him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said
sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. “We need
your hands to put it straight again,” he added, “and Molly told me on no
account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear.”
“Why, I should love to go,” replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her
heart. “I'll be ready in a minute,” and she ran upstairs to find her
mother, and to pack her things.
The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by
Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the
old coach before the portico.
“It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty,” he said, as he stepped in
after her and slammed the door. “It isn't often that I carry off a pretty
girl so easily.”
“Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily,” returned
Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. “She has told me the whole
story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that
made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost
broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelorship, sir, so
you needn't boast.”
The Major chuckled in his corner. “I don't doubt that Molly told you so,”
he replied, “but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to
her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly
romances she reads in bed--and, take my word for it, you'll find it
somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a
sensible woman, my child,--I'm the last man to deny it--but she always did
read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to
faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding--and, bless my
soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape.”
“Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world,” said Betty, “and I'm
quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you
can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot.”
“My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina,” dissented the Major, warmly,
“but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said
that it ruined poor Jane, with all her pride. She got into her head all
kind of notions about that scamp Montjoy, with his pale face and his long
black hair. Poor girl, poor girl! I tried to bring her up on Homer and
Milton, but she took to her mother's bookshelf as a duck to water.” He
wiped his eyes, and Betty patted his hand, and wondered if “the scamp
Montjoy” looked the least bit like his son.
When they reached Chericoke she shook hands with the servants and ran
upstairs to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber. The old lady, in her ruffled
nightcap, which she always put on when she took to bed, was sitting upright
under her dimity curtains, weeping over “Thaddeus of Warsaw.” There was a
little bookstand at her bedside filled with her favourite romances, and at
the beginning of the year she would start systematically to read from the
first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the
door. “None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear,” she would protest,
snapping her fingers at literature. “Why, they haven't enough sentiment to
give their hero a title--and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have
a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their
Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the
nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr.
Dickens's stories the other day and it was actually about a chimney
sweep--a common chimney sweep from a workhouse! Why, I really felt as if I
had been keeping low society.”
Now, as she caught sight of Betty, she laid aside her book, wiped her eyes
on a stiffly folded handkerchief, and became cheerful at once. “I warned
Mr. Lightfoot not to dare to show his face without you,” she began; “so I
suppose he brought you off by force.”
“I was only too glad to come,” replied Betty, kissing her; “but what must I
do for you first? Shall I rub your head with bay rum?”
“There's nothing on earth the matter with my head, child,” retorted Mrs.
Lightfoot, promptly, “but you may go downstairs, as soon as you take off
your things, and make me some decent tea and toast. Cupid brought me up two
waiters at dinner, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a ten-foot
pole.”
Betty took off her bonnet and shawl and hung them on a chair. “I'll go down
at once and see about it,” she answered, “and I'll make Car'line put away
my things. It's my old room I'm to have, I suppose.”
“It's the whole house, if you want it, only don't let any of the darkies
have a hand at my tea. It's their nature to slop.”
“But it isn't mine,” Betty answered her, and ran, laughing, down into the
dining room.
“Dar ain' been no sich chunes sense young Miss rid away in de dead er de
night time,” muttered Cupid, in the pantry. “Lawd, Lawd, I des wish you'd
teck up wid Marse Champe, en move 'long over hyer fer good en all. I reckon
dar 'ud be times, den, I reckon, dar 'ould.”
“There are going to be times now, Uncle Cupid,” responded Betty,
cheerfully, as she arranged the tray for Mrs. Lightfoot. “I'm going to make
some tea and toast right on this fire for your old Miss. You bring the
kettle, and I'll slice the bread.”
Cupid brought the kettle, grumbling. “I ain' never hyern tell er sich a
mouf es ole Miss es got,” he muttered. “I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin er
stomick, case she ain' never let de stuff git down dat fur--en de stomick
hit ain' never tase it yit.”
“Oh, stop grumbling, Uncle Cupid,” returned Betty, moving briskly about the
room. She brought the daintiest tea cup from the old sideboard, and leaned
out of the window to pluck a late microphylla rosebud from the creeper upon
the porch. Then, with the bread on the end of a long fork, she sat before
the fire and asked Cupid about the health and fortunes of the house
servants and the field hands.
“I ain' mix wid no fiel' han's,” grunted Cupid, with a social pride
befitting the Major. “Dar ain' no use er my mixin' en I ain' mix. Dey stay
in dere place en I stay in my place--en dere place hit's de quarters, en my
place hit's de dinin' 'oom.”
“But Aunt Rhody--how's she?” inquired Betty, pleasantly, “and Big Abel? He
didn't go back to college, did he?”
“Zeke, he went,” replied Cupid, “en Big Abel he wuz bleeged ter stay behint
'case his wife Saphiry she des put 'er foot right down. Ef'n he 'uz gwine
off again, sez she, she 'uz des gwine tu'n right in en git mah'ed agin. She
ain' so sho', nohow, dat two husban's ain' better'n one, is Saphiry, en she
got 'mos' a min' ter try hit. So Big Abel he des stayed behint.”
“That was wise of Big Abel,” remarked Betty. “Now open the door, Uncle
Cupid, and I'll carry this upstairs,” and as Cupid threw open the door, she
went out, holding the tray before her.
The old lady received her graciously, ate the toast and drank the tea, and
even admitted that it couldn't have been better if she had made it with her
own hands. “I think that you will have to come and live with me, Betty,”
she said good-humouredly. “What a pity you can't fancy one of those useless
boys of mine. Not that I'd have you marry Dan, child, the Major has spoiled
him to death, and now he's beginning to repent it; but Champe, Champe is a
good and clever lad and would make a mild and amiable husband, I am sure.
Don't marry a man with too much spirit, my dear; if a man has any extra
spirit, he usually expends it in breaking his wife's.”
“Oh, I shan't marry yet awhile,” replied Betty, looking out upon the
falling autumn leaves.
“So I said the day before I married Mr. Lightfoot,” rejoined the old lady,
settling her pillows, “and now, if you have nothing better to do, you might
read me a chapter of 'Thaddeus of Warsaw'; you will find it to be a book of
very pretty sentiment.”
IX
THE MONTJOY BLOOD
In the morning Betty was awakened by the tapping of the elm boughs on the
roof above her. An autumn wind was blowing straight from the west, and when
she looked out through the small greenish panes of glass, she saw eddies of
yellowed leaves beating gently against the old brick walls. Overhead light
gray clouds were flying across the sky, and beyond the waving tree-tops a
white mist hung above the dim blue chain of mountains.
When she went downstairs she found the Major, in his best black broadcloth,
pacing up and down before the house. It was Sunday, and he intended to
drive into town where the rector held his services.
“You won't go in with me, I reckon?” he ventured hopefully, when Betty
smiled out upon him from the library window. “Ah, my dear, you're as fresh
as the morning, and only an old man to look at you. Well, well, age has its
consolations; you'll spare me a kiss, I suppose?”
“Then you must come in to get it,” answered Betty, her eyes narrowing.
“Breakfast is getting cold, and Cupid is calling down Aunt Rhody's wrath
upon your head.”
“Oh, I'll come, I'll come,” returned the Major, hurrying up the steps, and
adding as he entered the dining room, “My child, if you'd only take a fancy
to Champe, I'd be the happiest man on earth.”
“Now I shan't allow any matchmaking on Sunday,” said Betty, warningly, as
she prepared Mrs. Lightfoot's breakfast. “Sit down and carve the chicken
while I run upstairs with this.”
She went out and came back in a moment, laughing merrily. “Do you know, she
threatens to become bedridden now that I am here to fix her trays,” she
explained, sitting down between the tall silver urns and pouring out the
Major's coffee. “What an uncertain day you have for church,” she added as
she gave his cup to Cupid.
With his eyes on her vivid face the old man listened rapturously to her
fresh young voice--the voice, he said, that always made him think of clear
water falling over stones. It was one of the things that came to her from
Peyton Ambler, he knew, with her warm hazel eyes and the sweet, strong
curve of her mouth. “Ah, but you're like your father,” he said as he
watched her. “If you had brown hair you'd be his very image.”
“I used to wish that I had,” responded Betty, “but I don't now--I'd just as
soon have red.” She was thinking that Dan did not like brown hair so much,
and the thought shone in her face--only the Major, in his ignorance,
mistook its meaning.
After breakfast he got into the coach and started off, and Betty, with the
key basket on her arm, followed Cupid and Aunt Rhody into the storeroom.
Then she gathered fresh flowers for the table, and went upstairs to read a
chapter from the Bible to Mrs. Lightfoot.
The Major stayed to dinner in town, returning late in a moody humour and
exhausted by his drive. As Betty brushed her hair before her bureau, she
heard him talking in a loud voice to Mrs. Lightfoot, and when she went in
at supper time the old, lady called her to her bedside and took her hand.
“He has had a touch of the gout, Betty,” she whispered in her ear, “and he
heard some news in town which upset him a little. You must try to cheer him
up at supper, child.”
“Was it bad news?” asked Betty, in alarm.
“It may not be true, my dear. I hope it isn't, but, as I told Mr.
Lightfoot, it is always better to believe the worst, so if any surprise
comes it may be a pleasant one. Somebody told him in church--and they had
much better have been attending to the service, I'm sure,--that Dan had
gotten into trouble again, and Mr. Lightfoot is very angry about it. He had
a talk with the boy before he went away, and made him promise to turn over
a new leaf this year--but it seems this is the most serious thing that has
happened yet. I must say I always told Mr. Lightfoot it was what he had to
expect.”
“In trouble again?” repeated Betty, kneeling by the bed. Her hands went
cold, and she pressed them nervously together.
“Of course we know very little about it, my dear,” pursued Mrs. Lightfoot.
“All we have heard is that he fought a duel and was sent away from the
University. He was even put into gaol for a night, I believe--a Lightfoot
in a common dirty gaol! Well, well, as I said before, all we can do now is
to expect the worst.”
“Oh, is that all?” cried Betty, and the leaping of her heart told her the
horror of her dim foreboding. She rose to her feet and smiled brightly down
upon the astonished old lady.
“I don't know what more you want,” replied Mrs. Lightfoot, tartly. “If he
ever gets clean again after a whole night in a common gaol, I must say I
don't see how he'll manage it. But if you aren't satisfied I can only tell
you that the affair was all about some bar-room wench, and that the papers
will be full of it. Not that the boy was anything but foolish,” she added
hastily. “I'll do him the justice to admit that he's more of a fool than a
villain--and I hardly know whether it's a compliment that I'm paying him or
not. He got some quixotic notion into his head that Harry Maupin insulted
the girl in his presence, and he called him to account for it. As if the
honour of a barkeeper's daughter was the concern of any gentleman!”
“Oh!” cried Betty, and caught her breath. The word went out of her in a
sudden burst of joy, but the joy was so sharp that a moment afterwards she
hid her wet face in the bedclothes and sobbed softly to herself.
“I don't think Mr. Lightfoot would have taken it so hard but for Virginia,”
said the old lady, with her keen eyes on the girl. “You know he has always
wanted to bring Dan and Virginia together, and he seems to think that the
boy has been dishonourable about it.”
“But Virginia doesn't care--she doesn't care,” protested Betty.
“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” returned Mrs. Lightfoot, relieved, “and I hope
the foolish boy will stay away long enough for his grandfather to cool off.
Mr. Lightfoot is a high-tempered man, my child. I've spent fifty years in
keeping him at peace with the world. There now, run down and cheer him up.”
She lay back among her pillows, and Betty leaned over and kissed her with
cold lips before she dried her eyes and went downstairs to find the Major.
With the first glance at his face she saw that Dan's cause was hopeless for
the hour, and she set herself, with a cheerful countenance, to a discussion
of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's
sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk
that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the
turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought
herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden
with its last sad flowers.
The Major listened gloomily, putting in a word now and then, and keeping
his weak red eyes upon his plate. There was a heavy cloud on his brow, and
the flush that Betty had learned to dread was in his face. Once when she
spoke carelessly of Dan, he threw out an angry gesture and inquired if she
“found Mrs. Lightfoot easier to-night?”
“Oh, I think so,” replied the girl, and then, as they rose from the table,
she slipped her hand through his arm and went with him into the library.
“Shall I sit with you this evening?” she asked timidly. “I'd be so glad to
read to you, if you would let me.”
He shook his head, patted her affectionately upon the shoulder, and smiled
down into her upraised face. “No, no, my dear, I've a little work to do,”
he replied kindly. “There are a few papers I want to look over, so run up
to Molly and tell her I sent my sunshine to her.”
He stooped and kissed her cheek; and Betty, with a troubled heart, went
slowly up to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber.
The Major sat down at his writing table, and spread his papers out before
him. Then he raised the wick of his lamp, and with his pen in his hand,
resolutely set himself to his task. When Cupid came in with the decanter of
Burgundy, he filled a glass and held it absently against the light, but he
did not drink it, and in a moment he put it down with so tremulous a hand
that the wine spilled upon the floor.
“I've a touch of the gout, Cupid,” he said testily. “A touch of the gout
that's been hanging over me for a month or more.”
“Huccome you ain' fit hit, Ole Marster?”
“Oh, I've been fighting it tooth and nail,” answered the old gentleman,
“but there are some things that always get the better of you in the end,
Cupid, and the gout's one of them.”
“En rheumaticks hit's anurr,” added Cupid, rubbing his knee.
He rolled a fresh log upon the andirons and went out, while the Major
returned, frowning, to his work.
He was still at his writing table, when he heard the sound of a horse
trotting in the drive, and an instant afterwards the quick fall of the old
brass knocker. The flush deepened in his face, and with a look at once
angry and appealing, he half rose from his chair. As he waited the outside
bars were withdrawn, there followed a few short steps across the hall, and
Dan came into the library.
“I suppose you know what's brought me back, grandpa?” he said quietly as he
entered.
The Major started up and then sat down again.
“I do know, sir, and I wish to God I didn't,” he replied, choking in his
anger.
Dan stood where he had halted upon his entrance, and looked at him with
eyes in which there was still a defiant humour. His face was pale and his
hair hung in black streaks across his forehead. The white dust of the
turnpike had settled upon his clothes, and as he moved it floated in a
little cloud about him.
“I reckon you think it's a pretty bad thing, eh?” he questioned coolly,
though his hands trembled.
The Major's eyes flashed ominously from beneath his heavy brows.
“Pretty bad?” he repeated, taking a long breath. “If you want to know what
I think about it, sir, I think that it's a damnable disgrace. Pretty
bad!--By God, sir, do you call having a gaol-bird for a grandson pretty
bad?”
“Stop, sir!” called Dan, sharply. He had steadied himself to withstand the
shock of the Major's temper, but, in the dash of his youthful folly, he had
forgotten to reckon with his own. “For heaven's sake, let's talk about it
calmly,” he added irritably.
“I am perfectly calm, sir!” thundered the Major, rising to his feet. The
terrible flush went in a wave to his forehead, and he put up one quivering
hand to loosen his high stock. “I tell you calmly that you've done a
damnable thing; that you've brought disgrace upon the name of Lightfoot.”
“It is not my name,” replied Dan, lifting his head. “My name is Montjoy,
sir.”
“And it's a name to hang a dog for,” retorted the Major.
As they faced each other with the same flash of temper kindling in both
faces, the likeness between them grew suddenly more striking. It was as if
the spirit of the fiery old man had risen, in a finer and younger shape,
from the air before him.
“At all events it is not yours,” said Dan, hotly. Then he came nearer, and
the anger died out of his eyes. “Don't let's quarrel, grandpa,” he pleaded.
“I've gotten into a mess, and I'm sorry for it--on my word I am.”
“So you've come whining to me to get you out,” returned the Major, shaking
as if he had gone suddenly palsied.
Dan drew back and his hand fell to his side.
“So help me God, I'll never whine to you again,” he answered.
“Do you want to know what you have done, sir?” demanded the Major. “You
have broken your grandmother's heart and mine--and made us wish that we had
left you by the roadside when you came crawling to our door. And, on my
oath, if I had known that the day would ever come when you would try to
murder a Virginia gentleman for the sake of a bar-room hussy, I would have
left you there, sir.”
“Stop!” said Dan again, looking at the old man with his mother's eyes.
“You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine,” repeated the Major, in
a trembling voice, “and I pray to God that you may not break Virginia
Ambler's--poor girl, poor girl!”
“Virginia Ambler!” said Dan, slowly. “Why, there was nothing between us,
nothing, nothing.”
“And you dare to tell me this to my face, sir?” cried the Major.
“Dare! of course I dare,” returned Dan, defiantly. “If there was ever
anything at all it was upon my side only--and a mere trifling fancy.”
The old gentleman brought his hand down upon his table with a blow that
sent the papers fluttering to the floor. “Trifling!” he roared. “Would you
trifle with a lady from your own state, sir?”
“I was never in love with her,” exclaimed Dan, angrily.
“Not in love with her? What business have you not to be in love with her?”
retorted the Major, tossing back his long white hair. “I have given her to
understand that you are in love with her, sir.”
The blood rushed to Dan's head, and he stumbled over an ottoman as he
turned away.
“Then I call it unwarrantable interference,” he said brutally, and went
toward the door. There the Major's flashing eyes held him back an instant.
“It was when I believed you to be worthy of her,” went on the old man,
relentlessly, “when--fool that I was--I dared to hope that dirty blood
could be made clean again; that Jack Montjoy's son could be a gentleman.”
For a moment only Dan stood motionless and looked at him from the
threshold. Then, without speaking, he crossed the hall, took down his hat,
and unbarred the outer door. It slammed after him, and he went out into the
night.
A keen wind was still blowing, and as he descended the steps he felt it
lifting the dampened hair from his forehead. With a breath of relief he
stood bareheaded in the drive and raised his face to the cool elm leaves
that drifted slowly down. After the heated atmosphere of the library there
was something pleasant in the mere absence of light, and in the soft
rustling of the branches overhead. The humour of his blood went suddenly
quiet as if he had plunged headlong into cold water.
While he stood there motionless his thoughts were suspended, and his
senses, gaining a brief mastery, became almost feverishly alert; he felt
the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves,
and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from
the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there
came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of
youthful rhetoric, “that come what would, he was going to the devil--and
going speedily.”
He had reached the gate and his hand was upon the latch, when he heard the
house door open and shut behind him and his name called softly from the
steps.
He turned impulsively and stood waiting, while Betty came quickly through
the lamplight that fell in squares upon the drive.
“Oh, come back, Dan, come back,” she said breathlessly.
With his hand still on the gate he faced her, frowning.
“I'd die first, Betty,” he answered.
She came swiftly up to him and stood, very pale, in the faint starlight
that shone between the broken clouds. A knitted shawl was over her
shoulders, but her head was bare and her hair made a glow around her face.
Her eyes entreated him before she spoke.
“Oh, Dan, come back,” she pleaded.
He laughed angrily and shook his head.
“I'll die first, Betty,” he repeated. “Die! I'd die a hundred times first!”
“He is so old,” she said appealingly. “It is not as if he were young and
quite himself, Dan--Oh, it is not like that--but he loves you, and he is so
old.”
“Don't, Betty,” he broke in quickly, and added bitterly, “Are you, too,
against me?”
“I am for the best in you,” she answered quietly, and turned away from him.
“The best!” he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Are you for the shot at
Maupin? the night I spent in gaol? or the beggar I am now? There's an equal
choice, I reckon.”
She looked gravely up at him.
“I am for the boy I've always known,” she replied, “and for the man who was
here two weeks ago--and--yes, I am for the man who stands here now. What
does it matter, Dan? What does it matter?”
“O, Betty!” he cried breathlessly, and hid his face in his hands.
“And most of all, I am for the man you are going to be,” she went on
slowly, “for the great man who is growing up. Dan, come back!”
His hands fell from his eyes. “I'll not do that even for you, Betty,” he
answered, “and, God knows, there's little else I wouldn't do for
you--there's nothing else.”
“What will you do for yourself, Dan?”
“For myself?” his anger leaped out again, and he steadied himself against
the gate. “For myself I'll go as far as I can from this damned place. I
wish to God I'd fallen in the road before I came here. I wish I'd gone
after my father and followed in his steps. I'll live on no man's charity,
so help me God. Am I a dog to be kicked out and to go whining back when the
door opens? Go--I'll go to the devil, and be glad of it!” For a moment
Betty did not answer. Her hands were clasped on her bosom, and her eyes
were dark and bright in the pallor of her face. As he looked at her the
rage died out of his voice, and it quivered with a deeper feeling.