plain soldier, and he liked it--liked his temporary comrades, who were
frankly men to men with him, in spite of his friendship with their
superiors on top of the hill. To the big soldier, Abe Long, the wag of
the regiment, he had been drawn with genuine affection. He liked Abe's
bunkie, the boy Sanders, who was from Maine, while Abe was a
Westerner--the lineal descendant in frame, cast of mind, and character
of the border backwoodsman of the Revolution. Reynolds was a bully, and
Crittenden all but had trouble with him; for he bullied the boy Sanders
when Abe was not around, and bullied the "rookies." Abe seemed to have
little use for him, but as he had saved the big soldier's life once in
an Indian fight, Abe stuck to him, in consequence, loyally. But
Blackford, the man who had been an officer once, had interested him
most; perhaps, because Blackford showed peculiar friendliness for him at
once. From Washington, Crittenden had heard not a word; nor from General
Carter, who had left Chickamauga before he could see him again. If,
within two days more, no word came, Crittenden had made up his mind to
go to Tampa, where the little General was, and where Rivers's regiment
had been ordered, and drill again and, as Rivers advised, await his
chance.
The camp was like some great picnic or political barbecue, with the
smoking trenches, the burgoo, and the central feast of beef and mutton
left out. Everywhere country folks were gathering up fragments of lunch
on the thick grass, or strolling past the tents of the soldiers, or
stopping before the Colonel's pavilion to look upon the martial young
gentlemen who composed his staff, their beautiful horses, and the
Colonel's beautiful guests from the river city--the big town of the
State. Everywhere were young soldiers in twos and threes keeping step,
to be sure, but with eyes anywhere but to the front; groups lying on the
ground, chewing blades of bluegrass, watching pretty girls pass, and
lounging lazily; groups to one side, but by no means out of sight,
throwing dice or playing "craps"--the game dear to the darkey's heart.
On the outskirts were guards to gently challenge the visitor, but not
very stern sentinels were they. As Crittenden drove in, he saw one
pacing a shady beat with a girl on his arm. And later, as he stood by
his buggy, looking around with an amused sense of the playful contrast
it all was to what he had seen at Chickamauga, he saw another sentinel
brought to a sudden halt by a surprised exclamation from a girl, who was
being shown through the camp by a strutting lieutenant. The sentinel was
Basil and Phyllis was the girl.
"Why, isn't that Basil?" she asked in an amazed tone--amazed because
Basil did not speak to her, but grinned silently.
"Why, it is Basil; why--why," and she turned helplessly from private to
officer and back again. "Can't you speak to me, Basil?"
Basil grinned again sheepishly.
"Yes," he said, answering her, but looking straight at his superior, "I
can if the Lieutenant there will let me." Phyllis was indignant.
"Let you!" she said, witheringly; and she turned on the hapless tyrant
at her side.
"Now, don't you go putting on airs, just because you happen to have been
in the Legion a little longer than _some_ people. Of course, I'm going
to speak to my friends. I don't care where they are or what they happen
to be at the time, or who happens to think himself over them."
And she walked up to the helpless sentinel with her hand outstretched,
while the equally helpless Lieutenant got very red indeed, and Basil
shifted his gun to a very unmilitary position and held out his hand.
"Let me see your gun, Basil," she added, and the boy obediently handed
it over to her, while the little Lieutenant turned redder still.
"You go to the guard-house for that, Crittenden," he said, quietly.
"Don't you know you oughtn't to give up your gun to anybody except your
commanding officer?"
"Does he, indeed?" said the girl, just as quietly. "Well, I'll see the
Colonel." And Basil saluted soberly, knowing there was no guard-house
for him that night.
"Anyhow," she added, "I'm the commanding officer here." And then the
gallant lieutenant saluted too.
"You are, indeed," he said; and Phyllis turned to give Basil a parting
smile.
Crittenden followed them to the Colonel's tent, which had a raised floor
and the good cheer of cigar-boxes, and of something under his cot that
looked like a champagne-basket; and he smiled to think of Chaffee's
Spartan-like outfit at Chickamauga. Every now and then a soldier would
come up with a complaint, and the Colonel would attend to him
personally.
It was plain that the old ex-Confederate was the father of the regiment,
and was beloved as such; and Crittenden was again struck with the
contrast it all was to what he had just seen, knowing well, however,
that the chief difference was in the spirit in which regular and
volunteer approached the matter in hand. With one, it was a business
pure and simple, to which he was trained. With the other, it was a lark
at first, but business it soon would be, and a dashing business at that.
There was the same crowd before the tent--Judith, who greeted him with
gracious frankness, but with a humorous light in her eye that set him
again to wondering; and Phyllis and Phyllis's mother, Mrs. Stanton, who
no sooner saw Crittenden than she furtively looked at Judith with a
solicitude that was maternal and significant.
There can be no better hot-bed of sentiment than the mood of man and
woman when the man is going to war; and if Mrs. Stanton had not shaken
that nugget of wisdom from her memories of the old war, she would have
known it anyhow, for she was blessed with a perennial sympathy for the
heart-troubles of the young, and she was as quick to apply a remedy to
the children of other people as she was to her own, whom, by the way,
she cured, one by one, as they grew old enough to love and suffer, and
learn through suffering what it was to be happy. And how other mothers
wondered how it was all done! In truth, her method--if she had a
conscious method--was as mysterious and as sure as is the way of nature;
and one could no more catch her nursing a budding passion here and there
than one could catch nature making the bluegrass grow. Everybody saw the
result; nobody saw just how it was done. That afternoon an instance was
at hand. Judith wanted to go home, and Mrs. Stanton, who had brought her
to camp, wanted to go to town. Phyllis, too, wanted to go home, and her
wicked little brother, Walter, who had brought her, climbed into
Basil's brake before her eyes, and, making a face at her, disappeared in
a cloud of dust. Of course, neither of the brothers nor the two girls
knew what was going on, but, a few minutes later, there was Basil
pleading with Mrs. Stanton to let him take Phyllis home, and there was
Crittenden politely asking the privilege of taking Judith into his
buggy. The girl looked embarrassed, but when Mrs. Stanton made a
gracious feint of giving up her trip to town, Judith even more
graciously declined to allow her, and, with a smile to Crittenden, as
though he were a conscious partner in her effort to save Mrs. Stanton
trouble, gave him her hand and was helped into the smart trap, with its
top pressed flat, its narrow seat and a high-headed, high-reined,
half-thoroughbred restive between the slender shafts; and a moment
later, smiled a good-by to the placid lady, who, with a sigh that was
half an envious memory, half the throb of a big, kind heart, turned to
her own carriage, assuring herself that it really was imperative for her
to drive to town, if for no other reason than to see that her
mischievous boy got out of town with the younger Crittenden's brake.
Judith and Crittenden were out of the push of cart, carriage, wagon, and
street-car now, and out of the smoke and dust of the town, and
Crittenden pulled his horse down to a slow trot. The air was clear and
fragrant and restful. So far, the two had spoken scarcely a dozen words.
Crittenden was embarrassed--he hardly knew why--and Judith saw it, and
there was a suppressed smile at the corners of her mouth which
Crittenden did not see.
"It's too bad."
Crittenden turned suddenly.
"It's a great pleasure."
"For which you have Mrs. Stanton to thank. You would have got it for
yourself five--dear me; is it possible?--five years ago."
"Seven years ago," corrected Crittenden, grimly. "I was more
self-indulgent seven years ago than I am now."
"And the temptation was greater then."
The smile at her mouth twitched her lips faintly, and still Crittenden
did not see; he was too serious, and he kept silent.
The clock-like stroke of the horse's high-lifted feet came sharply out
on the hard road. The cushioned springs under them creaked softly now
and then, and the hum of the slender, glittering spokes was noiseless
and drowsy.
"You haven't changed much," said Judith, "except for the better."
"You haven't changed at all. You couldn't--for better or worse."
Judith smiled dreamily and her eyes were looking backward--very far
backward. Suddenly they were shot with mischief.
"Why, you really don't seem to--" she hesitated--"to like me any more."
"I really don't--" Crittenden, too, hesitated--"don't like you any
more--not as I did."
"You wrote me that."
"Yes."
The girl gave a low laugh. How often he had played this harmless little
part. But there was a cool self-possession about him that she had never
seen before. She had come home, prepared to be very nice to him, and she
was finding it easy.
"And you never answered," said Crittenden.
"No; and I don't know why."
The birds were coming from shade and picket--for midday had been
warm--into the fields and along the hedges, and were fluttering from one
fence-rail to another ahead of them and piping from the bushes by the
wayside and the top of young weeds.
"You wrote that you were--'getting over it.' In the usual way?"
Crittenden glanced covertly at Judith's face. A mood in her like this
always made him uneasy.
"Not in the usual way; I don't think it's usual. I hope not."
"How, then?"
"Oh, pride, absence--deterioration and other things."
"Why, then?"
Judith's head was leaning backward, her eyes were closed, but her face
seemed perfectly serious.
"You told me to get over it."
"Did I?"
Crittenden did not deign to answer this, and Judith was silent a long
while. Then her eyes opened; but they were looking backward again, and
she might have been talking to herself.
"I'm wondering," she said, "whether any woman ever really meant that
when she said it to a man whom she--" Crittenden turned quickly--"whom
she liked," added Judith as though she had not seen his movement. "She
may think it her duty to say it; she may say it because it is her duty;
but in her heart, I suppose, she wants him to keep on loving her just
the same--if she likes him--" Judith paused--"even more than a very
little. That's very selfish, but I'm afraid it's true."
And Judith sighed helplessly.
"I think you made it little enough that time," laughed Crittenden. "Are
you still afraid of giving me too much hope?"
"I am afraid of nothing--now."
"Thank you. You were ever too much concerned about me."
"I was. Other men may have found the fires of my conscience smouldering
sometimes, but they were always ablaze whenever you came near. I liked
you better than the rest--better than all----"
Crittenden's heart gave a faint throb and he finished the sentence for
her.
"But one."
"But one."
And that one had been unworthy, and Judith had sent him adrift. She had
always been frank with Crittenden. That much he knew and no more--not
even the man's name; but how he had wondered who and where and what
manner of man he was! And how he had longed to see him!
They were passing over a little bridge in a hollow where a cool current
of air struck them and the freshened odour of moistening green things in
the creek-bed--the first breath of the night that was still below the
cloudy horizon.
"Deterioration," said Judith, almost sharply. "What did you mean by
that?"
Crittenden hesitated, and she added:
"Go on; we are no longer children."
"Oh, it was nothing, or everything, just as you look at it. I made a
discovery soon after you went away. I found that when I fell short of
the standard you"--Crittenden spoke slowly--"had set for me, I got at
least mental relief. I _couldn't_ think of you until--until I had
recovered myself again."
"So you----"
"I used the discovery."
"That was weak."
"It was deliberate."
"Then it was criminal."
"Both, if you wish; but credit me with at least the strength to confess
and the grace to be ashamed. But I'm beginning all over again now--by
myself."
He was flipping at one shaft with the cracker of his whip and not
looking at her, and Judith kept silent; but she was watching his face.
"It's time," he went on, with slow humour. "So far, I've just missed
being what I should have been; doing what I should have done--by a
hair's breadth. I did pretty well in college, but thereafter, when
things begin to count! Law? I never got over the humiliation of my first
ridiculous failure. Business? I made a fortune in six weeks, lost it in
a month, and was lucky to get out without having to mortgage a farm.
Politics? Wharton won by a dozen votes. I just missed being what my
brother is now--I missed winning you--everything! Think of it! I am
five feet eleven and three-quarters, when I should have been full six
feet. I am the first Crittenden to fall under the line in a century. I
have been told"--he smiled--"that I have missed being handsome. There
again I believe I overthrow family tradition. My youth is going--to no
purpose, so far--and it looks as though I were going to miss life
hereafter as well as here, since, along with everything else, I have
just about missed faith."
He was quite sincere and unsparing, but had Judith been ten years older,
she would have laughed outright. As it was, she grew sober and
sympathetic and, like a woman, began to wonder, for the millionth time,
perhaps, how far she had been to blame.
"The comfort I have is that I have been, and still am, honest with
myself. I haven't done what I ought not and then tried to persuade
myself that it was right. I always knew it was wrong, and I did it
anyhow. And the hope I have is that, like the man in Browning's poem, I
believe I always try to get up again, no matter how often I stumble. I
sha'n't give up hope until I am willing to lie still. And I guess, after
all--" he lifted his head suddenly--"I haven't missed being a man."
"And a gentleman," added Judith gently.
"According to the old standard--no." Crittenden paused.
The sound of buggy wheels and a fast-trotting horse rose behind them.
Raincrow lifted his head and quickened his pace, but Crittenden pulled
him in as Basil and Phyllis swept by. The two youngsters were in high
spirits, and the boy shook his whip back and the girl her
handkerchief--both crying something which neither Judith nor Crittenden
could understand. Far behind was the sound of another horse's hoofs, and
Crittenden, glancing back, saw his political enemy--Wharton--a girl by
his side, and coming at full speed. At once he instinctively gave half
the road, and Raincrow, knowing what that meant, shot out his feet and
Crittenden tightened the reins, not to check, but to steady him. The
head of the horse behind he could just see, but he went on talking
quietly.
"I love that boy," pointing with his whip ahead. "Do you remember that
passage I once read you in Stevenson about his 'little brother'?"
Judith nodded.
The horse behind was creeping up now, and his open nostrils were visible
past the light hair blowing about Judith's neck. Crittenden spoke one
quiet word to his own horse, and Judith saw the leaders of his wrist
begin to stand out as Raincrow settled into the long reach that had
sent his sire a winner under many a string.
"Well, I know what he meant--that boy never will. And that is as a man
should be. The hope of the race isn't in this buggy--it has gone on
before with Phyllis and Basil."
Once the buggy wheels ran within an inch of a rather steep bank, and
straight ahead was a short line of broken limestone so common on
bluegrass turnpikes, but Judith had the Southern girl's trust and
courage, and seemed to notice the reckless drive as little as did
Crittenden, who made the wheels straddle the stones, when the variation
of an inch or two would have lamed his horse and overturned them.
"Yes, they are as frank as birds in their love-making, and they will
marry with as little question as birds do when they nest. They will have
a house full of children--I have heard her mother say that was her
ambition and the ambition she had for her children; and they will live a
sane, wholesome, useful, happy life."
The buggy behind had made a little spurt, and the horses were almost
neck and neck. Wharton looked ugly, and the black-eyed girl with fluffy
black hair was looking behind Judith's head at Crittenden and was
smiling. Not once had Judith turned her head, even to see who they were.
Crittenden hardly knew whether she was conscious of the race, but they
were approaching her gate now and he found out.
"Shall I turn in?" he asked.
"Go on," said Judith.
There was a long, low hill before them, and up that Crittenden let
Raincrow have his full speed for the first time. The panting nostrils of
the other horse fell behind--out of sight--out of hearing.
"And if he doesn't get back from the war, she will mourn for him
sincerely for a year or two and then----"
"Marry someone else."
"Why not?"
That was what she had so often told him to do, and now he spoke as
though it were quite possible--even for him; and she was both glad and a
little resentful.
At the top of the hill they turned. The enemy was trotting leisurely up
the slope, having given up the race earlier than they knew. Judith's
face was flushed.
"I don't think you are so very old," she said.
[Illustration: "Go on!" said Judith.]
Crittenden laughed, and took off his hat very politely when they met the
buggy, but Wharton looked surly. The girl with the black hair looked
sharply at Judith, and then again at Crittenden, and smiled. She must
have cared little for her companion, Judith thought, or something for
Crittenden, and yet she knew that most women smiled at Crittenden, even
when they did not know him very well. Still she asked: "And the other
things--you meant other women?"
"Yes, and no."
"Why no?"
"Because I have deceived nobody--not even myself--and Heaven knows I
tried that hard enough."
"That was one?" she added, smiling.
"I thought you knew me better than to ask such a question."
Again Judith smiled--scanning him closely.
"No, you aren't so very old--nor world-weary, after all."
"No?"
"No. And you have strong hands--and wrists. And your eyes are--" she
seemed almost embarrassed--"are the eyes of a good man, in spite of what
you say about yourself; and I would trust them. And it was very fine in
you to talk as you did when we were tearing up that hill a moment ago."
Crittenden turned with a start of surprise.
"Oh," he said, with unaffected carelessness. "You didn't seem to be very
nervous."
"I trusted you."
Crittenden had stopped to pull the self-opening gate, and he drove
almost at a slow walk through the pasture toward Judith's home. The sun
was reddening through the trees now. The whole earth was moist and
fragrant, and the larks were singing their last songs for that happy
day. Judith was quite serious now.
"Do you know, I was glad to hear you say that you had got over your old
feeling for me. I feel so relieved. I have always felt so responsible
for your happiness, but I don't now, and it is _such_ a relief. Now you
will go ahead and marry some lovely girl and you will be happy and I
shall be happier--seeing it and knowing it."
Crittenden shook his head.
"No," he said, "something seems to have gone out of me, never to come
back."
There was nobody in sight to open the yard gate, and Crittenden drove to
the stiles, where he helped Judith out and climbed back into his buggy.
Judith turned in surprise. "Aren't you coming in?"
"I'm afraid I haven't time."
"Oh, yes, you have."
A negro boy was running from the kitchen.
"Hitch Mr. Crittenden's horse," she said, and Crittenden climbed out
obediently and followed her to the porch, but she did not sit down
outside. She went on into the parlour and threw open the window to let
the last sunlight in, and sat by it looking at the west.
For a moment Crittenden watched her. He never realized before how much
simple physical beauty she had, nor did he realize the significance of
the fact that never until now had he observed it. She had been a spirit
before; now she was a woman as well. But he did note that if he could
have learned only from Judith, he would never have known that he even
had wrists or eyes until that day; and yet he was curiously unstirred by
the subtle change in her. He was busied with his own memories.
"And I know it can never come back," he said, and he went on thinking as
he looked at her. "I wonder if you can know what it is to have somebody
such a part of your life that you never hear a noble strain of music,
never read a noble line of poetry, never catch a high mood from nature,
nor from your own best thoughts--that you do not imagine her by your
side to share your pleasure in it all; that you make no effort to better
yourself or help others; that you do nothing of which she could approve,
that you are not thinking of her--that really she is not the inspiration
of it all. That doesn't come but once. Think of having somebody so
linked with your life, with what is highest and best in you, that, when
the hour of temptation comes and overcomes, you are not able to think of
her through very shame. I wonder if _he_ loved you that way. I wonder if
you know what such love is."
"It never comes but once," he said, in a low tone, that made Judith turn
suddenly. Her eyes looked as if they were not far from tears.
A tiny star showed in the pink glow over the west--
"Starlight, star bright!"
"Think of it. For ten years I never saw the first star without making
the same wish for you and me. Why," he went on, and stopped suddenly
with a little shame at making the confession even to himself, and at the
same time with an impersonal wonder that such a thing could be, "I used
to pray for you always--when I said my prayers--actually. And sometimes
even now, when I'm pretty hopeless and helpless and moved by some
memory, the old prayer comes back unconsciously and I find myself
repeating your name."
For the moment he spoke as though not only that old love, but she who
had caused it, were dead, and the tone of his voice made her shiver.
And the suffering he used to get--the suffering from trifles--the
foolish suffering from silly trifles!
He turned now, for he heard Judith walking toward him. She was looking
him straight in the eyes and was smiling strangely.
"I'm going to make you love me as you used to love me."
Her lips were left half parted from the whisper, and he could have
stooped and kissed her--something that never in his life had he done--he
knew that--but the old reverence came back from the past to forbid him,
and he merely looked down into her eyes, flushing a little.
"Yes," she said, gently. "And I think you are just tall enough."
In a flash her mood changed, and she drew his head down until she could
just touch his forehead with her lips. It was a sweet bit of
motherliness--no more--and Crittenden understood and was grateful.
"Go home now," she said.
VII
At Tampa--the pomp and circumstance of war.