Mabel did not join in the desultory talk that engaged the others
until supper-time. There was a broken string in her heart, that
jangled painfully when touched by an incautious hand.
"Twelve years old!" she was saying, inwardly. "My darling would have
been thirteen, had she lived!"
And then flitted before her fancy a girlish form, with pure, loving
eyes, and a voice melodious as a mocking-bird's. Warm arms were
about her neck, and a round, soft cheek laid against hers--as no
human arms and face would ever caress her--her, the childless, whose
had been the hopes, fears, pains--never the recompence of maternity.
She had been to the graveyard that day--secretly, lest her husband
should frown, Clara wonder, and Winston sneer at her love for and
memory of that which had never existed, according to their rendering
of the term. She had trimmed the wire-grass out of the little
hollow, above which the mound had not been renewed since the day of
her baby's burial, and, trusting to the infrequency of others'
visits to the neglected enclosure, had laid a bunch of white
rose-buds over the unmarked dust she accounted still a part of her
heart, 'neath which it had lain so long. People said she had never
been a mother; never had had a living child; had no hope of seeing
it in heaven. God and she knew better.
"Clara, I wish you to attend Mrs. Tazewell's funeral this
afternoon," said Mr. Aylett at breakfast the next day but one after
this. "There were invidious remarks made upon your non-appearance at
her daughter's, and I do not choose that my family shall furnish
food for neighborhood scandal."
"My dear Winston, you must recollect what an insufferable headache I
had that day."
"Don't have one to-day," ordered her husband laconically. "Mabel, do
you care to go?"
"By all means. I would not fail, even in seeming, in rendering
respect to one I used to like so much, and whose kindness to me was
unvarying. You have no objection, Herbert?"
"None. I may accompany you--the day being fine, and the roads in
tolerable order."
The funeral was conducted with the disregard of what are, in other
regions, established customs that distinguish such occasions in the
rural districts of Virginia.
Written notices had been sent out, far and near, the day before,
announcing that the services would begin at two o'clock, but when
the Aylett party arrived at a quarter of an hour before the time
specified, there was no appearance of regular exercises of any kind.
A dozen carriges besides theirs were clustered about the front gate,
and a long line of saddle-horses tethered to the fence. Knots of
gentlemen in riding costume dotted the lawn and porches, and
within-doors ladies sat, or walked at their ease in the parlor and
dining room, or gathered in silent tearfulness around the open
coffin in the wide central hall.