Nor would it be permissible, save to one who would make his story whole, to leap in a sentence the two years of horror and add that the I. H. N. panel was returned to the rector of St. Michael’s some years afterwards by a clergyman whose name is not to be told, with the remarkable statement that he returned the monogram, as there was no place in his church for it.
There were two men who walked in sadness through the deserted city and came at nightfall to the old graveyard of St. Michael’s and entered. It was the hour when the worshippers gathered, a little family band in their home, for the weekly prayer meetings, and the shadows would fall around the old church and rest upon the graves of the departed. Then, while they lingered there with their God and their dead, sometimes the spirits of their fathers would come and join in the service and sprinkle incense upon the fire of their hearts; and the sunbeams would linger a little longer to bear the messages with them before they sped away to their homes beyond the mountains. Thus at the gloaming, when lovers used to meet, would the bridegroom of the Heavens come to prepare the church as a bride adorned for her husband.
It was an old burying ground and many men whom the South loved were buried there. The deepest passion of the ancient city’s soul was her love for her dead. One of the men led the other to where lay the eloquent Hayne, whose silver tongue had brought the great Webster up to his greatest effort. The other was Senator Wilson, Webster’s successor in the Senate. They looked at the graves grown over with weeds, for men had gone rabbit hunting in the shelled districts, and owls filled the offices. The two men were silent, nor could they find words fit for the scene. Their thought was of the great statesman, loved of all men, yet whose doctrines had brought such woe and destruction upon his city. And now the weeds were covering the grave of the apostle of secession and the owls and the bats inhabited the city of his love. With bared heads, in silence they paused while the tears welled into their eyes, then the senator said to his companion, in a broken voice:
“There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
The other answered: “If I had the power of a great painter, I would paint this scene—this ruined city under the heel of the conqueror, this temple defiled by vandals, and I would inscribe it: ‘The successor of Webster at the tomb of Robert Y. Hayne.’”
There was a band of soldiers that heard the ringing words of Henry Ward Beecher when the old flag was raised again on the walls of Fort Sumter, and shouted with the rest when he charged the war upon a proud and impatient aristocracy. These remembered that one was buried in St. Phillips graveyard, the proudest, most dashing of them all. So when there was a respite from duty they turned into the Western Cemetery and were seen by the simple grave of Carolina’s hero. Not a tuft of grass seemed misplaced about it.
“The arch-enemy!” one cried. “Damn—” but he stopped suddenly, like the boys of Dunvegan who must needs go over the hill out of sight of the moss-covered manse and the little red church in under the oaks before they could have heart to swear.
“John Caldwell Calhoun,” another read. “It’s a wonder some of the boys haven’t torn him out of there.”
“The old snook was a slick talker, but he had more sentiment than sense. None of those crazy loons down in here could see that it was too late in the day for slaves.”