I smiled up at him as he repeated the familiar old saying, learned from an old Chinook warrior on the Pacific. In the darkest days he would lift my face upward, look down with his kind eyes and gentle smile and say, "Keep up a skookum tum-tum, dear one." All through my life have the sweet old words come back to me when the sun has been hidden by the darkest clouds.
I heard the footsteps of the horse keeping time to my Soldier's whistle, "Believe me if all those endearing young charms," away in the distance long after he was out of sight. I remembered a trick of my childhood which had been taught me by a half-Indian, half-negress and, putting my ear to the ground, I listened to the steps until the last echo was lost. Later I learned that the faithful Lucy bore her master safely to the station and when the train carried him away lay down and died, as if she felt that, having done all she could, life held for her no more duties or pleasures.
The night-wind sighed with me as I walked back, repeating, "Keep up a skookum tum-tum." My pathway lay parallel with the Chuckatuck Creek, a stone's throw to the left. The tide was high and still coming in. The surging of the waves seemed to call out to me, "Skookum tum-tum! Skookum tum-tum!" I could not be all desolate when the most beautiful forces of nature, echoing his words, called to me, "Keep up a brave heart—brave heart!"
My precious old father had waited to have us say good-bye alone and was now coming forward to meet me. Our baby awakened just as we reached home and I confided to him the secret of the telegram and told him his dear father said that it would surely come and he always said what was true.
The stars were burning brightly in the midnight sky to light the traveler on his way as he went afar off. Could there be light on the pathway that led him from me? Had his face been turned southward, with his eyes fixed joyfully upon the loved home where he would be welcomed when the journey was over, what radiant glory would have flooded the way.
Far up in the zenith I could see "our star" gleaming brilliantly, seeming to reach out fingers of light to touch me in loving caress. It was a pure white star that sent down a veil of silvery radiance. Near it was a red star, gleaming and beautiful, but I did not love it. It seemed to glow with the baleful fires of war. My great, loving, tender, white star was like a symbol of peace looking down with serenest benediction.
"Our star," he had said as we stood together only one little evening before—how long it seemed!—and gazed upward to find what comfort we might in its soft glow. "Wherever we may be we will look aloft into the night sky where it shines with steady light, and feel that our thoughts and hearts are together."
I fell asleep, saying softly, "God's lights to guide him."
There were no steamers and no railroads from my home to Norfolk, but my father secured a pungy—a little oyster-boat—and the following day we—baby and I—started off.
A storm came up just as we left Chuckatuck Creek and we were delayed in arriving at Norfolk. We had hoped to be there some hours before the departure of the Baltimore steamer, but reached the wharf as the plank was about to be taken in, so that my father barely had time to say good-bye to me and put me on board.