The Christmas Peace | Page 8

Thomas Nelson Page

on each other as if they had both been of the same age. The child,
somewhat reserved with others, was bold enough with his grandfather.
They held long discussions together over things that interested the boy;
went sight-seeing in company to where the water ran over an old
mill-wheel, or where a hen and her chickens lived in a neighbor's yard,
or a litter of puppies gamboled under an outhouse, or a bird had her
nest and little ones in a jasmine in an old garden, and Colonel Drayton
told the boy wonderful stories of the world which was as unknown to
him as the present world was to the Colonel.
So matters went, until the Christmas when the boy was seven years old.

V
Meantime, General Hampden was facing a new foe. His health had
suddenly given way, and he was in danger of becoming blind. His
doctor had given him his orders--orders which possibly he might not
have taken had not the spectre of a lonely old man in total darkness
begun to haunt him. He had been "working too hard," the doctor told
him.
"Working hard! Of course, I have been working hard!" snapped the
General, fiercely, with his black eyes glowering. "What else have I to
do but work? I shall always work hard."
The doctor knew something of the General 's trouble. He had been a
surgeon in the hospital where young Oliver Hampden had been when
Lucy Drayton found him.
"You must stop," he said, quietly. "You will not last long unless you
do."
"How long!" demanded the General, quite calmly.
"Oh! I cannot say that. Perhaps, a year--perhaps, less. You have burned
your candle too fast." He glanced at the other's unmoved face. "You
need change. You ought to go South this winter."
"I should only change my skies and not my thoughts," said the General,
his memory swinging back to the past.
The doctor gazed at him curiously. "What is the use of putting out your
eyes and working yourself to death when you have everything that
money can give?"
"I have nothing! I work to forget that," snarled the General, fiercely.
The doctor remained silent.
The General thought over the doctor's advice and finally followed it,
though not for the reason the physician supposed.

Something led him to select the place where his son had gone and
where his body lay amid the magnolias. If he was going to die, he
would carry out a plan which he had formed in the lonely hours when
he lay awake between the strokes of the clock. He would go and see
that his son's grave was cared for, and if he could, would bring him
back home at last. Doubtless, "that woman's" consent could be bought.
She had possibly married again. He hoped she had.

VI
Christmas is always the saddest of seasons to a lonely man, and
General Hampden, when he landed in that old Southern town on the
afternoon of Christmas Eve, would not have been lonelier in a desert.
The signs of Christmas preparation and the sounds of Christmas cheer
but made him lonelier. For years, flying from the Furies, he had
immersed himself in work and so, in part, had forgotten his troubles;
but the removal of this prop let him fall flat to the earth.
As soon as the old fellow had gotten settled in his room at the hotel he
paid a visit to his son's grave, piloted to the cemetery by a friendly and
garrulous old negro hackman, who talked much about Christmas and
"the holidays."
"Yes, suh, dat he had known Cap'n Ham'n. He used to drive him out
long as he could drive out. He had been at his funeral. He knew Mrs.
Ham'n, too. She sutney is a fine lady," he wound up in sincere eulogy.
The General gave a grunt.
He was nearer to his son than he had ever been since the day he last
saw him in all the pride and beauty of a gallant young soldier.
The grave, at least, was not neglected. It was marked by a modest cross,
on which was the Hampden coat-of-arms and the motto, "Loyal," and it
was banked in fresh evergreens, and some flowers had been placed on
it only that afternoon. It set the General to thinking.

When he returned to his hotel, he found the loneliness unbearable. His
visit to his son's grave had opened the old wound and awakened all his
memories. He knew now that he had ruined his life. The sooner the
doctor's forecast came true, the better. He had no care to live longer. He
would return to work and die in harness.
He sent his servant to the office and arranged for his car to be put on
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