It was very sudden. He had been feeble, to be sure, more than usual, for several days, but nobody apprehended anything. Towards evening he failed - suddenly; sent for me, and died in my arms, blessing me. Yes, we had been walking the same road together for some time. I was only left to go on awhile longer alone.
But Mont Pilatte said to me that night, "There remaineth a rest for the people of God." And while the moon went down and the stars slowly trooped over the head of the mountain, I heard that utterance, and those words of the hymn -
"God liveth ever:
"Wherefore, soul, despair thou never."
I could go no farther. I could think no more. Kneeling at my window-sill, under the starry night, my soul held to those two things and did not loose its moorings. It is a great deal, to hold fast. It was all then I could do. And even in the remembrance now of the loneliness and desolate feeling that came upon me at that time, there is also a strong sense of the deep sweetness which I was conscious of, rather than able to taste, coming from those words and resting at the bottom of my heart.
I was in some measure drawn out of myself, almost immediately, by the illness of my mother. She fell into a nervous disordered condition, which it taxed all my powers to tend and soothe. I think it was mental rather than bodily, in the origin of it; but body and mind shared in the result, as usual. And when she got better and was able to sit up and even to go about again, she remained under the utmost despondency. Affairs were not looking well for the Southern struggle in America; and besides the mortification of her political affections, mamma was very sure that if the South could not succeed in establishing its independence, we should as a family be ruined.
"We are ruined now, Daisy," she said. "There can be nothing coming from our Magnolia estates - and our Virginia property is a mere battle ground, you know; and what have we to live upon?"
"Mamma, there will be some way," I said. "I have not thought about it."
"No, you do not think but of your own favourite speculations. I wish with all my heart you had never taken to fanatical ways. I have no comfort in you."
"What do you mean by fanaticism, mamma?"
"I will tell you!" replied mamma with energy. "The essence of fanaticism is to have your own way."