WHEN Valette, with the two children, reached Montrose in the morning, they saw three coffins on the front gallery. The stench had made that necessary. On the floor stood saucers of charcoal. The ends of the coffins rested on chairs. Mrs. Bedford had left Portobello soon after daylight and Valette saw her with Mrs. Quitman, Mr. Balfour and another gentleman who had his back turned her way as she came up to the steps. They were watchers with the dead.
The two children at the sight of the coffins clung to Valette’s skirts. “Lette, which is Cousin Edward?” Middleton whispered, drawing her down to his little ears.
“Hush, precious, you must keep quiet. Lette doesn’t know. Cousin Edward’s not there—that’s only—. Come, let’s sit over here.” She led them to a seat at the far end of the gallery, partly to keep them from seeing the men standing inside the graveyard wall. There were three men, two of them negroes, and Black Dave was waiting outside the gate with a spade on his shoulder. The children on each side of her put their arms through Valette’s, shutting their lips tight, and sat looking around them, and then into each other’s eyes. Their mother left the other watchers and tiptoed over to that end of the gallery with her finger on her lips.
“You must be good chillun,” she said, “do what Valette tells you.”
Middleton slid off the bench and put up his arms to embrace her. “Aunt Sallie, which is Cousin Edward?” he whispered, “which is Cousin Edward, Aunt Sallie?”
“Sh! He’s the one at this side. You mustn’t talk——”
“No, m’am.” He took away his arms and sat down on the bench again, never taking his eyes off the coffin that she had spoken of. She watched him a moment and then, brushing her hand across her cheek, leaned down and kissed his brow.
“Yes, my darlin’.”
Valette learned that the second coffin was the Hammond boy from West Feliciana Parish, the other was from that parish also and of the same company; but there was no trace of his name on the coffin. Charlie Taliaferro had never been found; in the confusion, the tents being destroyed, the retreat, nobody knew what had happened to him.
When Valette heard that, tears sprang into her eyes and began to run down her cheeks. She caught Mrs. Bedford’s hand.
“Charlie Taliaferro, My Dumplin’?”
“Yes, poor thing! But you hardly knew him, honey. It’s just the way war is.”
“But if he were alive they would know it.”
“We’re talking about your cousin Charlie Taliaferro, honey,” Valette said to Middleton. She laid her hand on his.
“I know you are,” said the little boy, looking at her strangely, as if to say that he knew more than she thought.
“Valette, you haven’t heard how ’twas, I reckon,” Mrs. Bedford said. “Well, they wouldn’t let Agnes go on the field, ’twas night already. But old William Veal stole out there. And he went over the field, feeling all the hair of all the dead till he found Edward, he knew him by his hair. You know how fine it was. Yes, so that’s it. And then, after they left Jackson last night, it was so dark that they stopped at a house and got one of those piney woods people to ride ahead of them on a white horse. So they could follow along the road. That’s how dark it was. So the man rode ahead on those blind roads and they followed.”
Mary Hartwell, hearing this and seeing the expression on Valette’s face, began to sob, making almost no sound; and Valette took her on her knees, pressing the child to her bosom and whispering to her: and then looking up at Mrs. Bedford as if to say they should not have brought the children.
“If Mary Hartwell cries,” her mother said, patting the little shoulder, “we’ll have to take her home, do you hear, Hartie, hear what Mamma says? But I think ’twas right to bring them. They ought to be here and see—They ought to see it with us.”
“My Dumplin’, do you know where Lucy is?”
“No, I haven’t seen her. But I’m going in now, I ought to.”
“If you see her—everybody’ll be with Aunt Agnes and Uncle Edward. My Dumplin’, if you see Lucy, you talk to her.”
A number of people arrived in carriages or on horseback, and came up the steps and indoors. A few remained on the lawn and presently went down to wait at the cemetery. After a few minutes some one opened a window, and Valette could see into the parlor where Agnes and Hugh McGehee were with their friends. Valette gazed into the room and thought it seemed older and sadder there than it was on the gallery, where the dead men lay in their coffins, heaped with flowers. The air stirred the leaves, the sun shone bright over the lawns and fields.
The two children leaned against Valette, talking in low tones about their Cousin Edward. She could feel their little heads pressed against her, like birds. But she did not hear quite what they were saying. She sat looking vaguely in front of her. “Blessed are they that die in the Lord—” she had heard that often, but now for the first time, she said to herself, she understood it. To die in the Lord meant to die young, tender, beautiful, all that love is.