A few days after this, the whole party set out for the South, and in a little more than a week arrived at the beautiful home of the Lauderdales.
Lincoln Lauderdale met and received them with hearty cordiality. Upon the very day that Mrs. Lauderdale had left home to go up the river and visit her step-daughter, she had written to Mrs. Wells, and invited her to come to Louisiana to meet her daughter-in-law, and perhaps her son. This was done by the kind-hearted little lady with the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between the long-estranged members of the family. And now, on reaching home again, among the letters upon her boudoir table she found one from Mrs. Wells, saying that the Doctor had gone for an indefinitely long absence to California, and that she should be pleased to accept the invitation of Mrs. Lauderdale, who might expect her about the middle of the month.
“And the day after to-morrow is the sixteenth, so, Mark, you may daily expect the arrival of your mother,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up from the epistle. And then she told them of her invitation.
Upon that very afternoon Mrs. Wells arrived. The meeting between herself and her son took place alone, by her request. It was not known what happened at that interview, except that she sobbed a long time on his shoulder, and that a full reconciliation ensued. To Rosalie her manner was very affectionate.
But Rosalie, from the time of her reaching Fairplains, failed very fast. She now seldom left her easy chair by the western window. It was the pleasantest and most beautiful room in the house that had been assigned the invalid—a room occupying the first floor of a whole wing of the house, and with its east windows looking far out upon the green alluvion that stretched to the sandy beach of the distant gulf, and with its west windows opened upon a beautiful garden, beyond which spread fields reaching out to the dark pine forest that stood stately against the sunset sky. At this sunset window was her favourite afternoon seat; and here, with her friends grouped around her, she smiled and conversed as sweetly, as cheerfully, if more faintly, than ever; or here, with only her husband seated by her side, she would sit with her thin hand in his, looking into his eyes with such infinite, unutterable love and devotion, as though she would transfuse all her mind, and soul, and spirit into his being, to strengthen him for his life’s trial and work.
Every mail brought him piles of letters from his political friends and correspondents: but they lay unanswered, unopened, upon his secretary. Sometimes she would inquire about the prospects of the party; he could tell her little, he thought little, he cared little about it; and she would fix her mild eyes in mournful wonder upon him.
Soon the pleasant seat by the sunset window was given up for the couch, and too soon the couch was left for the bed, from which she was never to rise again. Then it was, after her confinement to her bed, that they approached a subject that both had hitherto avoided discussing together—her dissolution. She still spoke to him of the good cause—the cause of justice, truth, and freedom. She implored him to let no individual sorrow draw him away from his labours of love to the whole race of man; rather to consecrate that sorrow to their service. And still she inquired about the prospects of his election to the Senate. She so much wished to see him in the possession of place and power before her death.
“Not alone for your sake, dearest Mark,” she still repeated; “not alone for your sake, but for the sake of humanity.”
“Oh, dearest Rosalie, why should I wish for success? When you have left me, what motive of action have I on earth?”
“A motive higher than any my life could supply you with—the service of God, the good of man.”