Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine remained silent, and Angela, leaning her head against the rude pine coffin, said, weeping: “O Richard, if you could speak, you would plead for Neville!”
Then Colonel Tremaine asked brokenly of Mrs. Tremaine: “Shall we forgive our son?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Mrs. Tremaine, and a sense of solemn joy came into their riven hearts.
At that moment Archie entered and stood by his parents. All at once the boy seemed to reach the stature of a man.
“My son,” said Colonel Tremaine, “your mother and I have given this dear son to his country. He is now no more, and you, although you are not yet of age to bear arms, must take your brother’s place.”
“Thank you, father,” answered Archie.
Mrs. Tremaine rose, laying her hand on his shoulder: “If it be that I must give you up, too, I do it cheerfully. If I had to lose my son, this is the way in which I should choose to give him up.”
Isabey, standing outside the door, heard this, and bowed his head in reverence. He had seen this indomitable courage of the Southern women before, and he recognized all its beauty and splendor—this calm surrender of their best beloved, this readiness to see the dearest of their hearts laid upon the Bed of Honor.
It was a time when tragedies moved rapidly, and Richard Tremaine’s body was laid in the old burying ground before sunset of that day. It had been impossible to get a clergyman in time. It was Colonel Tremaine himself who, in a steady voice, read the burial service. The faithful negro servants, headed by Hector and Peter, carried Richard Tremaine to his last resting place. In the waning afternoon the solemn procession took its way across the open field and into the old burial ground with the decaying brick walls and the moss-grown tombs. Mrs. Tremaine walked with Colonel Tremaine, and her step was steadier than his. She carried in her hand a small Testament, and grasped it as if she could not bear to part with it. Angela walked with Archie, and next them came Isabey with Lyddon, and last of all came Madame Isabey and Adrienne, followed by every negro on the place. Isabey thought Lyddon would drop as he stood at the foot of the grave, so pallid was he, so totally unnerved. It was Mrs. Tremaine who spoke words of courage to him.
“Take comfort,” she said. “We shall all meet again in a place of refreshment, light, and peace.”