to forget. The brisk spiciness in the air made the sun seem pleasant, so that Stephen, who had been ailing a little more than usual, had had his chair moved to the window that he might bask in the grateful warmth. Clotilde had made him comfortable with cushions and had gone to attend to her other duties about the house. She was standing at the china-cupboard in the dining-room when she heard the sound of horse’s feet on the drive, heard the rattle of the knocker and old Jason’s shuffling steps as he went to open the door. There was a pause, then Stephen’s voice called to her from the next room.
“Clotilde, my child,” he said, “a despatch from General Washington, and such joyful news. Come quickly and read it. But wait, first attend to the messenger, I have never seen a man so spent.”
“Yes, Master Sheffield, I will come to you in a moment,” she answered.
Jason was conducting the man to the kitchen and she followed to see that he had what he needed. He did indeed seem to have ridden so hard as to be utterly worn out; he sat in the chimney corner scarcely able to speak, so she spent some time in brewing a drink that would help to revive his strength. It must have been nearly twenty minutes later that she went into the study.