Stay she must by her
nest of helpless folk, and was it with futile wings he was breasting
the great outer currents of which she was so ignorant? His letters
told her nothing of what he was doing, just were filled to the word
with half-spoken love and longing and, above all, with a great
impatience about what, or for what, it was impossible for her to
understand. She could only grieve over it and long to comfort him with
all the strength of her love for him. And so with thinking, puzzling
and sad planning the afternoon wore away for her and sunset found her
at the house putting the household in order and to bed with her usual
cheery fostering of creaking joints and cumbersome retiring
ceremonies.
At last she was at liberty to fling her exhausted body down on the
cool, patched, old linen sheets of the great four-poster which had
harbored many of her foremothers and let herself drift out on her own
troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving
way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and
the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were
echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her
bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by
her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his own springy place of
repose.
"Rose Mamie," he demanded in an awestruck tone of voice that fairly
trembled through the darkness, "are you a-crying?"
"Yes, Stonie," she answered in a shame-forced gurgle that would have
done credit to Jennie Rucker in her worst moments of abasement before
the force of the General.
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