The quartette of heads wagged gravely.
“We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is no telling what may not happen in these times.”
Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en route for Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.
We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge during our absence, related how the “beautiful supper,” smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands, was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder were “just packed full” of useful and dainty edibles, sent and brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their names.
Thus began the four years of separation from my early home and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us—His ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles of fidelity to the government, and uncompromising adherence to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly as he loved Virginia—and romantic and tender as was his attachment to the brave old days that were to him the poetry of domestic and social life—he must have severed his connection with a parish in which he would have been accounted a “suspect.” Before the storm broke, we were gently lifted out of the “nest among the oaks” and established, as tenderly, in the “pleasant places” the Father—not we—had chosen.
XL
DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS—FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE
We were to need all the fulness of consolation that could be expressed from divine grace and human friendships, in the years immediately succeeding the events recorded in the last chapter.
The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire-blackened cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened, through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows of graves. One death after another among the friends to whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf—fast filling with blood—that parted us from kindred and early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor’s notebook, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and most faithful in their support of him in it.