Produced by Wendy Crockett, Tiffany Vergon, Juliet
Sutherland, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE BATTLE GROUND
By Ellen Glasgow
To
The Beloved Memory of My Mother
CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST
GOLDEN YEARS
I. “De Hine Foot er a He Frawg”
II. At the Full of the Moon
III. The Coming of the Boy
IV. A House with an Open Door
V. The School for Gentlemen
VI. College Days
BOOK SECOND
YOUNG BLOOD
I. The Major's Christmas
II. Betty dreams by the Fire
III. Dan and Betty
IV. Love in a Maze
V. The Major loses his Temper
VI. The Meeting in the Turnpike
VII. If this be Love
VIII. Betty's Unbelief
IX. The Montjoy Blood
X. The Road at Midnight
XI. At Merry Oaks Tavern
XII. The Night of Fear
XIII. Crabbed Age and Callow Youth
XIV. The Hush before the Storm
BOOK THIRD
THE SCHOOL OF WAR
I. How Merry Gentlemen went to War
II. The Day's March
III. The Reign of the Brute
IV. After the Battle
V. The Woman's Part
VI. On the Road to Romney
VII. “I wait my Time”
VIII. The Altar of the War God
IX. The Montjoy Blood again
BOOK FOURTH
THE RETURN OF THE VANQUISHED
I. The Ragged Army
II. A Straggler from the Ranks
III. The Cabin in the Woods
IV. In the Silence of the Guns
V. “The Place Thereof”
VI. The Peaceful Side of War.
VII. The Silent Battle
VIII. The Last Stand
IX. In the Hour of Defeat
X. On the March again
XI. The Return
BOOK FIRST
GOLDEN YEARS
I
“DE HINE FOOT ER A HE FRAWG”
Toward the close of an early summer afternoon, a little girl came running
along the turnpike to where a boy stood wriggling his feet in the dust.
“Old Aunt Ailsey's done come back,” she panted, “an' she's conjured the
tails off Sambo's sheep. I saw 'em hanging on her door!”
The boy received the news with an indifference from which it blankly
rebounded. He buried one bare foot in the soft white sand and withdrew it
with a jerk that powdered the blackberry vines beside the way.
“Where's Virginia?” he asked shortly.
The little girl sat down in the tall grass by the roadside and shook her
red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning
herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her
bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico.
“She can't run a bit,” she declared warmly, peering into the distance of
the long white turnpike. “I'm a long ways ahead of her, and I gave her the
start. Zeke's with her.”
With a grunt the boy promptly descended from his heavy dignity.
“You can't run,” he retorted. “I'd like to see a girl run, anyway.” He
straightened his legs and thrust his hands into his breeches pockets. “You
can't run,” he repeated.
The little girl flashed a clear defiance; from a pair of beaming hazel eyes
she threw him a scornful challenge. “I bet I can beat you,” she stoutly
rejoined. Then as the boy's glance fell upon her hair, her defiance waned.
She put on her sunbonnet and drew it down over her brow. “I reckon I can
run some,” she finished uneasily.
The boy followed her movements with a candid stare. “You can't hide it,” he
taunted; “it shines right through everything. O Lord, ain't I glad my
head's not red!”
At this pharisaical thanksgiving the little girl flushed to the ruffled
brim of her bonnet. Her sensitive lips twitched, and she sat meekly gazing
past the boy at the wall of rough gray stones which skirted a field of
ripening wheat. Over the wheat a light wind blew, fanning the even heads of
the bearded grain and dropping suddenly against the sunny mountains in the
distance. In the nearer pasture, where the long grass was strewn with wild
flowers, red and white cattle were grazing beside a little stream, and the
tinkle of the cow bells drifted faintly across the slanting sunrays. It was
open country, with a peculiar quiet cleanliness about its long white roads
and the genial blues and greens of its meadows.
“Ain't I glad, O Lord!” chanted the boy again.
The little girl stirred impatiently, her gaze fluttering from the
landscape.
“Old Aunt Ailsey's conjured all the tails off Sambo's sheep,” she remarked,
with feminine wile. “I saw 'em hanging on her door.”
“Oh, shucks! she can't conjure!” scoffed the boy. “She's nothing but a free
nigger, anyway--and besides, she's plum crazy--”
“I saw 'em hanging on her door,” steadfastly repeated the little girl. “The
wind blew 'em right out, an' there they were.”
“Well, they wan't Sambo's sheep tails,” retorted the boy, conclusively,
“'cause Sambo's sheep ain't got any tails.”
Brought to bay, the little girl looked doubtfully up and down the turnpike.
“Maybe she conjured 'em _on_ first,” she suggested at last.
“Oh, you're a regular baby, Betty,” exclaimed the boy, in disgust. “You'll
be saying next that she can make rattlesnake's teeth sprout out of the
ground.”
“She's got a mighty funny garden patch,” admitted Betty, still credulous.
Then she jumped up and ran along the road. “Here's Virginia!” she called
sharply, “an' I beat her! I beat her fair!”
A second little girl came panting through the dust, followed by a small
negro boy with a shining black face. “There's a wagon comin' roun' the
curve,” she cried excitedly, “an' it's filled with old Mr. Willis's
servants. He's dead, and they're sold--Dolly's sold, too.”
She was a fragile little creature, coloured like a flower, and her smooth
brown hair hung in silken braids to her sash. The strings of her white
pique bonnet lined with pink were daintily tied under her oval chin; there
was no dust on her bare legs or short white socks.
As she spoke there came the sound of voices singing, and a moment later the
wagon jogged heavily round a tuft of stunted cedars which jutted into the
long curve of the highway. The wheels crunched a loose stone in the road,
and the driver drawled a patient “gee-up” to the horses, as he flicked at
a horse-fly with the end of his long rawhide whip. There was about him an
almost cosmic good nature; he regarded the landscape, the horses and the
rocks in the road with imperturbable ease.
Behind him, in the body of the wagon, the negro women stood chanting the
slave's farewell; and as they neared the children, he looked back and spoke
persuasively. “I'd set down if I was you all,” he said. “You'd feel better.
Thar, now, set down and jolt softly.”
But without turning the women kept up their tremulous chant, bending their
turbaned heads to the imaginary faces upon the roadside. They had left
their audience behind them on the great plantation, but they still sang to
the empty road and courtesied to the cedars upon the way. Excitement
gripped them like a frenzy--and a childish joy in a coming change blended
with a mother's yearning over broken ties.
A bright mulatto led, standing at full height, and her rich notes rolled
like an organ beneath the shrill plaint of her companions. She was large,
deep-bosomed, and comely after her kind, and in her careless gestures there
was something of the fine fervour of the artist. She sang boldly, her full
body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long
throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon her breast.
The others followed her, half artlessly, half in imitation, mingling with
their words grunts of self-approval. A grin ran from face to face as if
thrown by the grotesque flash of a lantern. Only a little black woman
crouching in one corner bowed herself and wept.
The children had fallen back against the stone wall, where they hung
staring.
“Good-by, Dolly!” they called cheerfully, and the woman answered with a
long-drawn, hopeless whine:--
“Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
Meet agin.”
Zeke broke from the group and ran a few steps beside the wagon, shaking the
outstretched hands.
The driver nodded peaceably to him, and cut with a single stroke of his
whip an intricate figure in the sand of the road. “Git up an' come along
with us, sonny,” he said cordially; but Zeke only grinned in reply, and the
children laughed and waved their handkerchiefs from the wall. “Good-by,
Dolly, and Mirandy, and Sukey Sue!” they shouted, while the women, bowing
over the rolling wheels, tossed back a fragment of the song:--
“We hope ter meet you in heaven, whar we'll
Part no mo',
Whar we'll part no mo';
Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
Me--et a--gin.”
“Twel we meet agin,” chirped the little girls, tripping into the chorus.
Then, with a last rumble, the wagon went by, and Zeke came trotting back
and straddled the stone wall, where he sat looking down upon the loose
poppies that fringed the yellowed edge of the wheat.
“Dey's gwine way-way f'om hyer, Marse Champe,” he said dreamily. “Dey's
gwine right spang over dar whar de sun done come f'om.”
“Colonel Minor bought 'em,” Champe explained, sliding from the wall, “and
he bought Dolly dirt cheap--I heard Uncle say so--” With a grin he looked
up at the small black figure perched upon the crumbling stones. “You'd
better look out how you steal any more of my fishing lines, or I'll sell
you,” he threatened.
“Gawd er live! I ain' stole one on 'em sence las' mont',” protested Zeke,
as he turned a somersault into the road, “en dat warn' stealin' 'case hit
warn' wu'th it,” he added, rising to his feet and staring wistfully after
the wagon as it vanished in a sunny cloud of dust.
Over the broad meadows, filled with scattered wild flowers, the sound of
the chant still floated, with a shrill and troubled sweetness, upon the
wind. As he listened the little negro broke into a jubilant refrain,
beating his naked feet in the dust:--
“Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
Me--et a--gin.”
Then he looked slyly up at his young master.
“I 'low dar's one thing you cyarn do, Marse Champe.”
“I bet there isn't,” retorted Champe.
“You kin sell me ter Marse Minor--but Lawd, Lawd, you cyarn mek mammy leave
off whuppin' me. You cyarn do dat widout you 'uz a real ole marster
hese'f.”
“I reckon I can,” said Champe, indignantly. “I'd just like to see her lay
hands on you again. I can make mammy leave off whipping him, can't I,
Betty?”
But Betty, with a toss of her head, took her revenge.
“'Tain't so long since yo' mammy whipped you,” she rejoined. “An' I reckon
'tain't so long since you needed it.”
As she stood there, a spirited little figure, in a patch of faint sunshine,
her hair threw a halo of red gold about her head. When she smiled--and she
smiled now, saucily enough--her eyes had a trick of narrowing until they
became mere beams of light between her lashes. Her eyes would smile, though
her lips were as prim as a preacher's.
Virginia gave a timid pull at Betty's frock. “Champe's goin' home with us,”
she said, “his uncle told him to--You're goin' home with us, ain't you,
Champe?”
“I ain't goin' home,” responded Betty, jerking from Virginia's grasp. She
stood warm yet resolute in the middle of the road, her bonnet swinging in
her hands. “I ain't goin' home,” she repeated.
Turning his back squarely upon her, Champe broke into a whistle of
unconcern. “You'd just better come along,” he called over his shoulder as
he started off. “You'd just better come along, or you'll catch it.”
“I ain't comin',” answered Betty, defiantly, and as they passed away
kicking the dust before them, she swung her bonnet hard, and spoke aloud to
herself. “I ain't comin',” she said stubbornly.
The distance lengthened; the three small figures passed the wheat field,
stopped for an instant to gather green apples that had fallen from a stray
apple tree, and at last slowly dwindled into the white streak of the road.
She was alone on the deserted turnpike.
For a moment she hesitated, caught her breath, and even took three steps on
the homeward way; then turning suddenly she ran rapidly in the opposite
direction. Over the deepening shadows she sped as lightly as a hare.
At the end of a half mile, when her breath came in little pants, she
stopped with a nervous start and looked about her. The loneliness seemed
drawing closer like a mist, and the cry of a whip-poor-will from the little
stream in the meadow sent frightened thrills, like needles, through her
limbs.
Straight ahead the sun was setting in a pale red west, against which the
mountains stood out as if sculptured in stone. On one side swept the
pasture where a few sheep browsed; on the other, at the place where two
roads met, there was a blasted tree that threw its naked shadow across the
turnpike. Beyond the tree and its shadow a well-worn foot-path led to a
small log cabin from which a streak of smoke was rising. Through the open
door the single room within showed ruddy with the blaze of resinous pine.
The little girl daintily picked her way along the foot-path and through a
short garden patch planted in onions and black-eyed peas. Beside a bed of
sweet sage she faltered an instant and hung back. “Aunt Ailsey,” she called
tremulously, “I want to speak to you, Aunt Ailsey.” She stepped upon the
smooth round stone which served for a doorstep and looked into the room.
“It's me, Aunt Ailsey! It's Betty Ambler,” she said.
A slow shuffling began inside the cabin, and an old negro woman hobbled
presently to the daylight and stood peering from under her hollowed palm.
She was palsied with age and blear-eyed with trouble, and time had ironed
all the kink out of the thin gray locks that straggled across her brow. She
peered dimly at the child as one who looks from a great distance.
“I lay dat's one er dese yer ole hoot owls,” she muttered querulously, “en
ef'n 'tis, he des es well be a-hootin' along home, caze I ain' gwine be
pestered wid his pranks. Dar ain' but one kind er somebody es will sass you
at yo' ve'y do,' en dat's a hoot owl es is done loss count er de time er
day--”
“I ain't an owl, Aunt Ailsey,” meekly broke in Betty, “an' I ain't hootin'
at you--”
Aunt Ailsey reached out and touched her hair. “You ain' none er Marse
Peyton's chile,” she said. “I'se done knowed de Amblers sence de fu'st one
er dem wuz riz, en dar ain' never been a'er Ambler wid a carrot haid--”
The red ran from Betty's curls into her face, but she smiled politely as
she followed Aunt Ailsey into the cabin and sat down in a split-bottomed
chair upon the hearth. The walls were formed of rough, unpolished logs, and
upon them, as against an unfinished background, the firelight threw reddish
shadows of the old woman and the child. Overhead, from the uncovered
rafters, hung several tattered sheepskins, and around the great fireplace
there was a fringe of dead snakes and lizards, long since as dry as dust.
Under the blazing logs, which filled the hut with an almost unbearable
heat, an ashcake was buried beneath a little gravelike mound of ashes.
Aunt Ailsey took up a corncob pipe from the stones and fell to smoking. She
sank at once into a senile reverie, muttering beneath her breath with
short, meaningless grunts. Warm as the summer evening was, she shivered
before the glowing logs.
For a time the child sat patiently watching the embers; then she leaned
forward and touched the old woman's knee. “Aunt Ailsey, O Aunt Ailsey!”
Aunt Ailsey stirred wearily and crossed her swollen feet upon the hearth.
“Dar ain' nuttin' but a hoot owl dat'll sass you ter yo' face,” she
muttered, and, as she drew her pipe from her mouth, the gray smoke circled
about her head.
The child edged nearer. “I want to speak to you, Aunt Ailsey,” she said.
She seized the withered hand and held it close in her own rosy ones. “I
want you--O Aunt Ailsey, listen! I want you to conjure my hair coal black.”
She finished with a gasp, and with parted lips sat waiting. “Coal black,
Aunt Ailsey!” she cried again.
A sudden excitement awoke in the old woman's face; her hands shook and she
leaned nearer. “Hi! who dat done tole you I could conjure, honey?” she
demanded.
“Oh, you can, I know you can. You conjured back Sukey's lover from Eliza
Lou, and you conjured all the pains out of Uncle Shadrach's leg.” She fell
on her knees and laid her head in the old woman's lap. “Conjure quick and I
won't holler,” she said.
“Gawd in heaven!” exclaimed Aunt Ailsey. Her dim old eyes brightened as she
gently stroked the child's brow with her palsied fingers. “Dis yer ain' no
way ter conjure, honey,” she whispered. “You des wait twel de full er de
moon, w'en de devil walks de big road.” She was wandering again after the
fancies of dotage, but Betty threw herself upon her. “Oh, change it! change
it!” cried the child. “Beg the devil to come and change it quick.”
Brought back to herself, Aunt Ailsey grunted and knocked the ashes from her
pipe. “I ain' gwine ter ax no favors er de devil,” she replied sternly.
“You des let de devil alont en he'll let you alont. I'se done been young,
en I'se now ole, en I ain' never seed de devil stick his mouf in anybody's
bizness 'fo' he's axed.”
She bent over and raked the ashes from her cake with a lightwood splinter.
“Dis yer's gwine tase moughty flat-footed,” she grumbled as she did so.
“O Aunt Ailsey,” wailed Betty in despair. The tears shone in her eyes and
rolled slowly down her cheeks.
“Dar now,” said Aunt Ailsey, soothingly, “you des set right still en wait
twel ter-night at de full er de moon.” She got up and took down one of the
crumbling skins from the chimney-piece. “Ef'n de hine foot er a he frawg
cyarn tu'n yo' hyar decent,” she said, “dar ain' nuttin' de Lawd's done
made es'll do hit. You des wrop er hank er yo' hyar roun' de hine foot,
honey, en' w'en de night time done come, you teck'n hide it unner a rock in
de big road. W'en de devil goes a-cotin' at de full er de moon--en he been
cotin' right stiddy roun' dese yer parts--he gwine tase dat ar frawg foot a
mile off.”
“A mile off?” repeated the child, stretching out her hands.
“Yes, Lawd, he gwine tase dat ar frawg foot a mile off, en w'en he tase
hit, he gwine begin ter sniff en ter snuff. He gwine sniff en he gwine
snuff, en he gwine sniff en he gwine snuff twel he run right spang agin de
rock in de middle er de road. Den he gwine paw en paw twel he root de rock
clean up.”
The little girl looked up eagerly.
“An' my hair, Aunt Ailsey?”
“De devil he gwine teck cyar er yo' hyar, honey. W'en he come a-sniffin' en
a-snuffin' roun' de rock in de big road, he gwine spit out flame en smoke
en yo' hyar hit's gwine ter ketch en hit's gwine ter bu'n right black. Fo'
de sun up yo' haid's gwine ter be es black es a crow's foot.”
The child dried her tears and sprang up. She tied the frog's skin tightly
in her handkerchief and started toward the door; then she hesitated and
looked back. “Were you alive at the flood, Aunt Ailsey?” she politely
inquired.
“Des es live es I is now, honey.”
“Then you must have seen Noah and the ark and all the animals?”
“Des es plain es I see you. Marse Noah? Why, I'se done wash en i'on Marse
Noah's shuts twel I 'uz right stiff in de j'ints. He ain' never let nobody
flute his frills fur 'im 'cep'n' me. Lawd, Lawd, Marse Peyton's shuts warn'
nuttin ter Marse Noah's!”
Betty's eyes grew big. “I reckon you're mighty old, Aunt Ailsey--'most as
old as God, ain't you?”
Aunt Ailsey pondered the question. “I ain' sayin' dat, honey,” she modestly
replied.
“Then you're certainly as old as the devil--you must be,” hopefully
suggested the little girl.
The old woman wavered. “Well, de devil, he ain' never let on his age,” she
said at last; “but w'en I fust lay eyes on 'im, he warn' no mo'n a brat.”
Standing upon the threshold for an instant, the child reverently regarded
her. Then, turning her back upon the fireplace and the bent old figure, she
ran out into the twilight.
II
AT THE FULL OF THE MOON
By the light of the big moon hanging like a lantern in the topmost pine
upon a distant mountain, the child sped swiftly along the turnpike.
It was a still, clear evening, and on the summits of the eastern hills a
fringe of ragged firs stood out illuminated against the sky. In the warm
June weather the whole land was fragrant from the flower of the wild grape.
When she had gone but a little way, the noise of wheels reached her
suddenly, and she shrank into the shadow beside the wall. A cloud of dust
chased toward her as the wheels came steadily on. They were evidently
ancient, for they turned with a protesting creak which was heard long
before the high, old-fashioned coach they carried swung into view--long
indeed before the driver's whip cracked in the air.
As the coach neared the child, she stepped boldly out into the road--it was
only Major Lightfoot, the owner of the next plantation, returning, belated,
from the town.
“W'at you doin' dar, chile?” demanded a stern voice from the box, and, at
the words, the Major's head was thrust through the open window, and his
long white hair waved in the breeze.
“Is that you, Betty?” he asked, in surprise. “Why, I thought it was the
duty of that nephew of mine to see you home.”
“I wouldn't let him,” replied the child. “I don't like boys, sir.”
“You don't, eh?” chuckled the Major. “Well, there's time enough for that, I
suppose. You can make up to them ten years hence,--and you'll be glad
enough to do it then, I warrant you,--but are you all alone, young lady?”
As Betty nodded, he opened the door and stepped gingerly down. “I can't
turn the horses' heads, poor things,” he explained; “but if you will allow
me, I shall have the pleasure of escorting you on foot.”
With his hat in his hand, he smiled down upon the little girl, his face
shining warm and red above his pointed collar and broad black stock. He was
very tall and spare, and his eyebrows, which hung thick and dark above his
Roman nose, gave him an odd resemblance to a bird of prey. The smile
flashed like an artificial light across his austere features.
“Since my arm is too high for you,” he said, “will you have my hand?--Yes,
you may drive on, Big Abel,” to the driver, “and remember to take out those
bulbs of Spanish lilies for your mistress. You will find them under the
seat.”
The whip cracked again above the fat old roans, and with a great creak the
coach rolled on its way.
“I--I--if you please, I'd rather you wouldn't,” stammered the child.
The Major chuckled again, still holding out his hand. Had she been eighty
instead of eight, the gesture could not have expressed more deference. “So
you don't like old men any better than boys!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, sir, I do--heaps,” said Betty. She transferred the frog's foot to
her left hand, and gave him her right one. “When I marry, I'm going to
marry a very old gentleman--as old as you,” she added flatteringly.
“You honour me,” returned the Major, with a bow; “but there's nothing like
youth, my dear, nothing like youth.” He ended sadly, for he had been a gay
young blood in his time, and the enchantment of his wild oats had increased
as he passed further from the sowing of them. He had lived to regret both
the loss of his gayety and the languor of his blood, and, as he drifted
further from the middle years, he had at last yielded to tranquillity with
a sigh. In his day he had matched any man in Virginia at cards or wine or
women--to say nothing of horseflesh; now his white hairs had brought him
but a fond, pale memory of his misdeeds and the boast that he knew his
world--that he knew all his world, indeed, except his wife.
“Ah, there's nothing like youth!” he sighed over to himself, and the child
looked up and laughed.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“You will know some day,” replied the Major. He drew himself erect in his
tight black broadcloth, and thrust out his chin between the high points of
his collar. His long white hair, falling beneath his hat, framed his ruddy
face in silver. “There are the lights of Uplands,” he said suddenly, with a
wave of his hand.
Betty quickened her pace to his, and they went on in silence. Through the
thick grove that ended at the roadside she saw the windows of her home
flaming amid the darkness. Farther away there were the small lights of the
negro cabins in the “quarters,” and a great one from the barn door where
the field hands were strumming upon their banjos.
“I reckon supper's ready,” she remarked, walking faster. “Yonder comes
Peter, from the kitchen with the waffles.”
They entered an iron gate that opened from the road, and went up a lane of
lilac bushes to the long stuccoed house, set with detached wings in a grove
of maples. “Why, there's papa looking for me,” cried the child, as a man's
figure darkened the square of light from the hall and came between the
Doric columns of the portico down into the drive.
“You won't have to search far, Governor,” called the Major, in his ringing
voice, and, as the other came up to him, he stopped to shake hands. “Miss
Betty has given me the pleasure of a stroll with her.”
“Ah, it was like you, Major,” returned the other, heartily. “I'm afraid it
isn't good for your gout, though.”
He was a small, soldierly-looking man, with a clean-shaven, classic face,
and thick, brown hair, slightly streaked with gray. Beside the Major's
gaunt figure he appeared singularly boyish, though he held himself severely
to the number of his inches, and even added, by means of a simplicity
almost august, a full cubit to his stature. Ten years before he had been
governor of his state, and to his friends and neighbours the empty honour,
at least, was still his own.
“Pooh! pooh!” the older man protested airily, “the gout's like a woman, my
dear sir--if you begin to humour it, you'll get no rest. If you deny
yourself a half bottle of port, the other half will soon follow. No, no, I
say--put a bold foot on the matter. Don't give up a good thing for the sake
of a bad one, sir. I remember my grandfather in England telling me that at
his first twinge of gout he took a glass of sherry, and at the second he
took two. 'What! would you have my toe become my master?' he roared to the
doctor. 'I wouldn't give in if it were my whole confounded foot, sir!' Oh,
those were ripe days, Governor!”
“A little overripe for the toe, I fear, Major.”
“Well, well, we're sober enough now, sir, sober enough and to spare. Even
the races are dull things. I've just been in to have a look at that new
mare Tom Bickels is putting on the track, and bless my soul, she can't hold
a candle to the Brown Bess I ran twenty years ago--you don't remember Brown
Bess, eh, Governor?”
“Why, to be sure,” said the Governor. “I can see her as if it were
yesterday,--and a beauty she was, too,--but come in to supper with us, my
dear Major; we were just sitting down. No, I shan't take an excuse--come
in, sir, come in.”
“No, no, thank you,” returned the Major. “Molly's waiting, and Molly
doesn't like to wait, you know. I got dinner at Merry Oaks tavern by the
way, and a mighty bad one, too, but the worst thing about it was that they
actually had the impudence to put me at the table with an abolitionist.
Why, I'd as soon eat with a darkey, sir, and so I told him, so I told him!”
The Governor laughed, his fine, brown eyes twinkling in the gloom. “You
were always a man of your word,” he said; “so I must tell Julia to mend her
views before she asks you to dine. She has just had me draw up my will and
free the servants. There's no withstanding Julia, you know, Major.”
“You have an angel,” declared the other, “and she gets lovelier every day;
my regards to her,--and to her aunts, sir. Ah, good night, good night,” and
with a last cordial gesture he started rapidly upon his homeward way.
Betty caught the Governor's hand and went with him into the house. As they
entered the hall, Uncle Shadrach, the head butler, looked out to reprimand
her. “Ef'n anybody 'cep'n Marse Peyton had cotch you, you'd er des been
lammed,” he grumbled. “An' papa was real mad!” called Virginia from the
table.
“That's jest a story!” cried Betty. Still clinging to her father's hand,
she entered the dining room; “that's jest a story, papa,” she repeated.
“No, I'm not angry,” laughed the Governor. “There, my dear, for heaven's
sake don't strangle me. Your mother's the one for you to hang on. Can't you
see what a rage she's in?”
“My dear Mr. Ambler,” remonstrated his wife, looking over the high old
silver service. She was very frail and gentle, and her voice was hardly
more than a clear whisper. “No, no, Betty, you must go up and wash your
face first,” she added decisively.
The Governor sat down and unfolded his napkin, beaming hospitality upon his
food and his family. He surveyed his wife, her two maiden aunts and his own
elder brother with the ineffable good humour he bestowed upon the majestic
home-cured ham fresh from a bath of Madeira.
“I am glad to see you looking so well, my dear,” he remarked to his wife,
with a courtliness in which there was less polish than personality. “Ah,
Miss Lydia, I know whom to thank for this,” he added, taking up a pale tea
rosebud from his plate, and bowing to one of the two old ladies seated
beside his wife. “Have you noticed, Julia, that even the roses have become
more plentiful since your aunts did us the honour to come to us?”
“I am sure the garden ought to be grateful to Aunt Lydia,” said his wife,
with a pleased smile, “and the quinces to Aunt Pussy,” she added quickly,
“for they were never preserved so well before.”
The two old ladies blushed and cast down their eyes, as they did every
evening at the same kindly by-play. “You know I am very glad to be of use,
my dear Julia,” returned Miss Pussy, with conscious virtue. Miss Lydia, who
was tall and delicate and bent with the weight of potential sanctity, shook
her silvery head and folded her exquisite old hands beneath the ruffles of
her muslin under-sleeves. She wore her hair in shining folds beneath her
thread-lace cap, and her soft brown eyes still threw a youthful lustre over
the faded pallor of her face.
“Pussy has always had a wonderful talent for preserving,” she murmured
plaintively. “It makes me regret my own uselessness.”
“Uselessness!” warmly protested the Governor. “My dear Miss Lydia, your
mere existence is a blessing to mankind. A lovely woman is never useless,
eh, Brother Bill?”
Mr. Bill, a stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words, merely
bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a theory in
the family--a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard by--that Mr.
Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly thirty years
before he had made a series of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia
Ambler--and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in
the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr. Bill to the position of a
perpetual mourner.
Now, as he shook his head and helped himself to chicken, Miss Lydia sighed
in sympathy.
“I am afraid Mr. Bill must find us very flippant,” she offered as a gentle
reproof to the Governor.
Mr. Bill started and cast a frightened glance across the table. Thirty
years are not as a day, and, after all, his emotion had been hardly more
than he would have felt for a prize perch that had wriggled from his line
into the stream. The perch, indeed, would have represented more
appropriately the passion of his life--though a lukewarm lover, he was an
ardent angler.
“Ah, Brother Bill understands us,” cheerfully interposed the Governor. His
keen eyes had noted Mr. Bill's alarm as they noted the emptiness of Miss
Pussy's cup. “By the way, Julia,” he went on with a change of the subject,
“Major Lightfoot found Betty in the road and brought her home. The little
rogue had run away.”
Mrs. Ambler filled Miss Pussy's cup and pressed Mr. Bill to take a slice of
Sally Lunn. “The Major is so broken that it saddens me,” she said, when
these offices of hostess were accomplished. “He has never been himself
since his daughter ran away, and that was--dear me, why that was twelve
years ago next Christmas. It was on Christmas Eve, you remember, he came to
tell us. The house was dressed in evergreens, and Uncle Patrick was making
punch.”
“Poor Patrick was a hard drinker,” sighed Miss Lydia; “but he was a citizen
of the world, my dear.”
“Yes, yes, I perfectly recall the evening,” said the Governor,
thoughtfully. “The young people were just forming for a reel and you and I
were of them, my dear,--it was the year, I remember, that the mistletoe was
brought home in a cart,--when the door opened and in came the Major. 'Jane
has run away with that dirty scamp Montjoy,' he said, and was out again and
on his horse before we caught the words. He rode like a madman that night.
I can see him now, splashing through the mud with Big Abel after him.”
Betty came running in with smiling eyes, and fluttered into her seat. “I
got here before the waffles,” she cried. “Mammy said I wouldn't. Uncle
Shadrach, I got here before you!”
“Dat's so, honey,” responded Uncle Shadrach from behind the Governor's
chair. He was so like his master--commanding port, elaborate shirt-front,
and high white stock--that the Major, in a moment of merry-making, had once
dubbed him “the Governor's silhouette.”
“Say your grace, dear,” remonstrated Miss Lydia, as the child shook out her
napkin. “It's always proper to offer thanks standing, you know. I remember
your great-grandmother telling me that once when she dined at the White
House, when her father was in Congress, the President forgot to say grace,
and made them all get up again after they were seated. Now, for what are we
about--”
“Oh, papa thanked for me,” cried Betty. “Didn't you, papa?”
The Governor smiled; but catching his wife's eyes, he quickly forced his
benign features into a frowning mask.
“Do as your aunt tells you, Betty,” said Mrs. Ambler, and Betty got up and
said grace, while Virginia took the brownest waffle. When the thanksgiving
was ended, she turned indignantly upon her sister. “That was just a sly,
mean trick!” she cried in a flash of temper. “You saw my eye on that
waffle!”
“My dear, my dear,” murmured Miss Lydia.
“She's des an out'n out fire bran', dat's w'at she is,” said Uncle
Shadrach.
“Well, the Lord oughtn't to have let her take it just as I was thanking Him
for it!” sobbed Betty, and she burst into tears and left the table,
upsetting Mr. Bill's coffee cup as she went by.
The Governor looked gravely after her. “I'm afraid the child is really
getting spoiled, Julia,” he mildly suggested.
“She's getting a--a vixenish,” declared Mr. Bill, mopping his expansive
white waistcoat.
“You des better lemme go atter a twig er willow, Marse Peyton,” muttered
Uncle Shadrach in the Governor's ear.
“Hold your tongue, Shadrach,” retorted the Governor, which was the harshest
command he was ever known to give his servants.
Virginia ate her waffle and said nothing. When she went upstairs a little
later, she carried a pitcher of buttermilk for Betty's face.
“It isn't usual for a young lady to have freckles, Aunt Lydia says,” she
remarked, “and you must rub this right on and not wash it off till
morning--and, after you've rubbed it well in, you must get down on your
knees and ask God to mend your temper.”
Betty was lying in her little trundle bed, while Petunia, her small black
maid, pulled off her stockings, but she got up obediently and laved her
face in buttermilk. “I don't reckon there's any use about the other,” she
said. “I believe the Lord's jest leavin' me in sin as a warnin' to you and
Petunia,” and she got into her trundle bed and waited for the lights to go
out, and for the watchful Virginia to fall asleep.
She was still waiting when the door softly opened and her mother came in, a
lighted candle in her hand, the pale flame shining through her profile as
through delicate porcelain, and illumining her worn and fragile figure. She
moved with a slow step, as if her white limbs were a burden, and her head,
with its smoothly parted bright brown hair, bent like a lily that has begun
to fade.
She sat down upon the bedside and laid her hand on the child's forehead.
“Poor little firebrand,” she said gently. “How the world will hurt you!”
Then she knelt down and prayed beside her, and went out again with the
white light streaming upon her bosom. An hour later Betty heard her soft,
slow step on the gravelled drive and knew that she was starting on a
ministering errand to the quarters. Of all the souls on the great
plantation, the mistress alone had never rested from her labours.
The child tossed restlessly, beat her pillow, and fell back to wait more
patiently. At last the yellow strip under the door grew dark, and from the
other trundle bed there came a muffled breathing. With a sigh, Betty sat up
and listened; then she drew the frog's skin from beneath her pillow and
crept on bare feet to the door. It was black there, and black all down the
wide, old staircase. The great hall below was like a cavern underground.
Trembling when a board creaked under her, she cautiously felt her way with
her hands on the balustrade. The front door was fastened with an iron chain
that rattled as she touched it, so she stole into the dining room, unbarred
one of the long windows, and slipped noiselessly out. It was almost like
sliding into sunshine, the moon was so large and bright.
From the wide stone portico, the great white columns, looking grim and
ghostly, went upward to the roof, and beyond the steps the gravelled drive
shone hard as silver. As the child went between the lilac bushes, the
moving shadows crawled under her bare feet like living things.
At the foot of the drive ran the big road, and when she came out upon it
her trailing gown caught in a fallen branch, and she fell on her face.
Picking herself up again, she sat on a loosened rock and looked about her.
The strong night wind blew on her flesh, and she shivered in the moonlight,
which felt cold and brazen. Before her stretched the turnpike, darkened by
shadows that bore no likeness to the objects from which they borrowed
shape. Far as eye could see, they stirred ceaselessly back and forth like
an encamped army of grotesques.
She got up from the rock and slipped the frog's skin into the earth beneath
it. As she settled it in place, her pulses gave a startled leap, and she
stood terror-stricken beside the stone. A thud of footsteps was coming
along the road.
For an instant she trembled in silence; then her sturdy little heart took
courage, and she held up her hand.
“If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Devil, I'm goin' in,” she cried.
From the shadows a voice laughed at her, and a boy came forward into the
light--a half-starved boy, with a white, pinched face and a dusty bundle
swinging from the stick upon his shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped out.
Betty gave back a defiant stare. She might have been a tiny ghost in the
moonlight, with her trailing gown and her flaming curls.
“I live here,” she answered simply. “Where do you live?”
“Nowhere.” He looked her over with a laugh.
“Nowhere?”
“I did live somewhere, but I ran away a week ago.”
“Did they beat you? Old Rainy-day Jones beat one of his servants and he ran
away.”
“There wasn't anybody,” said the boy. “My mother died, and my father went
off--I hope he'll stay off. I hate him!”
He sent the words out so sharply that Betty's lids flinched.
“Why did you come by here?” she questioned. “Are you looking for the devil,
too?”
The boy laughed again. “I am looking for my grandfather. He lives somewhere
on this road, at a place named Chericoke. It has a lot of elms in the yard;
I'll know it by that.”
Betty caught his arm and drew him nearer. “Why, that's where Champe lives!”
she cried. “I don't like Champe much, do you?”
“I never saw him,” replied the boy; “but I don't like him--”
“He's mighty good,” said Betty, honestly; then, as she looked at the boy
again, she caught her breath quickly. “You do look terribly hungry,” she
added.
“I haven't had anything since--since yesterday.”
The little girl thoughtfully tapped her toes on the road. “There's a
currant pie in the safe,” she said. “I saw Uncle Shadrach put it there. Are
you fond of currant pie?--then you just wait!”
She ran up the carriage way to the dining-room window, and the boy sat down
on the rock and buried his face in his hands. His feet were set stubbornly
in the road, and the bundle lay beside them. He was dumb, yet disdainful,
like a high-bred dog that has been beaten and turned adrift.
As the returning patter of Betty's feet sounded in the drive, he looked up
and held out his hands. When she gave him the pie, he ate almost wolfishly,
licking the crumbs from his fingers, and even picking up a bit of crust
that had fallen to the ground.
“I'm sorry there isn't any more,” said the little girl. It had seemed a
very large pie when she took it from the safe.
The boy rose, shook himself, and swung his bundle across his arm.
“Will you tell me the way?” he asked, and she gave him a few childish
directions. “You go past the wheat field an' past the maple spring, an' at
the dead tree by Aunt Ailsey's cabin you turn into the road with the
chestnuts. Then you just keep on till you get there--an' if you don't ever
get there, come back to breakfast.”
The boy had started off, but as she ended, he turned and lifted his hat.
“I am very much obliged to you,” he said, with a quaint little bow; and
Betty bobbed a courtesy in her nightgown before she fled back into the
house.
III
THE COMING OF THE BOY
The boy trudged on bravely, his stick sounding the road. Sharp pains ran
through his feet where his shoes had worn away, and his head was swimming
like a top. The only pleasant fact of which he had consciousness was that
the taste of the currants still lingered in his mouth.
When he reached the maple spring, he swung himself over the stone wall and
knelt down for a drink, dipping the water in his hand. The spring was low
and damp and fragrant with the breath of mint which grew in patches in the
little stream. Overhead a wild grapevine was festooned, and he plucked a
leaf and bent it into a cup from which he drank. Then he climbed the wall
again and went on his way.
He was wondering if his mother had ever walked along this road on so
brilliant a night. There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told
him--not a shrub of sassafras or sumach that she had not carried in her
thoughts. The clump of cedars, the wild cherry, flowering in the spring
like snow, the blasted oak that stood where the branch roads met, the
perfume of the grape blossoms on the wall--these were as familiar to him as
the streets of the little crowded town in which he had lived. It was as if
nature had stood still here for twelve long summers, or as if he were
walking, ghostlike, amid the ever present memories of his mother's heart.
His mother! He drew his sleeve across his eyes and went on more slowly. She
was beside him on the road, and he saw her clearly, as he had seen her
every day until last year--a bright, dark woman, with slender, blue-veined
hands and merry eyes that all her tears had not saddened. He saw her in a
long, black dress, with upraised arm, putting back a crepe veil from her
merry eyes, and smiling as his father struck her. She had always smiled
when she was hurt--even when the blow was heavier than usual, and the blood
gushed from her temple, she had fallen with a smile. And when, at last, he
had seen her lying in her coffin with her baby under her clasped hands,
that same smile had been fixed upon her face, which had the brightness and
the chill repose of marble.
Of all that she had thrown away in her foolish marriage, she had retained
one thing only--her pride. To the end she had faced her fate with all the
insolence with which she faced her husband. And yet--“the Lightfoots were
never proud, my son,” she used to say; “they have no false pride, but they
know their place, and in England, between you and me, they were more
important than the Washingtons. Not that the General wasn't a great man,
dear, he was a very great soldier, of course--and in his youth, you know,
he was an admirer of your Great-great-aunt Emmeline. But she--why, she was
the beauty and belle of two continents--there's an ottoman at home covered
with a piece of her wedding dress.”
And the house? Was the house still as she had left it on that Christmas
Eve? “A simple gentleman's home, my child--not so imposing as Uplands, with
its pillars reaching to the roof, but older, oh, much older, and built of
brick that was brought all the way from England, and over the fireplace in
the panelled parlour you will find the Lightfoot arms.
“It was in that parlour, dear, that grandmamma danced a minuet with General
Lafayette; it looks out, you know, upon a white thorn planted by the
General himself, and one of the windows has not been opened for fifty
years, because the spray of English ivy your Great-aunt Emmeline set out
with her own hands has grown across the sash. Now the window is quite dark
with leaves, though you can still read the words Aunt Emmeline cut with her
diamond ring in one of the tiny panes, when young Harry Fitzhugh came in
upon her just as she had written a refusal to an English earl. She was
sitting in the window seat with the letter in her hand, and, when your
Great-uncle Harry--she afterwards married him, you know--fell on his knees
and cried out that others might offer her fame and wealth, but that he had
nothing except love, she turned, with a smile, and wrote upon the pane
'Love is best.' You can still see the words, very faint against the ivy
that she planted on her wedding day--”
Oh, yes, he knew it all--Great-aunt Emmeline was but the abiding presence
of the place. He knew the lawn with its grove of elms that overtopped the
peaked roof, the hall, with its shining floor and detached staircase that
crooked itself in the centre where the tall clock stood, and, best of all,
the white panels of the parlour where hung the portrait of that same
fascinating great-aunt, painted, in amber brocade, as Venus with the apple
in her hand.
And his grandmother, herself, in her stiff black silk, with a square of
lace turned back from her thin throat and a fluted cap above her corkscrew
curls--her daguerreotype, taken in all her pride and her precision, was
tied up in the bundle swinging on his arm.
He passed Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and turned into the road with the chestnuts.
A mile farther he came suddenly upon the house, standing amid the grove of
elms, dwarfed by the giant trees that arched above it. A dog's bark sounded
snappily from a kennel, but he paid no heed. He went up the broad white
walk, climbed the steps to the square front porch, and lifted the great
brass knocker. When he let it fall, the sound echoed through the shuttered
house.
The Major, who was sitting in his library with a volume of Mr. Addison open
before him and a decanter of Burgundy at his right hand, heard the knock,
and started to his feet. “Something's gone wrong at Uplands,” he said
aloud; “there's an illness--or the brandy is out.” He closed the book,
pushed aside the bedroom candle which he had been about to light, and went
out into the hall. As he unbarred the door and flung it open, he began at
once:--
“I hope there's no ill news,” he exclaimed.
The boy came into the hall, where he stood blinking from the glare of the
lamplight. His head whirled, and he reached out to steady himself against
the door. Then he carefully laid down his bundle and looked up with his
mother's smile.
“You're my grandfather, and I'm very hungry,” he said.
The Major caught the child's shoulders and drew him, almost roughly, under
the light. As he towered there above him, he gulped down something in his
throat, and his wide nostrils twitched.
“So you're poor Jane's boy?” he said at last.
The boy nodded. He felt suddenly afraid of the spare old man with his long
Roman nose and his fierce black eyebrows. A mist gathered before his eyes
and the lamp shone like a great moon in a cloudy circle.
The Major looked at the bundle on the floor, and again he swallowed. Then
he stooped and picked up the thing and turned away.
“Come in, sir, come in,” he said in a knotty voice. “You are at home.”
The boy followed him, and they passed the panelled parlour, from which he
caught a glimpse of the painting of Great-aunt Emmeline, and went into the
dining room, where his grandfather pulled out a chair and bade him to be
seated. As the old man opened the huge mahogany sideboard and brought out a
shoulder of cold lamb and a plate of bread and butter, he questioned him
with a quaint courtesy about his life in town and the details of his
journey. “Why, bless my soul, you've walked two hundred miles,” he cried,
stopping on his way from the pantry, with the ham held out. “And no money!
Why, bless my soul!”
“I had fifty cents,” said the boy, “that was left from my steamboat fare,
you know.”
The Major put the ham on the table and attacked it grimly with the
carving-knife.
“Fifty cents,” he whistled, and then, “you begged, I reckon?”
The boy flushed. “I asked for bread,” he replied, stung to the defensive.
“They always gave me bread and sometimes meat, and they let me sleep in the
barns where the straw was, and once a woman took me into her house and
offered me money, but I would not take it. I--I think I'd like to send her
a present, if you please, sir.”