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Stonewall
This scene depicts Thomas Jackson, about to leave for war, returning one last time to the home where he had lived with his deceased wife Ellie and her sister Maggie. Next, he found himself inside the silent dwelling. He stared around. The furniture had already been taken away. The house stood empty of all except a decade--could it be already that long?--of memories for Jackson. Memories the like of which could not be put into words. The festive loud suppers in the dining room with Father--or was it Ruthie?--holding court. And there, the very room where he had first laid eyes on her that wondrous starstruck night so long ago. And now these stairs, upon which he had carried her toward the unspeakable bliss of their wedding night. Maggie's room, and Father's, and-- He stood staring for a long while through the open doorway into the modest few feet where had come true so many of the earthly dreams he had imagined, and others he had never imagined. He realized he had not set eyes upon the room in five years. Not since he had moved out. And he realized he had rarely thought about it. With a start, the truth dawned that no, he could not recall having once thought about it since that sea-splashed return voyage from Europe. God, in His inimitable mercy . . . The room . . . the room . . . A simple maiden in her flower Long did he muse upon and remember that which had been forgotten. At length, the day's dying amber rays fled behind the tall pines, no longer willing to gaze upon that which had been and was no more. Stillness lay over the house in prologue to the familiar welcome lullaby of the grasshopper and katydid. Jackson started to step across the threshold of the room, but before he could cross it, he realized he was no longer alone. He whirled to see Ellie--his heart stopped cold--no, Maggie, never before had he noticed such a resemblance--standing a few feet away in the wide hallway. "Why, you look as though you had seen a ghost, Tom," Maggie said. Jackson sighed. They stared at one another, as they had done before. Both wanted to speak, but no words came. Jackson glanced into the room where he had shared his soul with two sisters so very different, shared it as he had never done before or since. The room where order had finally, irrevocably come to his life. Yes, in this room had that happened. So brief in berthing, but sure and strong and permanent in its flourishing. He looked at it because he had to do so. Because he honored it and esteemed it highly, ever more so than he could have imagined he still did. Because the past was not gone, it would never be, it stood now beside him and in front of him, still in fair full bloom of womanhood, and he had stuffed away so much and he wondered now if that had been proper, if it had been perhaps too easy, too selfish . . . and here, in all her ruddy aqua splendor was not a sister, not a peer, not the wife of a friend, but the essence of all that had been so very very important to him and to his utter shock still was. She saw his eyes well up and it caused hers to do the same. Oh, I did not mean for it to be this way, she thought desperately, I only wanted to share finally with him what Silverwood-- And then she was clutching him, holding him, spilling long years of dutiful well-hid tears into his strong breast. She held him as she had once, a very long time ago, dreamt he should hold her. She cradled all that the world could ever offer her with its most lovely evil allure, all that was good but not God's best, all that the ramparts of heaven in their unsearchable wisdom had thrown up between them. She held on for the years she had prayed would be but had finally trusted would not. And then, without looking him even once in the face, because she wanted greedily always to remember him with tears in his eyes--for she felt somehow, in some way, she had claim on at least some of them--she turned and ran away from him as fast as she could, down the stairs, out of the Washington College President's house, and home to her family.
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