SUNSHINE
Then began the St. Martin's summer of an old man's life. Every day
the Colonel saw Betty, and every day Fortescue performed some act of
kindness or attention to the old people at Holly Lodge. There was no
more skimping and saving for Betty, and in lieu of her one muslin gown
for the Christmas festivities, she had a dozen, and a rope of pearls
around her neck, and a riding habit from New York, and Birdseye to
ride every day. And there was a great Christmas party at Rosehill, the
finest that had ever been known there, so Betty privately resolved.
Everything was to be done just as in the Christmas times of old,
reinforced by all the new and delightful additions now in Betty's
power. The Colonel was to come over and spend the night for the first
time since he had left Rosehill, as he thought, forever.
It was cold as on the first Christmas Eve that Betty had met Fortescue,
but the great house at Rosehill was warm and alight. Betty's first
appearance as the chatelaine of Rosehill was admirable, with everything
thoroughly well done. The music was furnished by Isaac Minkins and
Uncle Cesar and the young gentleman of color with the "lap organ,"
reinforced by Kettle. To Kettle, his professional début as a fiddler at
"Miss Betty's Chris'mus party" was a solemn and awe inspiring event,
and he sawed away without the glimpse of a grin upon his little black
face, but in his heart was exultation. The supper was great and enough
for five times the number of guests. Apple toddy flowed, and the eggnog
was brewed in the Beverley punch-bowl. There were Christmas songs and
Christmas dances, and it was broad daylight on the Christmas morning
before the ball broke up. The Colonel insisted on sitting it out, and
even did a turn in the Virginia reel with Mrs. Lindsay, in spite of his
rheumatism.
When everybody was gone, Fortescue gave the Colonel an arm up the wide
staircase to his old room, and Betty was on the other side of him,
while Kettle brought up the rear with the Colonel's stick, while Aunt
Tulip and Uncle Cesar awaited the procession in the bedroom. Once in
the room, the Colonel looked around him in amazement. There was his bed
in the corner where it had stood for so many decades, and his shaving
table at the same angle, his arm-chair was drawn up to the blazing fire
as if it had never left the spot, and over the mantelpiece hung his
sword in its old place. The quaint old daguerrotypes were open on the
mantelpiece, and everything was just as it had been until three years
before. The Colonel, a little pale, dropped into the chair.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked.
"It means," said Betty, leaning over him in her shimmering evening gown
and with diamonds shining in her hair--"it means that you are not to go
away any more. Jack sent four men and a cart over to Holly Lodge the
minute you left, and all these things were brought up the back stairs,
and Aunt Tulip arranged them. And Uncle Cesar is to undress you and
put you to bed, and you are to throw the bootjack at him when you get
angry, just as you used to do. For Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar are
coming here to live, too, and Kettle is to be your aide-de-camp, and
Holly Lodge is to be shut up. It is a horrid little hole, anyhow."
Now, as Betty had sworn and declared and protested many times over upon
her honor as a lady and her faith as a Christian that Holly Lodge was a
most delightful little place, the Colonel was much shocked at her moral
turpitude, but Betty excused herself by saying:
"Of course it seemed well enough as long as you and I were there
together, but it must be a horrid little hole without me."
The Colonel submitted, as the old do, and his submission was very much
accelerated by Fortescue saying promptly:
"Now, Colonel, I am the commanding officer at Rosehill, and you will
not be permitted to return to Holly Lodge, except under guard or on
your parole."
When the house was quiet, and Uncle Cesar had put the Colonel to bed,
as in the days long past, the old soldier lay quiet and wakeful in his
high-post bed, watching through the chinks of the shutters the dawning
of the bright Christmas day. His heart was at peace.
"It is but for a little while," he said to himself.
But the Colonel was to see one more Christmas, a year later. On
that day, Betty's boy, the most beautiful baby ever seen, was to be
christened "Beverley Fortescue" for the old Colonel. There was to be no
Christmas ball at Rosehill, for the Colonel was past going downstairs,
and sat in his great chair awaiting from the Great Commander the order
to march. The baby was to be christened in the Colonel's room, and out
of the old bowl which served both for eggnogs and for christenings.
Fortescue and the Colonel and Uncle Cesar and Aunt Tulip and Kettle
thought they never saw so lovely a picture as Betty, with a pale,
glorified face, and wearing a long, clinging white gown such as are
seen in the pictures of angels, holding her baby in her arms to receive
baptism. The baby, beautiful and dark-eyed, looked seriously at the
new world about him, and acted with the dignity worthy of his name.
When the ceremony was over, and the old clergyman, who had also
baptized Betty when she was a baby, was gone, Betty, holding her boy in
her lap, sat by the Colonel. Fortescue, looking proudly at the baby,
said, "My son shall be a soldier," and the baby nodded, as much as to
say:
"I know what you mean."
Kettle, in convulsions of delight, watched him, while Aunt Tulip, in a
nurse's cap and a huge white apron, revelled in her new dignity as the
baby's mammy.
"Boy," said the Colonel to Uncle Cesar, "give me my sword."
Uncle Cesar took the sword down from over the mantelpiece, and the
Colonel putting the hilt in the baby's hand, said to him:
"I give you this sword. It is all I have to give, but it is much, for
the sword means honor, and you must keep your honor virgin, and without
rust or decay, like this sword. And it means courage. You must fear no
one but God. And truth is a sword, and so you must live and act and
speak truthfully. When years have passed and this sword comes into your
possession, your mother and father will tell you what I have said. May
you never forget it."
The baby grasped the sword firmly with his tiny hand, and his great
dark eyes were fixed gravely, as if he understood every word, upon the
brave old eyes of the Colonel.
Then the sword was again hung upon the wall, and they all went out of
the room, leaving the Colonel to rest, with Uncle Cesar to watch him.
For in those last hours, the humble serving-man was close to his "ole
Marse." Down in the hall, Fortescue was saying to Betty, her hand in
his:
"I have a Christmas gift for you that I haven't yet given you. I see
the little dent in the locket around your neck and the place where the
chain is mended. I wouldn't tell you until I had tested it, but I have
had perfect sight now for several days."
For answer, Betty threw herself in his arms.
"Now," she cried, "you can once more be a soldier!"
Upstairs, the Colonel was talking feebly with Uncle Cesar, his mind
sounding the deeps and shallows of memory.
"Boy," he was saying, "did you ever see a more beautiful little fellow
than my Betty's son? He looks like Betty's father, the son I gave my
country. But it is all over now, eh, boy? No more fighting and marching
and starving and freezing in the trenches of life. Everything pleasant
and Christmas weather for the rest of the march."
"Yes, suh," answered Uncle Cesar. "We kin be jes' as comfortable at
Rosehill as ever we was, suh."
The Colonel's eyes suddenly brightened, and he raised his thin figure
in the chair, and his eyes saw into another world.
"Hear the music," he said. "The band plays very well to-day; it is
playing a fine march for the dress parade. Give me my sword."
Uncle Cesar reached up and took the sword from where it hung over the
mantel, and put it gently in the Colonel's wasted hand. With his
feeble strength, the old man drew it half out of its scabbard, and
looked at it.
"It is bright," he said. "There has never been a stain upon it. Here
comes the Commanding Officer. Turn out the guard."
Uncle Cesar, who knew what was at hand, answered reverently:
"Yes, ole Marse. The guard is turnin' out."
Then, raising the sword to the salute, the gallant old Colonel heard
the last order to fall in, and met, face to face humbly, but without
fear and in perfect peace, the Great Commander.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter errors and
to regularize hyphenation; variant spelling has been retained.
Full color illustrations have been moved, to avoid interrupting the
flow of paragraphs. Decorative illustrations have been deleted from
this e-text.
The title page for this book has been moved to be the first page of
this text, followed by the half-title page giving the edition.
Christmas, as used in dialect, has been regularized to Chris'mus.