THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
There was not much money at Holly Lodge, but Christmas dinners were
ridiculously cheap, and some of earth's choicest products lay almost at
the door of the little house. Fortescue thought he had never seen so
noble a turkey or such captivating oysters, and when the plum pudding
was brought in with a sprig of holly stuck in it and surrounded by
a sea of fire, he hypocritically pretended he had never before seen
anything like it.
He settled the question of his absence from Rosehill and his guests, by
saying debonairly:
"Those fellows at Rosehill will get along all right. With a soldier,
one must catch pleasure on the wing. And every one of the fellows would
stay, just as I do, if they had half a chance."
"That was the way the youngsters talked in my time," said the Colonel,
laughing. "War and the ladies, eh?"
The Colonel grew reminiscent of past Christmas days.
"I recollect one in particular," he said grimly: "the Christmas of '64
in the trenches at Petersburg, when it was snowing and freezing and
hailing, and we had nothing to eat, and death and defeat stalked with
us. Don't you remember that Christmas, boy?" asked the Colonel of Uncle
Cesar.
"God knows I does," responded Uncle Cesar fervently.
"That boy," continued the Colonel, indicating the gray-haired Cesar,
"was my body-servant during the whole war. He is an arrant coward, and
would run away if he thought there was a Yankee within five miles."
Uncle Cesar bore this imputation upon his personal courage with a broad
grin.
"I warn't no soldier-man, ole Marse," he explained. "I was jes' your
body-servant, and I was skeered of Yankees, and I'se skeered of 'em
now."
At this, Fortescue laughed.
"You needn't be afraid of me, Uncle Cesar," he said.
But Uncle Cesar shook his head.
"Yankees is mighty cur'rus. In the wartime, they jes' as soon kill a
man as wring a chicken's neck."
"But I must say," added the Colonel, "that although Cesar always
disappeared promptly as soon as we got into a dangerous place, he
invariably turned up when the trouble was over, and with something hot
for me to eat or something to drink--which he called coffee, and was
almost as good."
"'Twuz parched corn, an' taters cut up an' roasted. An' mos' in
gineral, I could find somebody's cow to milk for ole Marse," Uncle
Cesar added with another grin.
The Colonel chuckled at this.
"That black rascal, sir," he said, indicating the faithful and devoted
servitor, "could milk a cow into a bottle and never spill a drop. But
there weren't any cows to rob in the trenches around Petersburg that
Christmas day of '64, eh, boy?"
The Colonel's tone was joking, but in his eyes, as they met those of
his gray-haired "boy," was a sombre expression. The bygone tragedy rose
before the old soldier and his "boy." Once more they saw the pinched
faces of the starving soldiers, the scanty portions of miserable food,
the agonies of cold and hunger, and from the far-off years came back
the sullen booming of the cannon, the frightful shriek of the bursting
shells, the cracking of bullets. "In the trenches"--the phrase was
enough to raise gruesome ghosts and awful phantoms from their bloody
graves.
It was Betty who brought the two old men away from sad Christmas
memories.
"Well, Granddaddy," she said, "it's all over now, thank heaven, and we
have everything to be proud of on both sides. I am so glad that I am a
soldier's daughter, and so proud when I can say so."
At that, Fortescue, who quickly adopted the quaint and old-fashioned
customs of people like Colonel Beverley and Betty, rose from the table
and gave Betty a military salute, which delighted her beyond words.
When dinner was over, Betty insisted that Fortescue should instruct her
in the manual of arms, and, with a broomstick for a gun, Betty went
through with the whole manual, to the Colonel's intense delight.
"By George!" he cried. "She would make a magnificent recruit!"
It was then growing dusk, and the Colonel reminded Betty that it was
the usual hour she always sang to her harp for him. Fortescue took the
green baize cover off the harp, and Betty played and sang, her graceful
figure and lovely, rounded arms making to Fortescue the prettiest
picture he had ever seen. She had a sweet, untrained voice, like a bird
in the forest, and sang to perfection the old-fashioned, sentimental
songs the Colonel loved.
[Illustration: HER GRACEFUL FIGURE MAKING TO FORTESCUE THE PRETTIEST
PICTURE HE HAD EVER SEEN]
Six o'clock came all too soon, and Fortescue, forced to remember his
duties as host, at last reluctantly rose to go. They were, however, to
meet in a few hours at the Red Plains ball. As Fortescue galloped along
the frozen road between Holly Lodge and Rosehill, he thought he had
never had so pleasant a Christmas day. It was all simple and innocent
pleasure, like the pastimes of children, but it was not the less joyous
and satisfying on that account. Fortescue came to the conclusion that
a great deal of beauty, joy, charm, goodness, and merriment, and even
the sublime thing called "happiness," might be found in a little brown
house with one sitting-room and one chimney, and on a place with only
one cow and one horse.