The rest of that long, hazy, dreamy, wonder day, in the morning of which
our hearts had been poured so full, we all of us spent with father, as
he was to leave us the next morning. Against the remonstrance of his
maternal parent, the worthless Jefferson had been chosen to go along in
the place of his father Dabney. The young negro's brisk packings filled
the house with a joy note that was delightful and Mammy admonished him
on subjects moral every time he came near the kitchen.
Late in the afternoon I left father down in the garden with young
Nickols, to whom he was confiding the care of some very choice hollyhock
seeds that would need gathering in the next few weeks.
"Your father got them from England," the judge said gravely, as he
showed the small paddies how to roll out the thin seed without crushing
them.
"Have I got any father but the Lady?" asked the youngster with all
seriousness, as he beamed up in my direction. Suddenly Martha turned
and went indoors and up to her room. I followed her and sat down beside
the bed on which she had flung herself.
"You'll have to make him understand it all; I can't," she said, after I
had tenderly hushed her weeping. "I give him to you. I--I won't be with
him long." As she spoke I noticed how the light shone through her pale
fingers as she held them up to clasp mine.
"We'll go away to Florida for a rest, Martha," I said, with the
reassurance I found I had constantly to use to her. There was a great
and beautiful tenderness in the soul of Martha, but she was completely
lacking in any of the worldly initiative that makes lives move on. She
seemed to be standing still.
"Yes, I'll go away," she answered softly, as she unclasped her hand from
mine, nestled her face in the pillow and shut her eyes.
I left her to sleep and a year from that hour I knew that I had not
understood the measure of her exhaustion. She faded like a flower and
drifted on into eternity like a gossamer thread in the breeze.
And it was with some of the depression that a kind of maternal brooding
over her gave me that I went out into the garden that night after all
the rest had gone to bed. A pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow
of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the
north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went
down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss
together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been
all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass
and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall
shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones
drearily. I leaned against the tallest old poplar and looked out across
the valley with a kind of stillness in my heart that seemed to be
listening and then listening.