Click here to visit my website for more information about atlantis gay cruise
Atlantis Gay Cruise
She exacted a promise from watch the train go past. And to say good-bye not only to the General but to something that had been a part of themselves. Two or three, met at a crossing where the signal tinkled as they stood at salute, a handful, perhaps with a flag, perhaps with a bugle, in every village; and in the towns, platforms crowded with middle-aged men, some of them in ill-fitting uniforms, all standing at ramrod attention, saluting as the train drew slowly through and around a curve and out of sight. John and Ludwig had come unexpectedly together outside the Waynesboro depot; neither of them had spoken of his intention to go; both had acted on impulse, half reluctantly, a little shamefaced.
They stood together wordlessly, along with other veterans, stiffened to attention and lifted their arms in salute, their faces rigid, but when the last car had pulled out of sight neither was dry-eyed. As the silent crowd began to drift away, Ludwig said, “Ruben’s here with the buggy. Let me drop you off at the office.”
They stood together wordlessly, along with other veterans, stiffened to attention and lifted their arms in salute, their faces rigid, but when the last car had pulled out of sight neither was dry-eyed. As the silent crowd began to drift away, Ludwig said, “Ruben’s here with the buggy. Let me drop you off at the office.”
- “I’d rather walk, I think, thanks just the same. Do you feel, all of a sudden, the sum of the years that have passed? That is an old man they are taking home to bury, not the General.”
- “Yes. And we are not boys, Dock. Something has gone out of our lives forever with that train.”
They had said no more; there was no need: there were enough shared momeries to evoke shared emotion, not only memories of marches, fights, and sieges, but of a picnic day when the General had been kind to an enchanted Binny. It was of that John spoke on the evening a year later, when they were setting out the chessmen.
- “You remember that day at Odell’s Grove? All the children: in a way it seems as long ago as Vicksburg. In another way it seems like yesterday. How have we come so quickly to be fathers of grown men and women? Here’s Johnny an M.D. and practicing.”
- “Where is your young man? Out on a case?”
- “He’s where he is mostly, of an evening, since the Demings got home. In their parlor. Sparking.”
- “Hasn’t that affair been hanging fire a long time? What’s the matter with Johnny? He’s a very enterprising boy, most ways.”
- “It’s the young lady who’s reluctant. And the Demings. They took that long trip abroad last summer hoping to separate the two, I suspect. Looking for a duke for her, maybe.”
Ludwig snorted, and John laughed. “That’s the way I feel,” he said. “It would have been no loss to Waynesboro if they could have brought it off. Johnny’s heart would have been broken, but it would have mended. ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them---’”
“‘But not for love.’ Lord, how that takes me back; remember Kitty Edwards playing Rosalind inone of those Club Christmas plays? And that was a long, long while ago, too. Poor Kitty---so young---but she knew what love meant. You and I, Dock, have been lucky. More fortunate than our children.”
Click here to visit my website for more information about atlantis gay cruise