"Yes," said I, meeting his eye as coolly as it met mine: I had learned a lesson of Josey. "I shall see you in the morning?"
"Yes"; and so he went back to her.
Morning came. Josephine was as bright, as calm, as natural, as the June day itself. She insisted on fastening "her Captain's" straps on his shoulders, purloined his cumbrous pin-ball and put it out of sight, and kept even Mrs. Bowen's sobs in subjection by the intense serenity of her manner. The minutes seemed to go like beats of a fever-pulse; ten o'clock smote on a distant bell; Josephine had retreated, as if accidentally, to a little parlor of her own, opening from our common sitting-room. Frank shook hands with Mr. Bowen; kissed Mrs. Bowen dutifully, and cordially too; gave me one strong clasp in his arms, and one kiss; then went after Josephine. I closed the door softly behind him. In five minutes by the ticking clock he came out, and strode through the room without a glance at either of us. I had heard her say "Good bye" in her sweet, clear tone, just as he opened the door; but some instinct impelled me to go in to her at once: she lay in a dead faint on the floor.
We left Washington that afternoon, and went straight back to Ridgefield. Josey was in and out of my small house continually: but for her father and mother, I think she would have stayed with me from choice. Rare letters came from Frank, and were always reported to me, but, of course, never shown. If there was any change in her manner, it was more steadily affectionate to her father and mother than ever; the fitful, playful ways of her girlhood were subdued, but, except to me, she showed no symptom of pain, no show of apprehension: with me alone she sometimes drooped and sighed. Once she laid her little head on my neck, and, holding me to her tightly, half sobbed,—
"Oh, I wish—I wish I could see him just for once!"
I could not speak to answer her.
As rumors of a march toward Manassas increased, Mr. and Mrs. Bowen took her to Dartford: there was no telegraph-line to Ridgefield, and but one daily mail, and now a day's delay of news might be a vital loss. I could not go with them; I was too ill. At last came that dreadful day of Bull Run. Its story of shame and blood, trebly exaggerated, ran like fire through the land. For twenty-four long hours every heart in Ridgefield seemed to stand still; then there was the better news of fewer dead than the first report, and we knew that the enemy had retreated, but no particulars. Another long, long day, and the papers said Colonel ——'s regiment was cut to pieces; the fourth mail told another story: the regiment was safe, but Captains Addison, Black, and—Jones, I think, were missing. The fifth day brought me a letter from Mr. Bowen. Frank was dead, shot through the heart, before the panic began, cheering on his men; he had fallen in the very front rank, and his gallant company, at the risk of their lives, after losing half their number as wounded or killed, had brought off his body, and carried it with them in retreat, to find at last that they had ventured all this for a lifeless corpse! He did not mention Josephine, but asked me to come to them at once, as he was obliged to go to Washington. I could not, for I was too ill to travel without a certainty of being quite useless at my journey's end. I could but just sit up. Five days after, I had an incoherent sobbing sort of letter from Mrs. Bowen, to say that they had arranged to have the funeral at Ridgefield the next day but one,—that Josephine would come out, with her, the night before, and directly to my house, if I was able to receive them. I sent word by the morning's mail that I was able, and went myself to the station to meet them.
They had come alone, and Josey preceded her mother into the little room, as if she were impatient to have any meeting with a fresh face over. She was pale as any pale blossom of spring, and as calm. Her curls, tucked away under the widow's-cap she wore, and clouded by the mass of crape that shrouded her, left only a narrow line of gold above the dead quiet of her brow. Her eyes were like the eyes of a sleep-walker: they seemed to see, but not to feel sight. She smiled mechanically, and put a cold hand into mine. For any outward expression of emotion, one might have thought Mrs. Bowen the widow: her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, her nose was red, her lips tremulous, her whole face stained and washed with tears, and the skin seemed wrinkled by their salt floods. She had cried herself sick,—more over Josephine than Frank, as was natural.
It was but a short drive over to my house, but an utterly silent one. Josephine made no sort of demonstration, except that she stooped to pat my great dog as we went in. I gave her a room that opened out of mine, and put Mrs. Bowen by herself. Twice in the night I stole in to look at her: both times I found her waking, her eyes fixed on the open window, her face set in its unnatural quiet; she smiled, but did not speak. Mrs. Bowen told me in the morning that she had neither shed a tear nor slept since the news came; it seemed to strike her at once into this cold silence, and so she had remained. About ten, a carriage was sent over from the village to take them to the funeral. This miserable custom of ours, that demands the presence of women at such ceremonies, Mrs. Bowen was the last person to evade; and when I suggested to Josey that she should stay at home with me, she looked surprised, and said, quietly, but emphatically, "Oh, no!"
After they were gone, I took my shawl and went out on the lawn. There was a young pine dense enough to shield me from the sun, sitting under which I could see the funeral-procession as it wound along the river's edge up toward the burying-ground, a mile beyond the station. But there was no sun to trouble me; cool gray clouds brooded ominously over all the sky; a strong south-wind cried, and wailed, and swept in wild gusts through the woods, while in its intervals a dreadful quiet brooded over earth and heaven,—over the broad weltering river, that, swollen by recent rain, washed the green grass shores with sullen flood,—over the heavy masses of oak and hickory trees that hung on the farther hill-side,—over the silent village and its gathering people. The engine-shriek was borne on the coming wind from far down the valley. There was an air of hushed expectation and regret in Nature itself that seemed to fit the hour to its event.