Alice and Louisa looked wistfully at each other, as their aged relative withdrew, but uttered not a word. Often and often they had wished, and hoped, and guessed, till they were weary of guessing what grandmamma’s life had been—for they were a little curious, though not reflective; and many a time a chance word or two had puzzled their young heads not a little; but hardly had they dared to hope that they ever should know, at all events, not before they were twenty-five—quite old women—any thing about it; and now that they were to know, really, it was quite too important a subject to trifle upon. So Louisa, with her mouth very much drawn down at the corners, and her eyebrows proportionably arched, withdrew to her room, as much like Madam Stanwood as possible, while Alice relapsed into her grandmother’s easy-chair. Reflection in an easy-chair is apt to glide into reverie, and thence the transition to sleep is not uncommon; and Alice was waked out of marvelous dreams, by the announcement that the carriage waited for her.
The day was fine and clear, though a little cold, and as the carriage-wheels rolled almost noiselessly over the smooth, hard road, it seemed the very afternoon of all the world for story-telling. Yet Madam Stanwood looked silently out on the landscape before them, and the young girls did not venture to speak. At last they stopped at a house where they were a good deal acquainted.
The Williamses were all at home; and a right gay set of young people they were: then there were their father and mother, and Mrs. Williams’ brother, old Colonel Morgan, who was always ready for a frolic, and the two Miss Dundasses, from Richmond. They had a very gay call. The two Miss Stanwoods flirted desperately with the old colonel, and the two Miss Dundasses beat him about the room with bouquets of bright flowers; and there was such laughing, till the tears ran, with old Mr. Williams, and such gentle and sympathizing laughter among the old ladies, and such heartfelt fun among all, that it was with some effort the Stanwoods at last left the resounding parlor for the silent carriage.
Silent it became as soon as the doors were closed, and the soft, crackling sound of the wheels brought the old associations of painful thought and anxious expectation.
At last Madam Stanwood spoke: but the words seemed rather the repetition of a record than the expression of thought.
“Saturday, the 20th of May, 1780.”
The girls listened eagerly, but no further sound escaped her. The faint color came and went on her faded cheek, her eyes closed, and the spirit within seemed unable to utter its mournful remembrances.
“I thought I could tell you,” she said at last, “but it will not come to my tongue—and perhaps it is best so—for why should your young hearts be baptized with sorrow before their time? And besides, all, every thing within and without is so different now. I scarcely recognize myself as I look back to that day. The dark day. You have heard of it, and the reason of it—but in those times we were not given to philosophizing. Yes, all is so changed. The skies I played under are no longer the same. They bent over a young, hopeful heart then, so blue, so clear—now they still bend over me, but they promise rest to the weary soul, and they speak soothingly of a better land.
“The brook behind my father’s house, in which my bared feet daily waded, turns the wheel of a factory; the trees that shaded our log cabin are metamorphosed into three-story houses; the country has turned into a town—and not more has the form changed than the spirit. The minds of men, trained and inured to suffering, patient, sturdy, vigorous, watchful—those were men, indeed!”
Madam Stanwood’s face, usually so benignly thoughtful, lighted up as she spoke, and she looked at the eager faces of her granddaughters with a smile. The most painful part, the beginning, had been surmounted, and she went on, less however to them than to herself.