I
The County had been settled as a “frontier” in early colonial days, and
when it ceased to be frontier, settlement had taken a jump beyond it,
and in a certain sense over it, to the richer lands of the Piedmont.
When, later on, steam came, the railway simply cut across it at its
narrowest part, and then skirted along just inside its border on
the bank of the little river which bounded it on the north, as if it
intentionally left it to one side. Thus, modern progress had not greatly
interfered with it either for good or bad, and its development was
entirely natural.
It was divided into “neighborhoods”, a name in itself implying something
both of its age and origin; for the population was old, and the customs
of life and speech were old likewise.
This chronicle, however, is not of the “neighborhoods”, for they were
known, or may be known by any who will take the trouble to plunge
boldly in and throw themselves on the hospitality of any of the
dwellers therein. It is rather of the unknown tract, which lay vague
and undefined in between the several neighborhoods of the upper end. The
history of the former is known both in peace and in war: in the pleasant
homesteads which lie on the hills above the little rivers which make
down through the county to join the great river below, and in the long
list of those who fell in battle, and whose names are recorded on the
slabs set up by their comrades on the walls of the old Court House. The
history of the latter, however, is unrecorded. The lands were in the
main very poor and grown up in pine, or else, where the head-waters of
a little stream made down in a number of “branches”, were swampy and
malarial. Possibly it was this poverty of the soil or unwholesomeness
of their location, which more than anything else kept the people of this
district somewhat distinct from others around them, however poor they
might be. They dwelt in their little cabins among their pines, or down
on the edges of the swampy district, distinct both from the gentlemen
on their old plantations and from the sturdy farmer-folk who owned the
smaller places. What title they had to their lands originally, or how
they traced it back, or where they had come from, no one knew. They had
been there from time immemorial, as long or longer, if anything, than
the owners of the plantations about them; and insignificant as they
were, they were not the kind to attempt to question, even had anyone
been inclined to do so, which no one was.
They had the names of the old English gentry, and were a clean-limbed,
blond, blue-eyed people.
When they were growing to middle age, their life told on them and made
them weather-beaten, and not infrequently hard-visaged; but when they
were young there were often among them straight, supple young fellows
with clear-cut features, and lithe, willowy-looking girls, with pink
faces and blue, or brown, or hazel eyes, and a mien which one might have
expected to find in a hall rather than in a cabin.
Darby Stanley and Cove Mills (short for Coverley) were the leaders of
the rival factions of the district. They lived as their fathers had
lived before them, on opposite sides of the little stream, the branches
of which crept through the alder and gum thickets between them,
and contributed to make the district almost as impenetrable to
the uninitiated as a mountain fastness. The long log-cabin of the
Cove-Millses, where room had been added to room in a straight line,
until it looked like the side of a log fort, peeped from its pines
across at the clearing where the hardly more pretentious home of Darby
Stanley was set back amid a little orchard of ragged peach-trees, and
half hidden under a great wistaria vine. But though the two places lay
within rifle shot of each other, they were almost as completely divided
as if the big river below had rolled between them. Since the great fight
between old Darby and Cove Mills over Henry Clay, there had rarely been
an election in which some members of the two families had not had a
“clinch”. They had to be thrown together sometimes “at meeting”, and
their children now and then met down on the river fishing, or at “the
washing hole”, as the deep place in the little stream below where the
branches ran together was called; but they held themselves as much
aloof from each other as their higher neighbors, the Hampdens and the
Douwills, did on their plantations. The children, of course, would “run
together”, nor did the parents take steps to prevent them, sure that
they would, as they grew up, take their own sides as naturally as they
themselves had done in their day. Meantime “children were children”, and
they need not be worried with things like grown-up folk.
When Aaron Hall died and left his little farm and all his small
belongings to educate free the children of his poor neighbors, the
farmers about availed themselves of his benefaction, and the children
for six miles around used to attend the little school which was started
in the large hewn-log school-house on the roadside known as “Hall’s Free
School”. Few people knew the plain, homely, hard-working man, or wholly
understood him. Some thought him stingy, some weak-minded, some only
queer, and at first his benefaction was hardly comprehended; but in time
quite a little oasis began about the little fountain, which the poor
farmer’s bequest had opened under the big oaks by the wayside, and
gradually its borders extended, until finally it penetrated as far as
the district, and Cove Mills’s children appeared one morning at the door
of the little school-house, and, with sheepish faces and timid voices,
informed the teacher that their father had sent them to school.
At first there was some debate over at Darby Stanley’s place, whether
they should show their contempt for the new departure of the Millses, by
standing out against them, or should follow their example. It was hard
for a Stanley to have to follow a Mills in anything. So they stood
out for a year. As it seemed, however, that the Millses were getting
something to which the Stanleys were as much entitled as they, one
morning little Darby Stanley walked in at the door, and without taking
his hat off, announced that he had come to go to school. He was
about fifteen at the time, but he must have been nearly six feet (his
sobriquet being wholly due to the fact that Big Darby was older, not
taller), and though he was spare, there was something about his face
as he stood in the open door, or his eye as it rested defiantly on the
teacher’s face, which prevented more than a general buzz of surprise.
“Take off your hat,” said the teacher, and he took it off slowly. “I
suppose you can read?” was the first question.
“No.”
A snicker ran round the room, and little Darby’s brow clouded.
As he not only could not read, but could not even spell, and in fact did
not know his letters, he was put into the alphabet class, the class of
the smallest children in the school.
Little Darby walked over to the corner indicated with his head up, his
hands in his pockets, and a roll in his gait full of defiance, and took
his seat on the end of the bench and looked straight before him. He
could hear the titter around him, and a lowering look came into his blue
eyes. He glanced sideways down the bench opposite. It happened that the
next seat to his was that of Vashti Mills, who was at that time just
nine. She was not laughing, but was looking at Darby earnestly, and as
he caught her eye she nodded to him, “Good-mornin’.” It was the first
greeting the boy had received, and though he returned it sullenly, it
warmed him, and the cloud passed from his brow and presently he looked
at her again. She handed him a book. He took it and looked at it as if
it were something that might explode.
He was not an apt scholar; perhaps he had begun too late; perhaps there
was some other cause; but though he could swim better, climb better,
and run faster than any boy in the school, or, for that matter, in the
county, and knew the habits of every bird that flitted through the woods
and of every animal that lived in the district, he was not good at his
books. His mind was on other things. When he had spent a week over the
alphabet, he did know a letter as such, but only by the places on the
page they were on, and gave up when “big A” was shown him on another
page, only asking how in the dickens “big A” got over there. He pulled
off his coat silently whenever ordered and took his whippings like a
lamb, without a murmur and almost without flinching, but every boy in
the school learned that it was dangerous to laugh at him; and though he
could not learn to read fluently or to train his fingers to guide a pen,
he could climb the tallest pine in the district to get a young crow for
Vashti, and could fashion all sorts of curious whistles, snares, and
other contrivances with his long fingers.
He did not court popularity, was rather cold and unapproachable, and
Vashti Mills was about the only other scholar with whom he seemed to be
on warm terms. Many a time when the tall boy stood up before the thin
teacher, helpless and dumb over some question which almost anyone in the
school could answer, the little girl, twisting her fingers in an ecstacy
of anxiety, whispered to him the answer in the face of almost certain
detection and of absolutely certain punishment. In return, he worshipped
the ground she walked on, and whichever side Vashti was on, Darby was
sure to be on it too. He climbed the tallest trees to get her nuts;
waded into the miriest swamps to find her more brilliant nosegays of
flowers than the other girls had; spent hours to gather rarer birds’
eggs than they had, and was everywhere and always her silent worshipper
and faithful champion. They soon learned that the way to secure his
help in anything was to get Vashti Mills to ask it, and the little girl
quickly discovered her power and used it as remorselessly over her
tall slave as any other despot ever did. They were to be seen any day
trailing along the plantation paths which the school-children took
from the district, the others in a clump, and the tall boy and little
calico-clad girl, who seemed in summer mainly sun-bonnet and bare legs,
either following or going before the others at some distance.
The death of Darby--of old Darby, as he had begun to be called--cut off
Little Darby from his “schoolin’”, in the middle of his third year, and
before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write
in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance
at all times. He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his
reason, with characteristic brevity: “Got to work.”
Perhaps no one at the school mourned the long-legged boy’s departure
except his little friend Vashti, now a well-grown girl of twelve, very
straight and slim and with big dark eyes. She gave him when he went away
the little Testament she had gotten as a prize, and which was one of her
most cherished possessions. Other boys found the first honor as climber,
runner, rock-flinger, wrestler, swimmer, and fighter open once more to
them, and were free from the silent and somewhat contemptuous gaze of
him who, however they looked down on him, was a sort of silent power
among them. Vashti alone felt a void and found by its sudden absence how
great a force was the steady backing of one who could always be counted
on to take one’s side without question. She had to bear the gibes of the
school as “Miss Darby”, and though her two brothers were ready enough
to fight for her if boys pushed her too hardly, they could do nothing
against girls, and the girls were her worst tormentors.
The name was fastened on her, and it clung to her until, as time went
on, she came to almost hate the poor innocent cause of it.
Meantime Darby, beginning to fill out and take on the shoulders and form
of a man, began to fill also the place of the man in his little
home. This among other things meant opposition, if not hostility, to
everything on Cove Mills’s side. When old Darby died the Millses all
went to the funeral, of course; but that did not prevent their
having the same feeling toward Little Darby afterward, and the breach
continued.
At first he used to go over occasionally to see Vashti and carry her
little presents, as he had done at school; but he soon found that it was
not the same thing. He was always received coolly, and shortly he was
given to understand that he was not wanted there, and in time Vashti
herself showed that she was not the same she had been to him before.
Thus the young fellow was thrown back on himself, and the hostility
between the two cabins was as great as ever.
He spent much of his time in the woods, for the Stanley place was small
at best, only a score or so of acres, and mostly covered with pines, and
Little Darby was but a poor hand at working with a hoe--their only farm
implement. He was, however, an unerring shot, with an eye like a hawk to
find a squirrel flat on top of the grayest limb of the tallest hickory
in the woods, or a hare in her bed among the brownest broomsedge in the
county, and he knew the habits of fish and bird and animal as if he had
created them; and though he could not or would not handle a hoe, he
was the best hand at an axe “in the stump”, in the district, and Mrs.
Stanley was kept in game if not in meal.
The Millses dilated on his worthlessness, and Vashti, grown to be a
slender slip of a girl with very bright eyes and a little nose, was
loudest against him in public; though rumor said she had fallen afoul of
her youngest brother and boxed his jaws for seconding something she had
said of him.
The Mills’s enmity was well understood, and there were not wanting those
to take Darby’s side. He had grown to be the likeliest young man in the
district, tall, and straight as a sapling, and though Vashti flaunted
her hate of him and turned up her little nose more than it was already
turned up at his name, there were many other girls in the pines who
looked at him languishingly from under their long sun-bonnets, and
thought he was worth both the Mills boys and Vashti to boot. So when
at a fish-fry the two Mills boys attacked him and he whipped them both
together, some said it served them right, while others declared they
did just what they ought to have done, and intimated that Darby was less
anxious to meet their father than he was them, who were nothing more
than boys to him. These asked in proof of their view, why he had
declined to fight when Old Cove had abused him so to his face. This was
met by the fact that he “could not have been so mighty afeared,” for he
had jumped in and saved Chris Mills’s life ten minutes afterward, when
he got beyond his depth in the pond and had already sunk twice. But,
then, to be sure, it had to be admitted that he was the best swimmer on
the ground, and that any man there would have gone in to save his worst
enemy if he had been drowning. This must have been the view that Vashti
Mills took of the case; for one day not long afterward, having met Darby
at the cross-roads store where she was looking at some pink calico, and
where he had come to get some duck-shot and waterproof caps, she turned
on him publicly, and with flashing eyes and mantling cheeks, gave him
to understand that if she were a man he “would not have had to fight two
boys,” and he would not have come off so well either. If anything, this
attack brought Darby friends, for he not only had whipped the Mills boys
fairly, and had fought only when they had pressed him, but had, as has
been said, declined to fight old man Mills under gross provocation; and
besides, though they were younger than he, the Mills boys were seventeen
and eighteen, and “not such babies either; if they insisted on fighting
they had to take what they got and not send their sister to talk and
abuse a man about it afterward.” And the weight of opinion was that,
“that Vashti Mills was gettin’ too airified and set up anyways.”
All this reached Mrs. Stanley, and was no doubt sweet to her ears. She
related it in her drawling voice to Darby as he sat in the door one
evening, but it did not seem to have much effect on him; he never
stirred or showed by word or sign that he even heard her, and finally,
without speaking, he rose and lounged away into the woods. The old woman
gazed after him silently until he disappeared, and then gave a look
across to where the Mills cabin peeped from among the pines, which was
full of hate.
*****
The fish-fry at which Darby Stanley had first fought the Mills boys and
then pulled one of them out of the river, had been given by one of the
county candidates for election as delegate to a convention which was to
be held at the capital, and possibly the division of sentiment in
the district between the Millses and Little Darby was as much due to
political as to personal feeling; for the sides were growing more and
more tightly drawn, and the Millses, as usual, were on one side and
Little Darby on the other; and both sides had strong adherents. The
question was on one side, Secession, with probable war; and on the
other, the Union as it was. The Millses were for the candidate who
advocated the latter, and Little Darby was for him who wanted secession.
Both candidates were men of position and popularity, the one a young man
and the other older, and both were neighbors.
The older man was elected, and shortly the question became imminent,
and all the talk about the Cross-roads was of war. As time had worn on,
Little Darby, always silent, had become more and more so, and seemed to
be growing morose. He spent more and more of his time in the woods or
about the Cross-roads, the only store and post-office near the district
where the little tides of the quiet life around used to meet. At length
Mrs. Stanley considered it so serious that she took it upon herself to
go over and talk to her neighbor, Mrs. Douwill, as she generally did on
matters too intricate and grave for the experience of the district. She
found Mrs. Douwill, as always, sympathetic and kind, and though she
took back with her not much enlightenment as to the cause of her son’s
trouble or its cure, she went home in a measure comforted with the
assurance of the sympathy of one stronger than she. She had found out
that her neighbor, powerful and rich as she seemed to her to be, had
her own troubles and sorrows; she heard from her of the danger of war
breaking out at any time, and her husband would enlist among the first.
Little Darby did not say much when his mother told of her visit; but his
usually downcast eyes had a new light in them, and he began to visit the
Cross-roads oftener.
At last one day the news that came to the Cross-roads was that there
was to be war. It had been in the air for some time, but now it was
undoubted. It came in the presence of Mr. Douwill himself, who had
come the night before and was commissioned by the Governor to raise
a company. There were a number of people there--quite a crowd for
the little Cross-roads--for the stir had been growing day by day, and
excitement and anxiety were on the increase. The papers had been full of
secession, firing on flags, raising troops, and everything; but that
was far off. When Mr. Douwill appeared in person it came nearer,
though still few, if any, quite took it in that it could be actual and
immediate. Among those at the Cross-roads that day were the Millses,
father and sons, who looked a little critically at the speaker as one
who had always been on the other side. Little Darby was also there,
silent as usual, but with a light burning in his blue eyes.
That evening, when Little Darby reached home, which he did somewhat
earlier than usual, he announced to his mother that he had enlisted as
a soldier. The old woman was standing before her big fireplace when he
told her, and she leaned against it quite still for a moment; then she
sat down, stumbling a little on the rough hearth as she made her way to
her little broken chair. Darby got up and found her a better one, which
she took without a word.
Whatever entered into her soul in the little cabin that night, when Mrs.
Stanley went among her neighbors she was a soldier’s mother. She even
went over to Cove Mills’s on some pretext connected with Darby’s going.
Vashti was not at home, but Mrs. Mills was, and she felt a sudden loss,
as if somehow the Millses had fallen below the Stanleys. She talked
of it for several days; she could not make out entirely what it was.
Vashti’s black eyes flashed.
The next day Darby went to the Cross-roads to drill; there was, besides
the recruits, who were of every class, quite a little crowd there to
look at the drill. Among them were two women of the poorest class, one
old and faded, rather than gray, the other hardly better dressed, though
a slim figure, straight and trim, gave her a certain distinction, even
had not a few ribbons and a little ornament or two on her pink calico,
with a certain air, showed that she was accustomed to being admired.
The two women found themselves together once during the day, and their
eyes met. It was just as the line of soldiers passed. Those of the elder
lighted with a sudden spark of mingled triumph and hate, those of the
younger flashed back for a moment and then fell beneath the elder’s
gaze. There was much enthusiasm about the war, and among others, both of
the Mills boys enlisted before the day was ended, their sister going in
with them to the room where their names were entered on the roll, and
coming out with flashing eyes and mantling cheeks. She left the place
earlier than most of the crowd, but not until after the drill was over
and some of the young soldiers had gone home. The Mills boys’ enlistment
was set down in the district to Vashti, and some said it was because she
was jealous of Little Darby being at the end of the company, with a new
gun and such a fine uniform; for her hatred of Little Darby was well
known; anyhow, their example was followed, and in a short time nearly
all the young men in the district had enlisted.
At last one night a summons came for the company to assemble at the
Cross-roads next day with arms and equipment. Orders had come for them
to report at once at the capital of the State for drill, before being
sent into the field to repel a force which, report said, was already
on the way to invade the State. There was the greatest excitement and
enthusiasm. This was war! And everyone was ready to meet it. The day was
given to taking an inventory of arms and equipment, and then there was a
drill, and then the company was dismissed for the night, as many of them
had families of whom they had not taken leave, and as they had not come
that day prepared to leave, and were ordered to join the commander next
day, prepared to march.
Little Darby escorted his mother home, taciturn as ever. At first there
was quite a company; but as they went their several ways to their home,
at last Little Darby and his mother were left alone in the piney path,
and made the last part of their way alone. Now and then the old woman’s
eyes were on him, and often his eyes were on her, but they did not
speak; they just walked on in silence till they reached home.
It was but a poor, little house even when the wistaria vine covered
it, wall and roof, and the bees hummed among its clusters of violet
blossoms; but now the wistaria bush was only a tangle of twisted wires
hung upon it, and the little weather-stained cabin looked bare and
poor enough. As the young fellow stood in the door looking out with the
evening light upon him, his tall, straight figure filled it as if it
had been a frame. He stood perfectly motionless for some minutes, gazing
across the gum thickets before him.
The sun had set only about a half-hour and the light was still lingering
on the under edges of the clouds in the west and made a sort of glow in
the little yard before him, as it did in front of the cabin on the other
hill. His eye first swept the well-known horizon, taking in the thickets
below him and the heavy pines on either side where it was already dusk,
and then rested on the little cabin opposite. Whether he saw it or
not, one could hardly have told, for his face wore a reminiscent look.
Figures moved backward and forward over there, came out and went in,
without his look changing. Even Vashti, faintly distinguishable in
her gay dress, came out and passed down the hill alone, without his
expression changing. It was, perhaps, fifteen minutes later that he
seemed to awake, and after a look over his shoulder stepped from the
door into the yard. His mother was cooking, and he strolled down the
path across the little clearing and entered the pines. Insensibly his
pace quickened--he strode along the dusky path with as firm a step as if
it were broad daylight. A quarter of a mile below the path crossed the
little stream and joined the path from Cove Mills’s place, which he used
to take when he went to school. He crossed at the old log and turned
down the path through the little clearing there. The next moment he
stood face to face with Vashti Mills. Whether he was surprised or not
no one could have told, for he said not a word, and his face was in the
shadow, though Vashti’s was toward the clearing and the light from the
sky was on it. Her hat was in her hand. He stood still, but did not
stand aside to let her pass, until she made an imperious little gesture
and stepped as if she would have passed around him. Then he stood
aside. But she did not appear in a hurry to avail herself of the freedom
offered, she simply looked at him. He took off his cap sheepishly
enough, and said, “Good-evenin’.”
“Good-evenin’,” she said, and then, as the pause became embarrassing,
she said, “Hear you’re agoin’ away to-morrer?”
“Yes--to-morrer mornin’.”
“When you’re acomin’ back?” she asked, after a pause in which she had
been twisting the pink string of her hat.
“Don’t know--may be never.” Had he been looking at her he might have
seen the change which his words brought to her face; she lifted her eyes
to his face for the first time since the half defiant glance she had
given him when they met, and they had a strange light in them, but at
the moment he was looking at a bow on her dress which had been pulled
loose. He put out his hand and touched it and said:
“You’re a-losin’ yer bow,” and as she found a pin and fastened it again,
he added, “An’ I don’ know as anybody keers.”
An overpowering impulse changed her and forced her to say: “I don’t know
as anybody does either; I know as I don’t.”
The look on his face smote her, and the spark died out of her eyes as
he said, slowly: “No, I knowed you didn’! I don’t know as anybody does,
exceptin’ my old woman. Maybe she will a little. I jist wanted to tell
you that I wouldn’t a’ fit them boys if they hadn’t a’ pushed me so
hard, and I wan’t afeared to fight your old man, I jist wouldn’t--that’s
all.”
What answer she might have made to this was prevented by him; for he
suddenly held out his hand with something in it, saying, “Here.”
She instinctively reached out to take whatever it was, and he placed in
her hand a book which she recognized as the little Testament which she
had won as a prize at school and had given him when they went to school
together. It was the only book she had ever possessed as her very own.
“I brought this thinking as how maybe you might ‘a’-wanted--me to
keep it,” he was going to say; but he checked himself and said: “might
‘a’-wanted it back.”
Before she could recover from the surprise of finding the book in her
hand her own, he was gone. The words only came to her clearly as his
retreating footsteps grew fainter and his tall figure faded in the
darkening light. She made a hasty step or two after him, then checked
herself and listened intently to see if he were not returning, and then,
as only the katydids answered, threw herself flat on the ground and
grovelled in the darkness.
There were few houses in the district or in the county where lights did
not burn all that night. The gleam of the fire in Mrs. Stanley’s little
house could be seen all night from the door of the Mills cabin, as the
candle by which Mrs. Mills complained while she and Vashti sewed, could
be faintly seen from Little Darby’s house. The two Mills boys slept
stretched out on the one bed in the little centre-room.
While the women sewed and talked fitfully by the single tallow candle,
and old Cove dozed in a chair with his long legs stretched out toward
the fire and the two shining barrels of his sons’ muskets resting
against his knees, where they had slipped from his hands when he had
finished rubbing them.
The younger woman did most of the sewing. Her fingers were suppler
than her mother’s, and she scarcely spoke except to answer the latter’s
querulous questions. Presently a rooster crowed somewhere in the
distance, and almost immediately another crowed in answer closer at
hand.
“Thar’s the second rooster-crow, it’s gittin’ erlong toward the
mornin’,” said the elder woman.
The young girl made no answer, but a moment later rose and, laying aside
the thing she was sewing, walked to the low door and stepped out into
the night. When she returned and picked up her sewing again, her mother
said:
“I de-clar, Vashti, you drinks mo’ water than anybody I ever see.”
To which she made no answer.
“Air they a-stirrin’ over at Mis’s Stanley’s?” asked the mother.
“They ain’t a-been to bed,” said the girl, quietly; and then, as if a
sudden thought had struck her, she hitched her chair nearer the door
which she had left open, and sat facing it as she sewed on the brown
thing she was working on a small bow which she took from her dress.
“I de-clar, I don’t see what old Mis’s Stanley is actually a-gwine to
do,” broke out Mrs. Mills, suddenly, and when Vashti did not feel called
on to try to enlighten her she added, “Do you?”
“Same as other folks, I s’pose,” said the girl, quietly.
“Other folks has somebody--somebody to take keer on ‘em. I’ve got your
pappy now; but she ain’t got nobody but little Darby--and when he’s gone
what will she do?”
For answer Vashti only hitched her chair a little nearer the door and
sewed on almost in darkness. “Not that he was much account to her, ner
to anybody else, except for goin’ aroun’ a-fightin’ and a-fussin’.”
“He was account to her,” flamed up the girl, suddenly; “he was account
to her, to her and to everybody else. He was the fust soldier that
‘listed, and he’s account to everybody.”
The old woman had raised her head in astonishment at her daughter’s
first outbreak, and was evidently about to reply sharply; but the girl’s
flushed face and flashing eyes awed and silenced her.
“Well, well, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ against him,” she said, presently.
“Yes, you air--you’re always sayin’ somethin’ against him--and so is
everybody else--and they ain’t fitten to tie his shoes. Why don’t they
say it to his face! There ain’t one of ‘em as dares it, and he’s the
best soldier in the comp’ny, an’ I’m jest as proud of it as if he was my
own.”
The old woman was evidently bound to defend herself. She said:
“It don’t lay in your mouth to take up for him, Vashti Mills; for you’re
the one as has gone up and down and abused him scandalous.”
“Yes, and I know I did,” said the girl, springing up excitedly and
tossing her arms and tearing at her ribbons. “An’ I told him to his face
too, and that’s the only good thing about it. I knowed it was a lie when
I told him, and he knowed it was a lie too, and he knowed I knowed it
was a lie--what’s more--and I’m glad he did--fo’ God I’m glad he did.
He could ‘a’ whipped the whole company an’ he jest wouldn’t--an’ that’s
God’s truth--God’s fatal truth.”
The next instant she was on her knees hunting for something on the
floor, in an agony of tears; and as her father, aroused by the noise,
rose and asked a question, she sprang up and rushed out of the door.
The sound of an axe was already coming through the darkness across the
gum thickets from Mrs. Stanley’s, telling that preparation was being
made for Darby’s last breakfast. It might have told more, however, by
its long continuance; for it meant that Little Darby was cutting his
mother a supply of wood to last till his return. Inside, the old woman,
thin and faded, was rubbing his musket.
*****
The sun was just rising above the pines, filling the little bottom
between the cabins with a sort of rosy light, and making the dewy bushes
and weeds sparkle with jewel-strung gossamer webs, when Little Darby,
with his musket in his hand, stepped for the last time out of the low
door. He had been the first soldier in the district to enlist, he must
be on time. He paused just long enough to give one swift glance around
the little clearing, and then set out along the path at his old swinging
pace. At the edge of the pines he turned and glanced back. His mother
was standing in the door, but whether she saw him or not he could not
tell. He waved his hand to her, but she did not wave back, her eyes were
failing somewhat. The next instant he disappeared in the pines.
He had crossed the little stream on the old log and passed the point
where he had met Vashti the evening before, when he thought he heard
something fall a little ahead of him. It could not have been a squirrel,
for it did not move after it fell. His old hunter’s instinct caused
him to look keenly down the path as he turned the clump of bushes which
stopped his view; but he saw no squirrel or other moving thing. The
only thing he saw was a little brown something with a curious spot on
it lying in the path some little way ahead. As he came nearer it, he
saw that it was a small parcel not as big as a man’s fist. Someone had
evidently dropped it the evening before. He picked it up and examined
it as he strode along. It was a little case or wallet made of some brown
stuff, such as women carry needles and thread in, and it was tied up
with a bit of red, white and blue string, the Confederate colors, on the
end of which was sewed a small bow of pink ribbon. He untied it. It was
what it looked to be: a roughly made little needle-case such as women
use, tolerably well stocked with sewing materials, and it had something
hard and almost square in a separate pocket. Darby opened this, and his
gun almost slipped from his hand. Inside was the Testament he had given
back to Vashti the evening before. He stopped stock-still, and gazed at
it in amazement, turning it over in his hand. He recognized the bow of
pink ribbon as one like that which she had had on her dress the evening
before. She must have dropped it. Then it came to him that she must have
given it to one of her brothers, and a pang shot through his heart. But
how did it get where he found it? He was too keen a woodsman not to know
that no footstep had gone before his on that path that morning. It was a
mystery too deep for him, and after puzzling over it a while he tied the
parcel up again as nearly like what it had been before as he could,
and determined to give it to one of the Mills boys when he reached the
Cross-roads. He unbuttoned his jacket and put it into the little inner
pocket, and then rebuttoning it carefully, stepped out again more
briskly than before.
It was perhaps an hour later that the Mills boys set out for the
Cross-roads. Their father and mother went with them; but Vashti did not
go. She had “been out to look for the cow,” and got in only just before
they left, still clad in her yesterday’s finery; but it was wet and
bedraggled with the soaking dew. When they were gone she sat down in the
door, limp and dejected.
More than once during the morning the girl rose and started down the
path as if she would follow them and see the company set out on its
march, but each time she came back and sat down again in the door,
remaining there for a good while as if in thought.
Once she went over almost to Mrs. Stanley’s, then turned back and sat
down again.
So the morning passed, and the first thing she knew, her father and
mother had returned. The company had started. They were to march to the
bridge that night. She heard them talking over the appearance that they
had made; the speech of the captain; the cheers that went up as they
marched off--the enthusiasm of the crowd. Her father was in much
excitement. Suddenly she seized her sun-bonnet and slipped out of the
house and across the clearing, and the next instant she was flying down
the path through the pines. She knew the road they had taken, and a path
that would strike it several miles lower down. She ran like a deer, up
hill and down, availing herself of every short cut, until, about an hour
after she started, she came out on the road. Fortunately for her, the
delays incident to getting any body of new troops on the march had
detained the company, and a moment’s inspection of the road showed
her that they had not yet passed. Clambering up a bank, she concealed
herself and lay down. In a few moments she heard the noise they made in
the distance, and she was still panting from her haste when they came
along, the soldiers marching in order, as if still on parade, and a
considerable company of friends attending them. Not a man, however,
dreamed that, flat on her face in the bushes, lay a girl peering down
at them with her breath held, but with a heart which beat so loud to
her own ears that she felt they must hear it. Least of all did Darby
Stanley, marching erect and tall in front, for all the sore heart in his
bosom, know that her eyes were on him as long as she could see him.
When Vashti brought up the cow that night it was later than usual. It
perhaps was fortunate for her that the change made by the absence of the
boys prevented any questioning. After all the excitement her mother was
in a fit of despondency. Her father sat in the door looking straight
before him, as silent as the pine on which his vacant gaze was fixed.
Even when the little cooking they had was through with and his supper
was offered him, he never spoke. He ate in silence and then took his
seat again. Even Mrs. Mills’s complaining about the cow straying so far
brought no word from him any more than from Vashti. He sat silent as
before, his long legs stretched out toward the fire. The glow of the
embers fell on the rough, thin face and lit it up, bringing out the
features and making them suddenly clear-cut and strong. It might have
been only the fire, but there seemed the glow of something more, and
the eyes burnt back under the shaggy brows. The two women likewise were
silent, the elder now and then casting a glance at her husband. She
offered him his pipe, but he said nothing, and silence fell as before.
Presently she could stand it no longer. “I de-clar, Vashti,” she said,
“I believe your pappy takes it most harder than I does.”
The girl made some answer about the boys. It was hardly intended for him
to hear, but he rose suddenly, and walking to the door, took down from
the two dogwood forks above it his old, long, single-barrelled gun,
and turning to his wife said, “Git me my coat, old woman; by Gawd, I’m
a-gwine.” The two women were both on their feet in a second. Their faces
were white and their hands were clenched under the sudden stress, their
breath came fast. The older woman was the first to speak.
“What in the worl’ ken you do, Cove Mills, ole an’ puny as you is, an’
got the rheumatiz all the time, too?”
“I ken pint a gun,” said the old man, doggedly, “an’ I’m a-gwine.”
“An’ what in the worl’ is a-goin’ to become of us, an’ that cow got to
runnin’ away so, I’m afeared all the time she’ll git in the mash?” Her
tone was querulous, but it was not positive, and when her husband said
again, “I’m a-gwine,” she said no more, and all the time she was getting
together the few things which Cove would take.
As for Vashti, she seemed suddenly revivified; she moved about with a
new step, swift, supple, silent, her head up, a new light in her face,
and her eyes, as they turned now and then on her father, filled with a
new fire. She did not talk much. “I’ll a-teck care o’ us all,” she said
once; and once again, when her mother gave something like a moan, she
supported her with a word about “the only ones as gives three from one
family.” It was a word in season, for the mother caught the spirit, and
a moment later declared, with a new tone in her voice, that that was
better than Mrs. Stanley, and still they were better off than she, for
they still had two left to help each other, while she had not a soul.
“I’ll teck care o’ us all,” repeated the girl once more.
It was only a few things that Cove Mills took with him that morning,
when he set out in the darkness to overtake the company before they
should break camp--hardly his old game-bag half full; for the equipment
of the boys had stripped the little cabin of everything that could be of
use. He might only have seemed to be going hunting, as he slung down the
path with his old long-barrelled gun in his hand and his game-bag over
his shoulder, and disappeared in the darkness from the eyes of the two
women standing in the cabin door.
The next morning Mrs. Mills paid Mrs. Stanley the first visit she had
paid on that side the branch since the day, three years before, when
Cove and the boys had the row with Little Darby. It might have seemed
accidental, but Mrs. Stanley was the first person in the district to
know that all the Mills men were gone to the army. She went over again,
from time to time, for it was not a period to keep up open hostilities,
and she was younger than Mrs. Stanley and better off; but Vashti never
went, and Mrs. Stanley never asked after her or came.