Inside the house, bunches of sweet-smelling medicinal herbs, hanging agains the walls to dry, made the air heavy with their odors. Aunt Debby was at work near the bright zone of sun-rays, spinning yarn with a “big wheel.” She held in one hand a long slender roll of carded wool, and in the other a short stick, with which she turned the wheel. Setting it to whirling with a long sweep of the stick against a spoke, she would walk backward while the roll was twisted out into a long, thin thread, and then walk forward as they yarn was wound upon the spindle. When she walked backward, the spindle hummed sharply; when she came forward it droned. There was a stately rhythm in both, to which her footsteps and graceful sway of body kept time, and all blended harmoniously with the camp-meeting melody she was softly singing:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shalt be.
Perish every fond ambition—
All I've sought, or hoped, or known;
Yet how rich is my condition—
God and Heaven still my own.”
A world of memories of a joyous past, unflecked by a single one of the miseries of the present, crowded in upon Harry on the wings of this well-remembered tune. It was a favorite hymn at the Methodist church in Sardis, and the last time he had heard it was when he had accompanied Rachel to the church to attend services conducted by a noted evangelist.
Ah, Rachel!—what of her?
He had not thought of her since a swift recollection of her words at the parting scene on the piazza had come to spur up his faltering resolution, as the regiment advanced up the side of Wildcat. Now one bitter thought of how useless all that he had gone through with the day before was to rehabilitate himself in her good opinion was speedily chased from his mind by the still bitterer one of the contempt she must feel for him, did she but know of his present abject prostration.
After all, might not the occurrences of yesterday be but the memories of a nightmare? They seemed too unreal for probability. Perhaps he was just recovering consciousness after the delirium of a fever.
The walnut sticks in the fireplace popped as sharply as pistols, and he trembled from head to foot.
“Heavens, I'm a bigger coward than ever,” he said bitterly, and turning himself painfully in bed, he fixed his eyes upon the wall. “I was led to believe,” he continued, “that after I had once been under fire, I would cease to dread it. Now, it seems to me more dreadful than I ever imagined it to be.”
Aunt Debby's wheel hummed and droned still louder, but her pleasant tones rode on the cadences like an Aeolian harp in a rising wind:
“Man may trouble and distress me,
'T will but drive me to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press me;
Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.
O, 'tis not in grief to harm me,
While Thy love is left to me.
O, 'twere not in joy to charm me,
Were that joy unmixed with Thee.”