To Colonel Robert Estridge time had not passed and conditions had not changed for a generation. He was still the gallant aristocrat he had been when the war broke out,—a little past the age to enlist himself, but able and glad to give two sons to the cause of the South. They had gone out, light-hearted and gay, and brave in their military trappings and suits of gray. The father had watched them away with moist eyes and a swelling bosom. After that the tide of war had surged on and on, had even rolled to his very gates, and the widowed man watched and waited for it to bring his boys back to him. One of them came. They brought him back from the valley of the Shenandoah, and laid him in the old orchard out there behind the house. Then all the love of the father was concentrated upon the one remaining son, and his calendar could know but one day and that the one on which his Bob, his namesake and his youngest, should return to him. But one day there came to him the news that his boy had fallen in the front of a terrific fight, and in the haste of retreat he had been buried with the unknown dead. Into that trench, among the unknown, Colonel Robert Estridge had laid his heart, and there it had stayed. Time stopped, and his faculties wandered. He lived always in the dear past. The present and future were not. He did not even know when the fortunes of war brought an opposing host to his very doors. He was unconscious of it all when they devoured his substance like a plague of locusts. It was all a blank to him when the old manor house was fired and he was like to lose his possessions and his life. When his servants left him he did not know, but sat and gave orders to the one faithful retainer as though he were ordering the old host of blacks. And so for more than a generation he had lived.
“Hope you gwine to enjoy yo’ Christmas Eve breakfus’, Mas’ Estridge,” said the old servant.
“Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve? Yes, yes, so it is. To-morrow is Christmas Day, and I’m afraid I have been rather sluggish in getting things ready for the celebration. I reckon the darkies have already begun to jubilate and to shirk in consequence, and I won’t be able to get a thing done decently for a week.”
“Don’t you bother ’bout none o’ de res’, Mas’ Estridge; you kin ’pend on me—I ain’t gwine to shu’k even ef ’t is Christmus.”
“That’s right, Ike. I can depend upon you. You’re always faithful. Just you get things done up right for me, and I’ll give you that broadcloth suit of mine. It’s most as good as new.”
“Thanky, Mas’ Bob, thanky.” The old Negro said it as fervently as if he had not worn out that old broadcloth a dozen years ago.
“It’s late and we’ve got to hurry if we want things prepared in time. Tell Lize that I want her to let herself out on that dinner. Your Mas’ Bob and your Mas’ Stanton are going to be home to-morrow, and I want to show them that their father’s house hasn’t lost any of the qualities that have made it famous in Virginia for a hundred years. Ike, there ain’t anything in this world for making men out of boys like making them feel the debt they owe to their name and family.”
“Yes, suh, Mas’ Bob an’ Mas’ Stant sholy is mighty fine men.”
“There ain’t two finer in the whole country, sir,—no, sir, not in all Virginia, and that of necessity means the whole country. Now, Ike, I want you to get out some of that wine up in the second cellar, and when I say some I mean plenty. It ain’t seen the light for years, but it shall gurgle into the glasses to-morrow in honour of my sons’ home-coming. Good wine makes good blood, and who should drink good wine if not an Estridge of Virginia, sir, eh, Ike?”