He waited while Douglas spoke eagerly to the girl, and then said,——
"Theodora, for God's sake don't refuse! I have hurt you,—the marks of it you and I will carry to the grave. Let me think you forgive me before I go. Grant me this one request."
Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.
"I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace between us, David."
But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and trembling.
"It shall be as you say," said Palmer.
So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them one: simple words, wrung out of the man's thin lips with what suffering only he knew.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Thus he shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them came from as pure a heart as any child's that lives. He bade them good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw him again.
Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or—confiscation, had stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was "high time to be movin'," and when he was left alone, trudging through the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a breathless, "Ef dis nigger on'y knew what Mist' Perrine would say!"
A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter's ice and snow, and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole summer's wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of light,—will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate, looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist' Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this summer,—that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly's shiny sides against the "Government beastesses," in talking of the giant red beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich garden-mould. "Yer've no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf, I'll bet!" Even the crimson trumpet-flower on the wall is "a Virginny creeper, Sah!" But Bone learns something from them in exchange. He does not boast so often now of being "ole Mars' Joe's man,"—sits and thinks profoundly, till he goes to sleep. "Not of leavin' yer, Mist' Dode, I know what free darkies is, up dar; but dar's somefin' in a fellah's 'longin' ter hisself, af'er all!" Dode only smiles at his deep cogitations, as he weeds the garden-beds, or fodders the stock. She is a half-Abolitionist herself, and then she knows her State will soon be free.