AT BREAK OF DAY

“Stay here beside her, major.  I shall not he needed for an hour yet.  Meanwhile I’ll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to old Jane.”

The night was hot and sultry.  Though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring.  Only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in some distant marsh broke the night silence.  The heavy scent of magnolias, overpowering even the strong smell of drugs in the sickroom, suggested death and funeral wreaths, sorrow and tears, the long home, the last sleep.  The major shivered with apprehension as the slender hand which he held in his own contracted nervously and in a spasm of pain clutched his fingers with a viselike grip.

Major Carteret, though dressed in brown linen, had thrown off his coat for greater comfort.  The stifling heat, in spite of the palm-leaf fan which he plied mechanically, was scarcely less oppressive than his own thoughts.  Long ago, while yet a mere boy in years, he had come back from Appomattox to find his family, one of the oldest and proudest in the state, hopelessly impoverished by the war,—­even their ancestral home swallowed up in the common ruin.  His elder brother had sacrificed his life on the bloody altar of the lost cause, and his father, broken and chagrined, died not many years later, leaving the major the last of his line.  He had tried in various pursuits to gain a foothold in the new life, but with indifferent success until he won the hand of Olivia Merkell, whom he had seen grow from a small girl to glorious womanhood.  With her money he had founded the Morning Chronicle, which he had made the leading organ of his party and the most influential paper in the State.  The fine old house in which they lived was hers.  In this very room she had first drawn the breath of life; it had been their nuptial chamber; and here, too, within a few hours, she might die, for it seemed impossible that one could long endure such frightful agony and live.

One cloud alone had marred the otherwise perfect serenity of their happiness.  Olivia was childless.  To have children to perpetuate the name of which he was so proud, to write it still higher on the roll of honor, had been his dearest hope.  His disappointment had been proportionately keen.  A few months ago this dead hope had revived, and altered the whole aspect of their lives.  But as time went on, his wife’s age had begun to tell upon her, until even Dr. Price, the most cheerful and optimistic of physicians, had warned him, while hoping for the best, to be prepared for the worst.  To add to the danger, Mrs. Carteret had only this day suffered from a nervous shock, which, it was feared, had hastened by several weeks the expected event.

Dr. Price went downstairs to the library, where a dim light was burning.  An old black woman, dressed in a gingham frock, with a red bandana handkerchief coiled around her head by way of turban, was seated by an open window.  She rose and curtsied as the doctor entered and dropped into a willow rocking-chair near her own.