The old house was burned during the war, and on the old plantation where that happy home once stood there are now three or four chimneys and an old tumbled-down gin-house. That is all.
The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs. Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman, with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is the once beautiful “mamma” of Diddie, Dumps and Tot.
Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young men in the neighborhood; and though she was so young, her father consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into the army, and wanted to make her his wife before leaving. So, early in ’61, before Major Waldron went to Virginia, there was a quiet wedding in the parlor one night; and not many days afterwards the young Confederate soldier donned his gray coat, and rode away with Forrest’s Cavalry.
“And ere long a messenger came,
Bringing the sad, sad story—
A riderless horse: a funeral march:
Dead on the field of glory!”
After his death her baby came to gladden the young widow’s desolate life; and he is now almost grown, handsome and noble, and the idol of his mother.
Diddie is a widow still. She was young and pretty when the war ended, and has had many offers of marriage; but a vision of a cold white face, with its fair hair dabbled in blood, is ever in her heart. So Diddie lives for her boy. Their home is in Natchez now; for of course they could never live in the old place any more. When the slaves were free, they had no money to rebuild the houses, and the plantation has never been worked since the war.
The land is just lying there useless, worthless; and the squirrels play in and out among the trees, and the mocking-birds sing in the honeysuckles and magnolias and rose-bushes where the front yard used to be.
And at the quarters, where the happy slave-voices used to sing “Monkey Motions,” and the merry feet used to dance to “Cotton-eyed Joe,” weeds and thick underbrush have all grown up, and partridges build their nests there; and sometimes, at dusk, a wild-cat or a fox may be seen stealing across the old playground.
Tot, long years ago, before the war even, when she was yet a pure, sinless little girl, was added to that bright band of angel children who hover around the throne of God; and so she was already there, you see, to meet and welcome her “papa” when his stainless soul went up from Malvern Hill.
Well, for “Mammy” and “Daddy Jake” and “Aunt Milly” and “Uncle Dan’l,” “dat angel” has long since “blowed de horn,” and I hope and believe they are happily walking “dem golden streets” in which they had such implicit faith, and of which they never wearied of telling.