In the white, scared look on Sybil's face he read the right to speak.
But it had all been so hurried, she thought, when he was gone. Oh! for one of those minutes to return, that she might express to him a tenth part of the joy and pain, the hope and terror, that filled her heart. She could remember nothing clearly or in order, and yet she would have given all the other memories of her happy life to recall each word as it was spoken. He had asked her to give him something of her own, a ring, a glove, a ribbon, no matter what. And she had taken from her neck the medallion, and laid in it a little curl of her hair, and given it to him; and she had felt his hand upon her head, and heard him say, "God keep my sweet, innocent love!" And when she lifted her head he was gone, and she had told him nothing. It could not be a dream, for on her left hand was the ring he placed there—one that she had seen him wear, and thought too beautiful a jewel for a man to have, but now she felt so glad that he had worn it. He had said this was to be the guard of the wedding-ring that he would place there as soon as he could get a furlough to come home; and she had said—yes, thank God! she did remember saying that, at least—she had said that no one but himself should take off this ring or put another in its place; yes, thank God! she had said it.
Then Harry had come, too overjoyed at the news of her engagement to feel the pain of parting. That memory was full of turmoil; mixed, too, with self-reproach that all other emotion was so lost in her new joy or pain, whichever it might be called, that Harry's going gave her no uneasiness.
The sun dropped behind the hills; star after star pierced through the darkening blue. Stillness lay on the valley below, so lately full of tramping horses, and shouting men, and shifting lights.
At last she heard her aunt's voice calling her, and roused herself to go and tell her beautiful story, old as the human race, new as that very June evening. She wondered that Aunt Mildred understood it all so well. Short-sighted Sybil! it was you who were beginning to understand Miss Mildred.
One August day, when a sultry fog held the earth in bondage, and scarlet geraniums blazed like red pools among the wilted grass, Miss Mildred pushed open the little white gate, and, with that hurried step that in old age so poorly simulates speed, hastened across the lawn. She gave a quick glance into the two parlors which were vacant, and then went up-stairs, grasping nervously the low hand-rail. In the upper hall she stopped, and leaned against the balustrade to take breath, and courage, too. Then, opening the door of Sybil's room, she stopped on the threshold to see her lying on the floor with a newspaper crushed in her hand. A bulletin in the village post-office had told her all: "Found dead on the field, Captain Robert Adair, —th Regt. Mass. Vols." They lifted Sybil up and laid her on her bed. She did not "strive nor cry," but in that first grief it pleased God to measure her power of endurance.
It was not in victory that Adair had fallen, but in one of those engagements where, humanly speaking, life seems thrown away. But such thoughts should not disturb the mourners cradled in the providence of God. He chooses the time and the occasion, and what is lost in the current of human events he gathers up and cherishes.
Weeks passed away. Letters came—precious in their recognition of Adair's high integrity, his courage, his compassion; letters, too, from his mother, far away in her summer home, acknowledging Sybil as one with her in love and bereavement. But she lay, white and listless, on her bed, taking little notice of anything except in the expression of gratitude. Harder than anything else for her aunt to bear was the pathos of Sybil's resignation.
There came a soft afternoon, early in September, when for the first time Sybil's easy-chair was placed in the open air, under a striped awning that made an out-door room on the west side of Holly Farmhouse. Here she could be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun, and yet enjoy the trees and flowers.
Great velvet bees hid their heads buzzing in the freshly-opened cups of the day-lilies; a hummingbird dipped his dainty beak into the sweet-peas, and then flashed away to hide himself among the nasturtiums pouring in a golden stream over a broken tree-trunk on the lawn.