We carried her down to Richmond, the next day but one.
I have said elsewhere that it is not given to one to have two perfect, all-satisfying, friendships this side of the Land that is all Love. She had gladdened our cottage for little over a month. It was never quite the same after she flew heavenward. Nor was my life.
To everybody else, it seemed that the “stirring” of the nest began during the visit we paid to Northern friends that summer.
Our vacation was longer than usual. It could not be gay, for our mourning garments expressed but inadequately the gloom from which our spirits could not escape, with the memory of two bereavements fresh in the minds of all.
It was during this sojourn with the relatives, whose adoption of me had been frankly affectionate from the beginning of our association, that I learned of the desire of my father-in-law to have his son removed nearer to the rest of the family. The old Judge was proud and fond of the boy, and Virginia was a long distance away from New York—to him, and other loyal Middle Statesmen, as truly the Hub of Civilization as Boston to the born Bostonian. Moreover, the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House was a country charge, although eminently respectable in character, and honorable in all things pertaining to church traditions. Other men as young, and, in the father’s opinion, inferior in talent and education, were called to city parishes. “It was not right for Edward to bury himself in the backwoods until such time as he would be too near the dead line, with respect to age, to hope for preferment.”
All this and more of the like purport fell upon unheeding ears, when addressed to me. I had but one answer to make, after listening respectfully to argument and appeal:
“I promised Edward, of my own free will and accord, before our marriage, that I would never attempt to sway his judgment in anything relating to his profession. Least of all, would I cast the weight of what influence I might have into either scale, if he were called upon to make a change of pastorate. He must do as he thinks best.”
More than one church had made overtures to the rising man, and his kindred were hanging eagerly upon his decision. The initial “stir” had been given. It was a positive relief when we turned our faces southward.
The nest was full that autumn. My husband’s widower brother-in-law, crushed by his late bereavement, and compelled to resign the home in which his wife had taken just pride; helpless, as only a man of strictly domestic tastes can be in such circumstances, abandoned his profession of the law, and resolved to study divinity. My brother Herbert turned his back upon a promising business career, and made the same resolution. Both men were rusty in Latin and Greek, and neither knew anything of Hebrew. My husband—ever generous to a fault in the expenditure of his own time and strength in the service of others—rashly offered to “coach” them for a few months. I think they believed him, when he represented that Latin was mere play to him, and that an hour or two a day would be an advantage to him in refreshing his recollection of other dead languages.