Of course, without food or fuel, and without Abram, we could not live in the country. The fields were a desolate waste, with no fences to protect a possible crop or to keep cattle within bounds. Abram saw no hope from cultivation—nothing to "work on." He had been a refugee from a lower plantation, and he was now inclined to put out his children to service, and return in his old age to his old home and to his old master, who longed to welcome him. He was a grand old man. I doubt not he has a warm place in the bosom of that other Abram, the faithful, but no whit more faithful than he.
The afternoon before our departure from Cottage Farm, the weather was so deliciously balmy that I walked over the garden and grounds, thinking of the great drama that had been enacted on this spot. The spring comes early in the lower counties of Virginia. Already the grass was springing, and on the trees around the well which had so often refreshed General Lee, tender young leaves were trembling. Our old friends the tourists now appeared at intervals, taking in this historic ground on their return from Florida or South Carolina, where they had spent the winter.
The garden, which at this season had always blossomed with early hyacinths, daffodils, snowdrops, and the rosy spikes of the flowering almond, was now a ploughed and trampled waste of weeds. Under the iron-clad hoofs of the cavalry horses, and the heavy wheels of the gun-carriages, the life had been crushed out of the tender bulbs. Spring had come to touch all scars with her gentle finger-tips. Over all the battle-torn ground, over the grave of the young soldier who had lain so long under my window, over the track ploughed by shot and shell, she had spread a delicate bloom like a smile on the lips of the dead. A bit of color attracted my attention, and stooping over a bramble-bush I found, under its protection, a single spike of pink hyacinth. When I arose with the treasure in my hand, I saw that an elderly gentleman had alighted from his "buggy" and was gravely considering me. He bared his head and introduced himself. "Madame, I am a Northern traveller. Will you give me that little flower as a souvenir?"
"Take it!" I said; there was nothing else left, his people had all the rest—and with effusive bows and thanks he stumbled over the briers and uneven ground to secure his delicate souvenir of a battle-ground.
Much of my last night at Cottage Farm was spent at the window from which I had watched on that anxious night of my first home-coming. The home had been polluted, sacked, desecrated—and yet I was leaving it with regret. Many a hard battle with illness, with want, with despair, had been fought within those walls. It seemed like a long dark night in which neither sun nor moon nor stars had appeared; during which we had simply endured, watching ourselves the while, jealous lest the natural rebound of youthful hope and spirit should surprise us, and dishonor those who had suffered and bled and died for our sakes.
But now the night was gone, the hour of awakening had come. There was work for me to do in the world; the world in which I had been divinely taught I should "have tribulation" with the command and promise, "Fear not! I have overcome the world." And so, as I sat again in the darkness, and kept my midnight vigil:—
As of old when the fire and tempest had passed,
And an earthquake had riven the rocks, the Word
In a still small voice rose over the blast,
The voice of the Lord.