began to exchange jokes with the Governor and the rector. Mr. Bill and the
doctor, neither of whom could have told a story for his life, listened with
a kind of heavy gravity; and the young men, as they rattled off a college
tale or two, kept their eyes on Betty and Virginia.
Betty, leaning back in her high mahogany chair, and now and then putting in
a word with the bright effusion which belonged to her, gave ear half to the
Major's anecdotes, and half to a jest of Jack Morson's. Before her branched
a silver candelabrum, and beyond it, with the light in his face, Dan was
sitting. She watched him with a frank curiosity from eyes, where the smile,
with which she had answered the Major, still lingered in a gleam of
merriment. There was a puzzled wonder in her mind that Dan--the Dan of her
childhood--should have become for her, of a sudden, but a strong,
black-haired stranger from whom she shrank with a swift timidity. She
looked at Champe's high blue-veined forehead and curling brown hair; he was
still the big boy she had played with; but when she went back to Dan, the
wonder returned with a kind of irritation, and she felt that she should
like to shake him and have it out between them as she used to do before he
went away. What was the meaning of it? Where the difference? As he sat
across from her, with his head thrown back and his eyes dark with laughter,
her look questioned him half humorously, half in alarm. From his broad brow
to his strong hand, playing idly with a little heap of bread crumbs, she
knew that she was conscious of his presence--with a consciousness that had
quickened into a living thing.
To Dan, himself, her gaze brought but the knowledge that her smile was upon
him, and he met her question with lifted eyebrows and perplexed amusement.
What he had once called “the Betty look” was in her face,--so kind a look,
so earnest yet so humorous, with a sweet sane humour at her own
bewilderment, that it held his eyes an instant before they plunged back to
Virginia--an instant only, but long enough for him to feel the thrill of an
impulse which he did not understand. Dear little Betty, he thought,
tenderly, and went back to her sister.
The next moment he was telling himself that “the girl was a tearing
beauty.” He liked that modest droop of her head and those bashful soft
eyes, as if, by George, as if she were really afraid of him. Or was it
Champe or Jack Morson that she bent her bewitching glance upon? Well,
Champe, or Morson, or himself, in a week they would all be over head and
ears in love with her, and let him win who might. It was mere folly, of
course, to break one's heart over a girl, and there was no chance of that
so long as he had his horses and the bull pups to fall back upon; but she
was deucedly pretty, and if he ever came to the old house to live it would
be rather jolly to have her about. He would be twenty-one by this time next
year, and a man of twenty-one was old enough to settle down a bit. In the
meantime he laughed and met Virginia's eye, and they both blushed and
looked away quickly.
But when they left the dining room an hour later, it was not Virginia that
Dan sought. He had learned the duties of hospitality in the Major's school,
and so he sat down beside Miss Lydia and asked her about her window garden,
while Jack Morson made desperate love to his beautiful neighbour. Once,
indeed, he drew Betty aside for an instant, but it was only to whisper:
“Look here, you'll be real nice to Diggs, won't you? He's bashful, you
know, and besides he's awfully poor, and works like the devil. You make him
enjoy his holidays, and I--well, yes, I'll let that fox get away next week,
I declare I will.”
“All right,” agreed Betty, “it's a bargain. Mr. Diggs shall have a merry
Christmas, and the fox shall have his life. You'll keep faith with me?”
“Sworn,” said Dan, and he went back to Miss Lydia, while Betty danced a
reel with young Diggs, who fell in love with her before he was an hour
older. The terms cost him his heart, perhaps, but there was a life at
stake, and Betty, who had not a touch of the coquette in her nature, would
have flirted open-eyed with the rector could she have saved a robin from
the shot. As for Diggs, he might have been a family portrait or a Christmas
garland for all the sentiment she gave him.
When she went upstairs some hours later to put on her wraps, she had
forgotten, indeed, that Diggs or his emotion was in existence. She tied on
her blue hood with the swan's-down, and noticed, as she did so, that the
white rose was gone from her hair. “I hope I lost it after supper,” she
thought rather wistfully, for it was becoming; and then she slipped into
her long cloak and started down again. It was not until she reached the
bend in the staircase, where the tall clock stood, that she looked over the
balustrade and saw Dan in the hall below with the white rose in his hand.
She had come so softly that he had not heard her step. The light from the
candelabra was full upon him, and she saw the half-tender, half-quizzical
look in his face. For an instant he held the white rose beneath his eyes,
then he carefully folded it in his handkerchief and hid it in the pocket of
his coat. As he did so, he gave a queer little laugh and went quickly back
into the panelled parlour, while Betty glowed like a flower in the darkened
bend of the staircase.
When they called her and she came down the bright colour was still in her
face, and her eyes were shining happily under the swan's-down border of her
hood. “This little lady isn't afraid of the cold,” said the Major, as he
pinched her cheeks. “Why, she's as warm as a toast, and, bless my soul, if
I were thirty years younger, I'd ride twenty miles tonight to catch a
glimpse of her in that bonny blue hood. Ah, in my day, men were men, sir.”
Dan, who had come back from escorting Miss Lydia to the carriage, laughed
and held out his arms.
“Let me carry you, Betty; I'll show grandpa that there's still a man
alive.”
“No, sir, no,” said Betty, as she stood on tiptoe and held her cheek to the
Major. “You haven't a chance when your grandfather's by. There, I'll let
you carry the sleeping draught for Aunt Pussy; but my flounces, no, never!”
and she ran past him and slipped into the carriage beside Mrs. Ambler and
Miss Lydia.
In a moment Virginia came out under an umbrella that was held by Jack
Morson, and the carriage rolled slowly along the drive, while the young men
stood, bareheaded, in the falling snow.
“Keep a brave heart, Morson,” said Champe, with a laugh, as he ran back
into the house, where the Major waited to bar the door, “remember, you've
known her but three hours, and stand it like a man. Well I'm off to bed,”
and he lighted his candle and, with a gay “good night,” went whistling up
the stair.
In Dan's bedroom, where he had crowded for the holidays, he found his
cousin, upon the hearth-rug, looking abstractedly into the flames.
As Champe entered he turned, with the poker in his hand, and spoke out of
the fulness of his heart:--
“She's a beauty, I declare she is.”
Champe broke short his whistling, and threw off his coat.
“Well, I dare say she was fifty years ago,” he rejoined gravely.
“Oh, don't be an utter ass; you know I mean Virginia.”
“My dear boy, I had supposed Miss Lydia to be the object of your
attentions. You mustn't be a Don Juan, you know, you really mustn't. Spare
the sex, I entreat.”
Dan aimed a blow at him with a boot that was lying on the rug. “Shut up,
won't you,” he growled.
“Well, Virginia is a beauty,” was Champe's amiable response. “Jack Morson
swears Aunt Emmeline's picture can't touch her. He's writing to his father
now, I don't doubt, to say he can't live without her. Go down, and he'll
read you the letter.”
Dan's face grew black. “I'll thank him to mind his own business,” he
grumbled.
“Oh, he thinks he's doing it.”
“Well, his business isn't either of the Ambler girls, and I'll have him to
know it. What right has he got, I'd like to know, to come up here and fall
in love with our neighbours.”
“Oh, Beau, Beau! Why, it was only last week you ran him away from Batt
Horsford's daughter. Are you going in for a general championship?”
“The devil! Sally Horsford's a handsome girl, and a good girl, too; and
I'll fight any man who says she isn't. By George, a woman's a woman, if she
is a stableman's daughter!”
“Bravo!” cried Champe, with a whistle, “there spoke the Lightfoot.”
“She's a good girl,” repeated Dan, furiously, as he flung the other boot at
his cousin. Champe caught the boot, and carefully set it beside the door.
“Well, she's welcome to be, as far as I'm concerned,” he replied calmly.
“Turn not your speaking eye upon me. I harbour no dark intent, Sir
Galahad.”
“Damn Sir Galahad!” said Dan, and blew out the light.
II
BETTY DREAMS BY THE FIRE
Betty, lying back in the deep old carriage as it rolled through the storm,
felt a glow at her heart as if a lamp were burning there, shut in from the
night. Above the wind and the groaning of the wheels, she heard Hosea
calling to the horses, but the sound reached her through muffled ears.
“Git along dar!” cried Hosea, with sudden spirit, “dar ain' no oats dis
side er home, en dar ain' no co'n, nurr. Git along dar! 'Tain' no use
a-mincin'. Git along dar!”
The snow beat softly on the windows, and the Governor's profile was
relieved, fine and straight, against the frosted glass. “Are you asleep,
daughter?” he asked, turning to where the girl lay in her dark corner.
“Asleep!” She came back with a start, and caught his hand above the robe in
her demonstrative way. “Why, who can sleep on Christmas Eve? there's too
much to do, isn't there, mamma? Twenty stockings to fill and I don't know
how many bundles to tie up. Oh, no, I shan't sleep tonight.”
“We might get up early to-morrow and do them,” suggested Virginia, nodding
in her pink hood.
“You, at least, must go to bed, dear,” insisted Mrs. Ambler. “Betty and I
will fix the things.”
“Indeed, you shall go to bed, mamma,” said Betty, sternly. “Papa and I
shall make Christmas this year. You'll help me, won't you, papa?”
“Well, my dear, I don't see how I can help myself,” returned the Governor;
“I wasn't born to be the father of a Betty for nothing.”
“Get along dar!” sang out Hosea again. “'Tain' no use a-mincin', gemmun.
Dar ain' no fiddlin' roun'. Git along dar!”
Miss Lydia had fallen asleep, with her head on her breast, but the sound
aroused her, and she opened her eyes and sat up very straight.
“Why, I declare I'd almost dropped off,” she said. “Are we nearly there,
Peyton?”
“I think so,” replied the Governor, “but the snow's so thick I can't see;”
he opened the window and put out his head. “Are we nearly there, Hosea?”
“We des done pas' de clump er cedars, suh,” yelled Hosea through the storm.
“I'ud a knowd 'em ef dey'd come a-struttin' down de road--dey cyarn fool
me. Den we got ter pas' de wil' cher'y and de gap in de fence, en dar we
are.”
“Yes, we're nearly there,” said the Governor, as he drew in his head, and
Miss Lydia slept again until the carriage turned into the drive and stopped
before the portico.
Uncle Shadrach, in the open doorway, was grinning with delight. “Ef'n de
snow had er kep' you, dar 'ouldn't a been no Christmas for de res' er us,”
he declared.
“Oh, the snow couldn't keep us, Shadrach,” returned the Governor, as he
gave him his overcoat, and set himself to unfastening his wife's wraps. “We
were too anxious to get home. There, Julia, you go to bed, and leave Betty
and myself to manage things. Don't say I can't do it. I tell you I've been
Governor of Virginia, and I'll not be daunted by an empty stocking. Now go
away, and you, too, Virginia--you're as sleepy as a kitten. Miss Lydia,
shall I take Mrs. Lightfoot's mixture to Miss Pussy, or will you?”
Miss Lydia took the pitcher, and Betty put her arm about her mother and led
her upstairs, holding her hand and kissing it as she went. She was always
lavish with little ways of love, but to-night she felt tenderer than
ever--she felt that she should like to take the world in her arms and hold
it to her bosom. “Dearest, sweetest,” she said, and her voice was full and
tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she
caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion
which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her
joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a
pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could
she tell why she was sorrowful.
In Mrs. Ambler's room they found Mammy Riah, awaiting her mistress's
return.
“Put her to bed, Mammy,” she said; “she is all chilled by the drive,” and
she gave her mother over to the old negress, and ran down again to the
dining room, where the Governor was standing surrounded by the Christmas
litter.
“Do you expect to straighten out all these things, daughter?” he asked
hopelessly.
“Why, there's hardly anything left to do,” was Betty's cheerful assurance.
“You just sit down at the table and put the nuts into the toes of those
stockings, and I'll count out these print frocks.”
The Governor obediently sat down and went to work. “I am moved to offer
thanks that we are not as the beasts that have four legs,” he remarked
thoughtfully. “I shouldn't care to fill stockings for quadrupeds, Betty.”
“Why, you goose, there's only one stocking for each child.”
“Ah, but with four feet our expectations might be doubled,” suggested the
Governor. “You can't convince me that it isn't a merciful providence, my
dear.”
When the stockings were filled and the packages neatly tied up and
separated, Uncle Shadrach came with a hamper, and Betty went out to the
kitchen to prepare for the morning gathering of the field hands and their
families. Returning after the work was over, she lingered a moment in the
path to the house, looking far across the white country. The snow had
ceased, and a single star was shining, through a rift in the scudding
clouds, straight overhead. From the northwest the wind blew hard, and the
fleecy covering on the ground was fast freezing a foot deep in ice. With a
shiver she drew her cloak about her and ran indoors and upstairs to where
Virginia lay asleep in the high, white bed.
In the great brick fireplace the logs had fallen apart, and she softly
pushed them together again as she threw on a knot of resinous pine. The
blaze shot up quickly, and blowing out the candle upon the bureau, she
undressed by the firelight, crooning gently as she did so in a voice that
was lower than the singing flames. With the glow on her bared arms and her
hair unbound upon her shoulders, she sat close against the chimney; and
while Virginia slept in the tester bed, went dreaming out into the night.
At first her dreams went back into her childhood, and somehow, she knew not
why, she could not bring back her childhood but Dan came with it. She
fancied herself in all kinds of impossible places, but she had no sooner
got safely into them than she looked up and Dan was there before her,
standing very still and laughing at her with his eyes. It was the same
thing even when she was a baby. Her earliest memory was of a May morning
when they took her out into a field of buttercups, and told her that she
might pluck her arms full if she could, and then, as she stretched out her
little hands and began to gather very fast, she looked across to where the
waving yellow buttercups stood up against the blue spring sky. That memory
had always been her own before; but now, when she went back to it, she knew
that all the time she had been gathering buttercups for Dan. And she had
plucked faster and faster only that she might have a bigger bunch for him
when the gathering was done. She saw herself working bonnetless in the
sunshine, her baby face red, her lips breathless, working so hard, she did
not know for whom. Oh, how funny that he should have been somewhere all the
time!
And again on the day when they gave her her first doll, and she let it fall
and cried her heart out over its broken pink face. She knew, at last, that
somewhere in that ugly town Dan had dropped his toy; and it was for that
she was crying, not for her own poor doll. Yes, all her life she had had
two griefs to weep for, and two joys to be glad over. She had been really a
double self from her babyhood up--from her babyhood up! It had been always
up, up, up--like a lark that rises to the sun. She had all her life been
rising to the sun, and she was warmed at last.
Then she asked herself if it were happiness, after all, this new
restlessness of hers. The melancholy of the early spring was there--the
roving impulse that comes on April afternoons when the first buds are on
the trees and the air is keen with the smell of the newly turned earth. She
felt that it was time for the spring to come again; she wanted to walk
alone in the woods and to watch the swallows flying from the north. And
again she wanted only to lie close upon the hearth and to hear the flames
leap up the chimney. One of her selves cried to be up and roaming; the
other to turn over on the rug and sleep again.
But gradually her thoughts returned to him, and she went over, bit by bit,
what he had said last evening, asking herself if he had meant much at this
time, or little at another. It seemed to her that she found new meanings
now in things that she had once overlooked. She read words in his eyes
which he had never spoken; and, one by one, she brought back each sentence,
each look, each gesture, holding it up to her remembrance, and laying it
aside to give place to the next. Oh, there were so many, so many!
And then from the past her dreams went groping out into the future,
becoming dimmer, and shaping themselves into unreal forms. Scattered
visions came drifting through her mind,--of herself in romantic adventures,
and of Dan--always of Dan--appearing like the prince in the fairy tale, at
the perilous moment. She saw herself on the breast of a great river, borne,
while she stretched her hands at a white rose-bush blooming in the clouds,
to a cataract which she could not see, though she heard its thunder far
ahead. She tried to call, but no sound came, for the water filled her
mouth. The river went on and on, and the falling of the cataract was in her
ears, when she felt Dan's arm about her, and saw his eyes laughing at her
above the waters.
“Betty!” called Virginia, suddenly, rising on her elbow and rubbing her
eyes. “Betty, is it morning?”
Betty awoke with a cry, and stood up in the firelight.
“Oh, no, not yet,” she answered.
“What are you doing? Aren't you coming to bed?”
“I--I was just thinking,” stammered Betty, twisting her hair into a rope;
“yes, I'm coming now,” and she crossed the room and climbed into the bed
beside her sister.
“I believe I fell asleep by the fire,” she said, as she turned over.
III
DAN AND BETTY
On the last day of the year the young men from Chericoke, as they rode down
the turnpike, came upon Betty bringing holly berries from the wood. She was
followed by two small negroes laden with branches, and beside her ran her
young setters, Peyton and Bill.
As Dan came up with her, he checked his horse and swung himself to the
ground. “Thank God I've passed the boundary!” he exclaimed over his
shoulder to the others. “Ride on, my lads, ride on! Don't prate of the
claims of hospitality to me. My foot is on my neighbours' heath; I'm host
to no man.”
“Come, now, Beau,” remonstrated Jack Morson, looking down from his saddle;
“I see in Miss Betty's eyes that she wants me to carry that holly--I swear
I do.”
“Then you see more than is written,” declared Champe, from the other side,
“for it's as plain as day that one eye says Diggs and one Lightfoot--isn't
it, Betty?”
Betty looked up, laughing. “If you are so skilled in foreign tongues, what
can I answer?” she asked. “Only that I've been a mile after this holly for
the party to-night, and I wouldn't trust it to all of you together--for
worlds.”
“Oh, go on, go on,” said Dan, impatiently, “doesn't that mean that she'll
trust it to me alone? Good morning, my boys, God be with you,” and he led
Prince Rupert aside while the rest rode by.
When they were out of sight he turned to one of the small negroes, his hand
on the bridle. “Shall we exchange burdens, O eater of 'possums?” he asked
blandly. “Will you permit me to tote your load, while you lead my horse to
the house? You aren't afraid of him, are you?”
The little negro grinned. “He do look moughty glum, suh,” he replied, half
fearfully.
“Glum! Why, the amiability in that horse's face is enough to draw tears.
Come up, Prince Rupert, your highness is to go ahead of me; it's to oblige
a lady, you know.”
Then, as Prince Rupert was led away, Dan looked at Betty.
“Shall it be the turnpike or the meadow path?” he inquired, with the gay
deference he used toward women, as if a word might turn it to a jest or a
look might make it earnest.
“The meadow, but not the path,” replied the girl; “the path is asleep under
the snow.” She cast a happy glance over the white landscape, down the long
turnpike, and across the broad meadow where a cedar tree waved like a snowy
plume. “Jake, we must climb the wall,” she added to the negro boy, “be
careful about the berries.”
Dan threw his holly into the meadow and lifted Betty upon the stone wall.
“Now wait a moment,” he cautioned, as he went over. “Don't move till I tell
you. I'm managing this job--there, now jump!”
He caught her hands and set her on her feet beside him. “Take your fence,
my beauties,” he called gayly to the dogs, as they came bounding across the
turnpike.
Betty straightened her cap and took up her berries.
“Your tender mercies are rather cruel,” she complained, as she did so.
“Even my hair is undone.”
“Oh, it's all the better,” returned Dan, without looking at her. “I don't
see why girls make themselves so smooth, anyway. That's what I like about
you, you know--you've always got a screw loose somewhere.”
“But I haven't,” cried Betty, stopping in the snow.
“What! if I find a curl where it oughtn't to be, may I have it?”
“Of course not,” she answered indignantly.
“Well, there's one hanging over your ear now. Shall I put it straight with
this piece of holly? My hands are full, but I think I might manage it.”
“Don't touch me with your holly!” exclaimed Betty, walking faster; then in
a moment she turned and stood calling to the dogs. “Have you noticed what
beauties Bill and Peyton have grown to be?” she questioned pleasantly.
“There weren't any boys to be named after papa and Uncle Bill, so I called
the dogs after them, you know. Papa says he would rather have had a son
named Peyton; but I tell him the son might have been wicked and brought his
hairs in sorrow to the grave.”
“Well, I dare say, you're right,” he stopped with a sweep of his hand, and
stood looking to where a flock of crows were flying over the dried spectres
of carrot flowers that stood up above the snow; “That's fine, now, isn't
it?” he asked seriously.
Betty followed his gesture, then she gave a little cry and threw her arms
round the dogs. “The poor crows are so hungry,” she said. “No, no, you
mustn't chase them, Bill and Peyton, it isn't right, you see. Here, Jake,
come and hold the dogs, while I feed the crows.” She drew a handful of corn
from the pocket of her cloak, and flung it out into the meadow.
“I always bring corn for them,” she explained; “they get so hungry, and
sometimes they starve to death right out here. Papa says they are
pernicious birds; but I don't care--do you mind their being pernicious?”
“I? Not in the least. I assure you I trouble myself very little about the
morals of my associates. I'm not fond of crows; but it is their voices
rather than their habits I object to. I can't stand their eternal
'cawing!'--it drives me mad.”
“I suppose foxes are pernicious beasts, also,” said Betty, as she walked
on; “but there's an old red fox in the woods that I've been feeding for
years. I don't know anything that foxes like to eat except chickens, but I
carry him a basket of potatoes and turnips and bread, and pile them up
under a pine tree; it's just as well for him to acquire the taste for them,
isn't it?”
She smiled at Dan above her fur tippet, and he forgot her words in watching
the animation come and go in her face. He fell to musing over her decisive
little chin, the sensitive curves of her nostrils and sweet wide mouth, and
above all over her kind yet ardent look, which gave the peculiar beauty to
her eyes.
“Ah, is there anything in heaven or earth that you don't like?” he asked,
as he gazed at her.