“Promise Marse Charles ter take dese letters en swode en watch back home to my Missus en young Marster, en dey waitin’ fur me—I’se ’bleeged ter go.”
“Den he tuk de letters en read er minute, en his eyes gin ter water en he choke up en say, ‘Go-long!’
“Den I skeedaddled ergin. Dey kep on ketchin’ me twell bimeby er nasty stinkin low-life slue-footed Yankee kotched me en say dat I wuz er dang’us nigger, en sont me wid er lot er our prisoners way up ter ole Jonson’s Islan’ whar I mos froze ter deaf. I stay dar twell one day er fine lady what say she from Boston cum er long, en I up en tells her all erbout Marse Charles and my Missus, en how dey all waitin’ fur me, en how bad I want ter go home, en de nex news I knowed I wuz on er train er whizzin’ down home wid my way all paid. I get wid our men at Greensboro en come right on fas’ ez my legs’d carry me.”
There was silence for a moment and then slowly Mrs. Gaston said, “May God reward you, Nelse!”
“Yassum, I’se free, Missy, but I gwine ter wuk for you en my young Marster.”
Mrs. Gaston had lived daily in a sort of trance through those four years of war, dreaming and planning for the great day when her lover would return a handsome bronzed and famous man. She had never conceived of the possibility of a world without his will and love to lean upon. The Preacher was both puzzled and alarmed by the strangely calm manner she now assumed. Before leaving the home he cautioned Aunt Eve to watch her Mistress closely and send for him if anything happened.
When the boy was asleep in the nursery adjoining her room, she quietly closed the door, took the sword of her dead lover-husband in her lap and looked long and tenderly at it. On the hilt she pressed her lips in a lingering kiss.
“Here his dear hand must have rested last!” she murmured. She sat motionless for an hour with eyes fixed without seeing. At last she rose and hung the sword beside his picture near her bed and drew from her bosom the crumpled, worn letters Nelse had brought. The first was addressed to her.
“In the Trenches Near Richmond, May 4, 1864.
“Sweet Wifie:—I have a presentiment to-night that I shall not live to see you again. I feel the shadows of defeat and ruin closing upon us. I am surer day by day that our cause is lost and surrender is a word I have never learned to speak. If I could only see you for one hour, that I might tell you all I have thought in the lone watches of the night in camp, or marching over desolate fields. Many tender things I have never said to you I have learned in these days. I write this last message to tell you how, more and more beyond the power of words to express, your love has grown upon me, until your spirit seems the breath I breathe. My heart is so full of love for you and my boy, that I can’t go into battle now without thinking how many hearts will ache and break in far away, homes because of the work I am about to do. I am sick of it all. I long to be at home again and walk with my sweet young bride among the flowers she loves so well, and hear the old mocking bird that builds each spring in those rose bushes at our window.