Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches. Constance Fenimore Woolson
He saw Miss Ward but once.
It was a breathless evening in August, when the moonlight flooded the level country. He had started out to stroll across the waste; but the mood changed, and climbing over the eastern wall he had walked back to the flag-staff, and now lay at its foot gazing up into the infinite sky. A step sounded on the gravel-walk; he turned his face that way, and recognized Miss Ward. With confident step she passed the dark cottage, and brushed his arm with her robe as he lay unseen in the shadow. She went down toward the parade-ground, and his eyes followed her. Softly outlined in the moonlight, she moved to and fro among the mounds, pausing often, and once he thought she knelt. Then slowly she returned, and he raised himself and waited; she saw him, started, then paused.
"I thought you were away," she said; "Pomp told me so."
"You set him to watch me?"
"Yes. I wished to come here once, and I did not wish to meet you."
"Why did you wish to come?"
"Because Ward was here—and because—because—never mind. It is enough that I wished to walk once among those mounds."
"And pray there?"
"Well—and if I did!" said the girl defiantly.
Rodman stood facing her, with his arms folded; his eyes rested on her face; he said nothing.
"I am going away to-morrow," began Miss Ward again, assuming with an effort her old, pulseless manner. "I have sold the place, and I shall never return, I think; I am going far away."
"Where?"
"To Tennessee."
"That is not so very far," said the keeper, smiling.
"There I shall begin a new existence," pursued the voice, ignoring the comment.
"You have scarcely begun the old; you are hardly more than a child, now. What are you going to do in Tennessee?"
"Teach."
"Have you relatives there?"
"No."
"A miserable life—a hard, lonely, loveless life," said Rodman. "God help the woman who must be that dreary thing, a teacher from necessity!"
Miss Ward turned swiftly, but the keeper kept by her side. He saw the tears glittering on her eyelashes, and his voice softened. "Do not leave me in anger," he said; "I should not have spoken so, although indeed it was the truth. Walk back with me to the cottage, and take your last look at the room where poor Ward died, and then I will go with you to your home."
"No; Pomp is waiting at the gate," said the girl, almost inarticulately.
"Very well; to the gate, then."
They went toward the cottage in silence; the keeper threw open the door. "Go in," he said. "I will wait outside."
The girl entered and went into the inner room, throwing herself down upon her knees at the bedside. "O Ward, Ward!" she sobbed; "I am all alone in the world now, Ward—all alone!" She buried her face in her hands and gave way to a passion of tears; and the keeper could not help but hear as he waited outside. Then the desolate little creature rose and came forth, putting on, as she did so, her poor armor of pride. The keeper had not moved from the door-step. Now he turned his face. "Before you go—go away for ever from this place—will you write your name in my register," he said—"the visitors' register? The Government had it prepared for the throngs who would visit these graves; but with the exception of the blacks, who can not write, no one has come, and the register is empty. Will you write your name? Yet do not write it unless you can think gently of the men who lie there under the grass. I believe you do think gently of them, else why have you come of your own accord to stand by the side of their graves?" As he said this, he looked fixedly at her.
Miss Ward did not answer; but neither did she write.
"Very well," said the keeper; "come away. You will not, I see."
"I can not! Shall I, Bettina Ward, set my name down in black and white as a visitor to this cemetery, where lie fourteen thousand of the soldiers who killed my father, my three brothers, my cousins; who brought desolation upon all our house, and ruin upon all our neighborhood, all our State, and all our country?—for the South is our country, and not your North. Shall I forget these things? Never! Sooner let my right hand wither by my side! I was but a child; yet I remember the tears of my mother, and the grief of all around us. There was not a house where there was not one dead."
"It is true," answered the keeper; "at the South, all went."
They walked down to the gate together in silence.
"Good-by," said John, holding out his hand; "you will give me yours or not as you choose, but I will not have it as a favor."
She gave it.
"I hope that life will grow brighter to you as the years pass. May God bless you!"
He dropped her hand; she turned, and passed through the gateway; then he sprang after her.
"Nothing can change you," he said; "I know it, I have known it all along; you are part of your country, part of the time, part of the bitter hour through which she is passing. Nothing can change you; if it could, you would not be what you are, and I should not—But you can not change. Good-by, Bettina, poor little child—good-by. Follow your path out into the world. Yet do not think, dear, that I have not seen—have not understood."
He bent and kissed her hand; then he was gone, and she went on alone.
A week later the keeper strolled over toward the old house. It was twilight, but the new owner was still at work. He was one of those sandy-haired, energetic Maine men, who, probably on the principle of extremes, were often found through the South, making new homes for themselves in the pleasant land.
"Pulling down the old house, are you?" said the keeper, leaning idly on the gate, which was already flanked by a new fence.
"Yes," replied the Maine man, pausing; "it was only an old shell, just ready to tumble on our heads. You're the keeper over yonder, an't you?" (He already knew everybody within a circle of five miles.)
"Yes. I think I should like those vines if you have no use for them," said Rodman, pointing to the uprooted greenery that once screened the old piazza.
"Wuth about twenty-five cents, I guess," said the Maine man, handing them over.
SISTER ST. LUKE.
| She lived shut in by flowers and trees, |
| And shade of gentle bigotries; |
| On this side lay the trackless sea, |
| On that the great world's mystery; |
| But, all unseen and all unguessed, |
| They could not break upon her rest. |
| The world's far glories flamed and flashed, |
| Afar the wild seas roared and dashed; |
| But in her small dull paradise, |
| Safe housed from rapture or surprise, |
| Nor day nor night had power to fright |
| The peace of God within her eyes. |
| JOHN HAY. |
THEY