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Page 3
But in war there is always a reckoning to pay. Always one contender
driven to the wall, his cities turned to ashes, his lands laid waste.
Always one depleted side which takes one last desperate stand in the
sight of blackened homes and outraged fields and fights on through ever
darkening days until the inevitable end is come.
And the end of the Confederacy was now almost in sight. Three years of
fighting and the Seceding States had been cut in twain, their armies
widely separated by the Union hosts. Advancing and retreating but always
fighting, month after month, year after year the men in gray had come at
last to the bitterest period of it all--when the weakened South was
slowly breaking under the weight of her brother foes--when the two
greatest of the armies battled on Virginia soil--battled and passed to
their final muster roll.
Of little need to tell of the privations which the pivotal state of the
Confederacy went through. If it were true that Virginia had been simply
one vast arsenal where every inhabitant had unfailingly done his part in
making war, it was also true that she had furnished many of its greatest
battlefields--and at what a frightful cost.
Everywhere were the cruel signs of destruction and want--in scanty
larder, patched, refurbished clothing, servantless homes--in dismantled
outhouses, broken fences and neglected, brier-choked fields. Even the
staples of life were fast diminishing for every man who could shoulder
a gun had gone to fight with Lee, and few animals were left and fewer
slaves.
* * * * *
Yet, for all the dismal outlook, Winter had passed without actual
disaster to the Confederate arms and now that Spring had come the
plantation home of the Herbert Carys, twenty miles below Richmond, had
never had a fairer setting. White-pillared and stately the old Colonial
mansion stood on one of the low, emerald hills which roll back lazily
from the peaceful James. It was true that the flower beds had been
trampled down to ruin by alien horse and heel, but the scent of the
honeysuckle clinging to those shining pillars only seemed the sweeter
for the loss, and whatever else the forager might take, he could not rob
them of their gracious vista of hills and shimmering river.
Across the broad driveway and up the steps of the veranda passed Mrs.
Cary, fairer than had been the flowers, a true daughter of the oldtime
South, gentle and quiet eyed, her light summer dress of the cheapest
material, yet deftly fashioned by her own fingers from slightly opened
neck, where an old brooch lay against her soft throat, down to the
dainty spotless flounces lying above her petticoat of crinoline.
Though her lips and eyes refused to betray it even when there was no one
to see, it was with a very heavy heart that she mounted the stairs to
the attic, thinking, contriving, clutching desperately at her fading
hopes.
For good reason the plantation was very silent on this warm spring
morning. Where only a year before dozens of soft eyed Jerseys had ranged
through the pastures and wood lots there was now no sound of tinkling
bells--one after another the fine, blooded stock had been requisitioned
by a sad faced quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia. And one
by one the fat porkers who had muzzled greedily among the ears from the
Cary bins and who ought to have gone into the smoke house had departed,
squealing, to furnish bone and sinew with which to repel the invader.
Saddest of all, the chicken coops down by the deserted negro quarters
were quite as empty as the once teeming cabins themselves. Poverty, grim
and relentless, had caught the Carys in its iron hand and behind
Poverty stood its far more frightening shadow--Starvation.
But in these gloomy thoughts she was not entirely alone. All that
troubled her and more, though perhaps in a different way, passed hourly
through the old gray kinky head of Uncle Billy who happened at this very
moment to be emerging stealthily from the woods below the house. Slowly
and deliberately he made his way toward the front till he reached a
bench where he sat down under a tree to ruminate over the situation and
inspect the feathered prize which he had lately acquired by certain,
devious means known only to Uncle Billy. Wiping his forehead with his
ragged sleeve and holding the bird up by its tied feet he regarded it
with the eye of an expert, and the fatigue of one who has been sorely
put to it in order to accomplish his purpose.
"It 'pears to me," said Uncle Billy, "dat des' when you needs 'em the
mostest the chickens goes to roosting higher 'n' higher. Rooster--I
wonder who you b'longs to. Um-_um_!" he murmured as he thoughtfully
sounded the rooster's well developed chest through the feathers. "From
de feelin' of you, my son, I 'spec' you was raise' by one er de ol'es'
fam'lies what is!"
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