And she went back alone, and I looked and saw her pat the grave gently, and heard her say: “My peshous Dinah!”
“_The grave of all things hath its violet._”
It was in mellow, many-hued October. It was a Sunday--sunny and still. There was the _feel_ of Sunday in the air. Three years had passed since the Great Soldier’s prayer, “Let us have peace!” had been answered with blesséd acquiescence. But when, for any reason, the people came together in a crowd, it was sad to see how many still wore mourning. And when the wearer was old or middle-aged, there was something in the deadly composure of manner that said as plain as words: “This will be my garb as long as life shall last!”
One woman there was who watched with envious eye those who passed her wearing “deep mourning.” Envious, because she was herself denied the sad satisfaction of this outward expression of her great grief. Her husband--her dearer self--had simply abhorred the custom--the “social bondage,” as he called it--of mourning! The wrapping up of the strained and shaken body in black garments, and then the shutting out of every breath of pure air, every ray of God’s sunlight with yards on yards of the most hideous product of the manufacturing world--black _crêpe_--was, he declared, detrimental to good health when worn willingly, and when worn _unwillingly_, it was hypocrisy as vulgar as it was cruel. And he had exacted a solemn promise from her, that in the approaching hour of her loss, she would wear no _crêpe_ at all, and black only for the briefest possible time; a concession made to save her from the wondering and satirical comments of her friends and neighbors.
Now suddenly the church bells, the chimes, burst forth and tossed high their ringing notes into the pellucid air, sweet reminders to the Great-All Father that His children, sinning, bewildered, yet loving, trusting still, were gathering from afar to kneel and humbly pray together; remembering well those words big with promise: “When two or three are gathered together in my name!”
And among the moving multitude, two women from opposite sides of the city were approaching the same church. Both were middle-aged, and both felt that, in the better sense, their lives were over. Both were victims of the war; both had lost their nearest and dearest; and one, her home as well. And now, among strangers, she wore her rusty _crêpe_ with a dignified, almost haughty carriage of body, which, nevertheless, said plainly: “Here is the poverty which is so cruel to the well-bred and refined!” She worked to eke out her small pittance of an income, but there was no sweetness, no savor in her work. She knew she was growing hard and bitter in her sorrow and loneliness, but what did it matter now; there was no dear one to be wounded by her sarcastic speech. “A childless widow!” she murmured, “why do I encumber the earth? There is no living thing that needs me, that is glad of my coming,” and she shuddered in her thin, black garments as she thought of the years that, dull and cold, might be waiting her, and then saw the church, and tried to bring her thoughts under control.