“This is no way to do it!” he insisted. “Inconsiderate brutes to take advantage!—Ladies, too! Must stay and protect.—Lovely day for a drive! See the country at its best!—New fashion, driving lying down! driving in bed!—Time for new fashions, had old fashions long enough!—Bring the ladies home something pretty—scarf or feather!—saw a man once show the white feather—it wasn’t pretty.—Pretty, pretty—
‘Pretty Polly Watkins—,’”
Jim drove him away, trying to sing. It was not far to where the farm road dipped into a heavy woodland. The rumble of the wagon died from the air.
Mother and daughter turned and looked at each other. Margaret spoke. “The hair trunk with Will’s things in it, and the portraits and silver and your great-grandfather’s books and letters—we might hide them in the hollow behind the ice-house. No one can see it for the honeysuckle.”
“Very well. I’ll get the books and papers.”
Tullius and Mat carried out the small hair trunk and took down the two or three oil portraits and the Saint Memin. Miriam, with Peggy to help, laid a sheet on the floor and heaped into it a treasured shelf of English poetry, essay, philosophy, and drama, old and mellow of binding, with quaint prints, and all annotated in her great-grandfather’s clear, firm writing. To them she added a box filled with old family, Revolutionary, and Colonial letters. William and Rose’s Husband took up the bundle, Martha and young Martha and Mahalah filled their aprons with the silver. All hurried through the flower garden, between the sweet william and canterbury bell and hermosa roses, to the mossy-roofed ice-house and a cavity, scooped by nature in the bank behind and veiled by a mass of vines. Will and Miriam had always used it when they played Swiss Family Robinson. Now they leaned the portraits against its damp walls and set the hair trunk and the silver and the books and papers on the earth that glistened where snails had traversed it. The honeysuckle did not hide the place perfectly, but it would take a deliberate search and sharp eyes to discover it, and beggars must not be choosers. The movements of all had been swift; they were back through the flower garden to the house in the shortest of times. As mother and daughter reëntered the hall they heard through the open front door a hum of voices and a sound of oncoming feet.
“We had best meet them here,” said Margaret.
“I am going upstairs to get my amethysts,” said Miriam. “I am going to put them around my neck, inside my dress.”
Three Oaks was burned. Porch and pillars, doors and windows, hall and chambers, walls and chimneys submitted, since they could not help it, to a shroud of fire, and crumbled within it. The family was allowed to take nothing out. Matters that they prized were taken out, indeed, but not by them nor for them. At the eleventh hour soldiers, searching the garden, found the little cavern and its contents. The silver was reserved, but the hair trunk, the portraits, books and papers were thrown into the flames.
Margaret Cleave and her daughter and the coloured people watched destruction from the knoll beneath the three oaks. It was home that was burning—home that had been long lived in, long loved. The outdoor kitchen and the cabins also caught—all Three Oaks was burning down. In the glare moved the band of the foe sent out to do the work. The sun had set and the night was at hand—at hand with storm. Already the lightnings were playing, the thunder pealing. Three soldiers came up to the cluster beneath the oaks. They rolled in their gait like sailors.