But now, in this later time, when the strength of the nation had been wasted, when victory itself was dark with mourning for sons slain, the loss of the one wise leader to whom all turned with uplifted hearts seemed the signal for annihilation; and then, indeed, it appeared that the prophecy of Mary Ballard’s old grandfather had been fulfilled and the curse of slavery had not only been wiped out with blood, but that the greater curse of anarchy and misrule had taken its place to still further scourge the nation.
Mary Ballard’s mother, while scarcely past her prime, was taken ill with fever and died, and immediately upon this blow to the dear old father who was not yet old enough by many years to be beyond his usefulness to those who loved and depended on him, came the tragic death of Lincoln, whom he revered and in whom all his hopes for the right adjustment of the nation’s affairs rested. Under the weight of the double calamity he gave up hope, and left the world where all looked so dark to him, almost before the touch of his wife’s hand had grown cold in his.
“Father died of a broken heart,” said Mary, and turned to her husband and children with even more intensity of devotion. “For,” she said, “after all, the only thing in life of which we can be perfectly sure is our love for each other. A grave may open at our feet anywhere at any time, and only love oversteps it.”
With such an animating spirit as this, no family can be wholly sad, and though poverty pinched them at times, and 68 sorrow had bitterly visited them, with years and thrift things changed. Bertrand painted more pictures and sold them; the children were gay and vigorous and brought life and good times to the home, and the girls grew up to be womanly, winsome lasses, light-hearted and good to look upon.
Enough of the war and the evils thereof has been said and written and sung. Animosity is dead, and brotherhood and mutual service between the two opposing factions of one great family have taken the place of strife. Useless now to say what might have been, or how otherwise that terrible time of devastation and sorrow could have been avoided. Enough to know that at last as a nation, whole and undivided, we may pull together in the tremendous force of our united strength, and that now we may take up the “White Man’s Burden” and bear it to its magnificent conclusion to the service of all mankind and the glory of God.
CHAPTER VII
A NEW ERA BEGINS
Bertrand Ballard’s studio was at the top of his house, with a high north window and roughly plastered walls of uncolored sand, left as Bertrand himself had put the plaster on, with his trowel marks over the surface as they happened to come, and the angles and projections thereof draped with cobwebs.