dim I couldn't see, and, after all, it was no great harm, for there was not
a handsomer man in the state than my friend Dick--the ladies used to call
him 'Apollo Unarmed,' you know. Ah, I was jealous enough of Dick in my day,
though he never knew it. He rather took Julia's fancy when I first began
courting her, and, for a time, he pretended to reform and refused to touch
a drop even at the table. I've seen him sit for hours, too, in Julia's
Bible class of little negroes, with his eyes positively glued on her face
while she read the hymns aloud. Yes, he was over head and ears in love with
her, there's no doubt of that--though she has always denied it--and, I dare
say, he would have been a much better man if she had married him, and I a
much worse one. Somehow, I can't help feeling that it wasn't quite just,
and that I ought to square up things with Dick at Judgment Day. I shouldn't
like to reap any good from his mistakes, poor fellow.” He broke off for an
instant, lay gazing at the lightwood blaze, and then took up the thread.
“He had his fall at last, and it's been on my conscience ever since that I
didn't toss that bowl of apple toddy through the window when I saw him
going towards it. We were at Chericoke on Christmas Eve in a big snowstorm,
and Dick couldn't resist his glass--he never could so long as there was a
drop at the bottom of it--the more he drank, the thirstier he got, he used
to say. Well, he took a good deal, more than he could stand, and when the
Major began toasting the ladies and called them the prettiest things God
ever made, Dick flew into a rage and tried to fight him. 'There are two
prettier sights than any woman that ever wore petticoats,' he thundered;
'and (here he ripped out an oath) I'll prove it to you at the sword's point
before sunrise. God made but one thing, sir, prettier than the cobwebs on a
bottle of wine, and that's the bottle of wine without the cobwebs!' Then he
went at the Major, and we had to hold him back and rub snow on his temples.
That night I drove home with Julia, and she accepted me before we passed
the wild cherry tree on the way to Uplands.”
As he fell silent the old negro, treading softly, came into the room and
made the preparations for his simple supper, which he carried outside
beneath the trees. In a little bared place amid charred wood, a fire was
started, and Dan watched through the open doorway the stooping figures of
the two negroes as they bent beside the flames. In a little while Big Abel
came into the room and beckoned him, but he shook his head impatiently and
turned away, sickened by the thought of food.
“Go, my boy,” said the Governor, as if he had seen it through closed eyes.
“I never saw a private yet that wasn't hungry--one told me last week that
his diet for a year had varied only three times--blackberries, chinquapins,
and persimmons had kept him alive, he said.”
Then his mind wandered again, and he talked in a low voice of the wheat
fields at Uplands and of the cradles swinging all day in the sunshine. Dan,
moving to the door, stared, with aching eyes, at the rich twilight which
crept like purple mist among the trees. The very quiet of the scene grated
as a discord upon his mood, and he would have welcomed with a feeling of
relief any violent manifestation of the savagery of nature. A storm, an
earthquake, even the thunder of battle he felt would be less tragic than
just this pleasant evening with the serene moon rising above the hills.
Turning back into the room, he drew a split-bottomed chair beside the
hearth, and began his patient watch until the daybreak. Under the patchwork
quilt the Governor lay motionless, dead from the waist down, only the
desire in his eyes struggling to keep the spirit to the clay. Big Abel and
the old negro made themselves a bed beneath the trees, and as they raked
the dried leaves together the mournful rustling filled the little cabin.
Then they lay down, the yellow dog beside them, and gradually the silence
of the night closed in.
After midnight, Dan, who had dozed in his chair from weariness, was
awakened by the excited tones of the Governor's voice. The desire was
vanquished at last and the dying man had gone back in delirium to the
battle he had fought beyond the river. On the hearth the resinous pine
still blazed and from somewhere among the stones came the short chirp of a
cricket.
“Oh, it's nothing--a mere scratch. Lay me beneath that tree, and tell
Barnes to support D. H. Hill at the sunken road. Richardson is charging us
across the ploughed ground and we are fighting from behind the stacked
fence rails. Ah, they advance well, those Federals--not a man out of line,
and their fire has cut the corn down as with a sickle. If Richardson keeps
this up, he will sweep us from the wood and beyond the slope. No, don't
take me to the hospital. Please God, I'll die upon the field and hear the
cannon at the end. Look! they are charging again, but we still hold our
ground. What, Longstreet giving way? They are forcing him from the
ridge--the enemy hold it now! Ah, well, there is A. P. Hill to give the
counter stroke. If he falls upon their flank, the day is--”
His voice ceased, and Dan, crossing the room, gave him brandy from the
glass upon the chair. The silence had grown suddenly oppressive, and as the
young man went back to his seat, he saw a little mouse gliding like a
shadow across the floor. Startled by his footsteps, it hesitated an instant
in the centre of the room, and then darted along the wall and disappeared
between the loose logs in the corner. Often during the night it crept out
from its hiding place, and at last Dan grew to look for it with a certain
wistful comfort in its shy companionship.
Gradually the stars went out above the dim woods, and the dawn whitened
along the eastern sky. With the first light Dan went to the open door and
drew a deep breath of the refreshing air. A new day was coming, but he met
it with dulled eyes and a crippled will. The tragedy of life seemed to
overhang the pleasant prospect upon which he looked, and, as he stood
there, he saw in his vision of the future only an endless warfare and a
wasted land. With a start he turned, for the Governor was speaking in a
voice that filled the cabin and rang out into the woods.
“Skirmishers, forward! Second the battalion of direction! Battalions,
forward!”
He had risen upon his pallet and was pointing straight at the open door,
but when, with a single stride, Dan reached him, he was already dead.
IV
IN THE SILENCE OF THE GUNS
At noon the next day, Dan, sitting beside the fireless hearth, with his
head resting on his clasped hands, saw a shadow fall suddenly upon the
floor, and, looking up, found Mrs. Ambler standing in the doorway.
“I am too late?” she said quietly, and he bowed his head and motioned to
the pallet in the corner.
Without seeing the arm he put out, she crossed the room like one bewildered
by a sudden blow, and went to where the Governor was lying beneath the
patchwork quilt. No sound came to her lips; she only stretched out her hand
with a protecting gesture and drew the dead man to her arms. Then it was
that Dan, turning to leave her alone with her grief, saw that Betty had
followed her mother and was coming toward him from the doorway. For an
instant their eyes met; then the girl went to her dead, and Dan passed out
into the sunlight with a new bitterness at his heart.
A dozen yards from the cabin there was a golden beech spreading in wide
branches against the sky, and seating himself on a fallen log beneath it,
he looked over the soft hills that rose round and deep-bosomed from the dim
blue valley. He was still there an hour later when, hearing a rustle in the
grass, he turned and saw Betty coming to him over the yellowed leaves. His
first glance showed him that she had grown older and very pale; his second
that her kind brown eyes were full of tears.
“Betty, is it this way?” he asked, and opened his arms.
With a cry that was half a sob she ran toward him, her black skirt sweeping
the leaves about her feet. Then, as she reached him, she swayed forward as
if a strong wind blew over her, and as he caught her from the ground, he
kissed her lips. Her tears broke out afresh, but as they stood there in
each other's arms, neither found words to speak nor voice to utter them.
The silence between them had gone deeper than speech, for it had in it all
the dumb longing of the last two years--the unshaken trust, the bitterness
of the long separation, the griefs that had come to them apart, and the
sorrow that had brought them at last together. He held her so closely that
he felt the flutter of her breast with each rising sob, and an anguish that
was but a vibration from her own swept over him like a wave from head to
foot. Since he had put her from him on that last night at Chericoke their
passion had deepened by each throb of pain and broadened by each step that
had led them closer to the common world. Not one generous thought, not one
temptation overcome but had gone to the making of their love to-day--for
what united them now was not the mere prompting of young impulse, but the
strength out of many struggles and the fulness out of experiences that had
ripened the heart of each.
“Let me look at you,” said Betty, lifting her wet face. “It has been so
long, and I have wanted you so much--I have hungered sleeping and waking.”
“Don't look at me, Betty, I am a skeleton--a crippled skeleton, and I will
not be looked at by my love.”
“Your love can see you with shut eyes. Oh, my best and dearest, do you
think you could keep me from seeing you however hard you tried? Why,
there's a lamp in my heart that lets me look at you even in the night.”
“Your lamp flatters, I am afraid to face it. Has it shown you this?”
He drew back and held up his maimed hand, his eyes fastened upon her face,
where the old fervour had returned.
With a sob that thrilled through him, she caught his hand to her lips and
then held it to her bosom, crooning over it little broken sounds of love
and pity. Through the spreading beech above a clear gold light filtered
down upon her, and a single yellow leaf was caught in her loosened hair. He
saw her face, impassioned, glorified, amid a flood of sunshine.
“And I did not know,” she said breathlessly. “You were wounded and there
was no one to tell me. Whenever there has been a battle I have sat very
still and shut my eyes, and tried to make myself go straight to you. I have
seen the smoke and heard the shots, and yet when it came I did not know it.
I may even have laughed and talked and eaten a stupid dinner while you were
suffering. Now I shall never smile again until I have you safe.”
“But if I were dying I should want to see you smiling. Nobody ever smiled
before you, Betty.”
“If you are wounded, you will send for me. Promise me; I beg you on my
knees. You will send for me; say it or I shall be always wretched. Do you
want to kill me, Dan? Promise.”
“I shall send for you. There, will that do? It would be almost worth dying
to have you come to me. Would you kiss me then, I wonder?”
“Then and now,” she answered passionately. “Oh, I sometimes think that wars
are fought to torture women! Hold me in your arms again or my heart will
break. I have missed Virginia so--never a day passes that I do not see her
coming through the rooms and hear her laugh--such a baby laugh, do you
remember it?”
“I remember everything that was near to you, beloved.”
“If you could have seen her on her wedding day, when she came down in her
pink crepe shawl and white bonnet that I had trimmed, and looked back,
smiling at us for the last time. I have almost died with wanting her
again--and now papa--papa! They loved life so, and yet both are dead, and
life goes on without them.”
“My poor love, poor Betty.”
“But not so poor as if I had lost you, too,” she answered; “and if you are
wounded even a little remember that you have promised, and I shall come to
you. Prince Rupert and I will pass the lines together. Do you know that I
have Prince Rupert, Dan?”
“Keep him, dear, don't let him get into the army.”
“He lives in the woods night and day, and when he comes to pasture I go
after him while Uncle Shadrach watches the turnpike. When the soldiers come
by, blue or gray, we hide him behind the willows in the brook. They may
take the chickens--and they do--but I should kill the man who touched
Prince Rupert's bridle.”
“You should have been a soldier, Betty.”
She shook her head. “Oh, I couldn't shoot any one in cold blood--as you
do--that's different. I'd have to hate him as much--as much as I love you.”
“How much is that?”
“A whole world full and brimming over; is that enough?”
“Only a little world?” he answered. “Is that all?”
“If I told you truly, you would not believe me,” she said earnestly. “You
would shake your head and say: 'Poor silly Betty, has she gone moon mad?'”
Catching her in his arms again, he kissed her hair and mouth and hands and
the ruffle at her throat. “Poor silly Betty,” he repeated, “where is your
wisdom now?”
“You have turned it into folly, sad little wisdom that it was.”
“Well, I prefer your folly,” he said gravely. “It was folly that made you
love me at the first; it was pure folly that brought you out to me that
night at Chericoke--but the greatest folly of all is just this, my dear.”
“But it will keep you safe.”
“Who knows? I may get shot to-morrow. There, there, I only said it to feel
your arms about me.”
Her hands clung to him and the tears, rising to her lashes, fell fast upon
his coat.
“Oh, don't let me lose you,” she begged. “I have lost so much--don't let me
lose you, too.”
“Living or dead, I am yours, that I swear.”
“But I don't want you dead. I want the feel of you. I want your hands, your
face. I want _you_.”
“Betty, Betty,” he said softly. “Listen, for there is no word in the world
that means so much as just your name.”
“Except yours.”
“No interruptions, this is martial law. Dear, dearest, darling, are all
empty sounds; but when I say 'Betty,' it is full of life.”
“Say it again, then.”
“Betty, do you love me?”
“Ask: 'Betty, is the sun shining?'”
“It always shines about you.”
“Because my hair is red?”
“Red? It is pure gold. Do you remember when I found that out on the hearth
in free Levi's cabin? The colour went to my head, but when I put out my
hand to touch a curl, you drew away and fastened them up again. Now I have
pulled them all down and you dare not move.”
“Shall I tell you why I drew away?”
The tears were still on her lashes, but in the exaltation of a great
passion, life, death, the grave, and things beyond had dwindled like stars
before the rising sun.
“You told me then--because I was 'a pampered poodle dog.' Well, I've
outgrown that objection certainly. Let us hope you have a fancy for lean
hounds.”
She put up her hands in protest.
“I drew away partly because I knew you did not love me,” she said, meeting
his eyes with her clear and ardent gaze, “but more because--I knew that I
loved you.”
“You loved me then? Oh, Betty, if I had only known!”
“If you had known!” She covered her face. “Oh, it was terrible enough as it
was. I wanted to beat myself for shame.”
“Shame? In loving me, my darling?”
“In loving you like that.”
“Nonsense. If you had only said to me: 'My good sir, I love you a little
bit,' I should have come to my senses on the spot. Even pampered poodle
dogs are not all fat, Betty, and, as it was, I did come to the years of
discretion that very night. I didn't sleep a wink.”
“Nor I.”
“I walked the floor till daybreak.”
“And I sat by the window.”
“I hurled every hard name at myself that I could think of. 'Dolt and idiot'
seemed to stick. By George, I can't get over it. To think that I might have
galloped down that turnpike and swept you off your feet. You wouldn't have
withstood me, Betty, you couldn't.”
“Yet I did,” she said, smiling sadly.
“Oh, I didn't have a fair chance, you see.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered, “though sometimes I was afraid you would hear
my heart beating and know it all. Do you remember that morning in the
garden with the roses?--I wouldn't kiss you good-by, but if you had done it
against my will I'd have broken down. After you had gone I kissed the grass
where you had stood.”
“My God! I can't leave you, Betty.”
She met his passionate gaze with steady eyes.
“If you were not to go I should never have told you,” she answered; “but if
you die in battle you must remember it at the last.”
“It seems an awful waste of opportunities,” he said, “but I'll make it up
on the day that I come back a Major-general. Then I shall say 'forward,
madam,' and you'll marry me on the spot.”
“Don't be too sure. I may grow coy again when the war is over.”
“When you do I'll find the remedy--for I'll be a Major-general, then, and
you a private. This war must make me, dear. I shan't stay in the ranks much
longer.”
“I like you there--it is so brave,” she said.
“But you'll like me anywhere, and I prefer the top--the very top. Oh, my
love, we'll wring our happiness from the world before we die!”
With a shiver she came back to the earth.
“I had almost forgotten him,” she said in keen self-reproach, and went
quickly over the rustling leaves to the cabin door. As Dan followed her the
day seemed to grow suddenly darker to his eyes.
On the threshold he met Mrs. Ambler, composed and tearless, wearing her
grief as a veil that hid her from the outside world. Before her calm gray
eyes he fell back with an emotion not unmixed with awe.
“I did the best I could,” he said bluntly, “but it was nothing.”
She thanked him quietly, asking a few questions in her grave and gentle
voice. Was he conscious to the end? Did he talk of home? Had he expressed
any wishes of which she was not aware?
“They are bringing him to the wagon now,” she finished steadily. “No, do
not go in--you are very weak and your strength must be saved to hold your
musket. Shadrach and Big Abel will carry him, I prefer it to be so. We left
the wagon at the end of the path; it is a long ride home, but we have
arranged to change horses, and we shall reach Uplands, I hope, by sunrise.”
“I wish to God I could go with you!” he exclaimed.
“Your place is with the army,” she answered. “I have no son to send, so you
must go in his stead. He would have it this way if he could choose.”
For a moment she was silent, and he looked at her placid face and the
smooth folds of her black silk with a wonder that checked his words.
“Some one said of him once,” she added presently, “that he was a man who
always took his duty as if it were a pleasure; and it was true--so true. I
alone saw how hard this was for him, for he hated war as heartily as he
dreaded death. Yet when both came he met them squarely and without looking
back.”
“He died as he had lived, the truest gentleman I have ever known,” he said.
A pleased smile hovered for an instant on her lips.
“He fought hard against secession until it came,” she pursued quietly, “for
he loved the Union, and he had given it the best years of his life--his
strong years, he used to say. I think if he ever felt any bitterness toward
any one, it was for the man or men who brought us into this; and at last he
used to leave the room because he could not speak of them without anger. He
threw all his strength against the tide, yet, when it rushed on in spite of
him, he knew where his duty guided him, and he followed it, as always, like
a pleasure. You thought him sanguine, I suppose, but he never was so--in
his heart, though the rest of us think differently, he always felt that he
was fighting for a hopeless cause, and he loved it the more for very pity
of its weakness. 'It is the spirit and not the bayonet that makes history,'
he used to say.”
Heavy steps crossed the cabin floor, and Uncle Shadrach and Big Abel came
out bringing the dead man between them. With her hand on the gray coat,
Mrs. Ambler walked steadily as she leaned on Betty's shoulder. Once or
twice she noticed rocks in the way, and cautioned the negroes to go
carefully down the descending grade. The bright leaves drifted upon them,
and through the thin woods, along the falling path, over the lacework of
lights and shadows, they went slowly out into the road where Hosea was
waiting with the open wagon.
The Governor was laid upon the straw that filled the bottom, Mrs. Ambler
sat down beside him, and as Betty followed, Uncle Shadrach climbed upon the
seat above the wheel.
“Good-by, my boy,” said Mrs. Ambler, giving him her hand.
“Good-by, my soldier,” said Betty, taking both of his. Then Hosea cracked
the whip and the wagon rolled out into the road, scattering the gray dust
high into the sunlight.
Dan, standing alone against the pines, looked after it with a gnawing
hunger at his heart, seeing first Betty's eyes, next the gleam of her hair,
then the dim figures fading into the straw, and at last the wagon caught up
in a cloud of dust. Down the curving road, round a green knoll, across a
little stream, and into the blue valley it passed as a speck upon the
landscape. Then the distance closed over it, the sand settled in the road,
and the blank purple hills crowded against the sky.
V
“THE PLACE THEREOF”
In the full beams of the sun the wagon turned into the drive between the
lilacs and drew up before the Doric columns. Mr. Bill and the two old
ladies came out upon the portico, and the Governor was lifted down by Uncle
Shadrach and Hosea and laid upon the high tester bed in the room behind the
parlour.
As Betty entered the hall, the familiar sights of every day struck her eyes
with the smart of a physical blow. The excitement of the shock had passed
from her; there was no longer need to tighten the nervous strain, and
henceforth she must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest--in
the place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories. While
there was something for her hands to do--or the danger of delay in the long
watch upon the road--it had not been so hard to brace her strength against
necessity, but here--what was there left that she must bring herself to
endure? The torturing round of daily things, the quiet house in which to
cherish new regrets, and outside the autumn sunshine on the long white
turnpike. The old waiting grown sadder, was begun again; she must put out
her hands to take up life where it had stopped, go up and down the shining
staircase and through the unchanged rooms, while her ears were always
straining for the sound of the cannon, or the beat of a horse's hoofs upon
the road.
The brick wall around the little graveyard was torn down in one corner,
and, while the afternoon sun slanted between the aspens, the Governor was
laid away in the open grave beneath rank periwinkle. There was no minister
to read the service, but as the clods of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs.
Ambler opened her prayer book and Betty, kneeling upon the ground, heard
the low words with her eyes on the distant mountains. Overhead the aspens
stirred beneath a passing breeze, and a few withered leaves drifted slowly
down. Aunt Lydia wept softly, and the servants broke into a subdued
wailing, but Mrs. Ambler's gentle voice did not falter.
“He, cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a
shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
She read on quietly in the midst of the weeping slaves, who had closed
about her. Then, at the last words, her hands dropped to her sides, and she
drew back while Uncle Shadrach shovelled in the clay.
“It is but a span,” she repeated, looking out into the sunshine, with a
light that was almost unearthly upon her face.
“Come away, mamma,” said Betty, holding out her arms; and when the last
spray of life-everlasting was placed upon the finished mound, they went out
by the hollow in the wall, turning from time to time to look back at the
gray aspens. Down the little hill, through the orchard, and across the
meadows filled with waving golden-rod, the procession of white and black
filed slowly homeward. When the lawn was reached each went to his
accustomed task, and Aunt Lydia to her garden.
An hour later the Major rode over in response to a message which had just
reached him.
“I was in town all the morning,” he explained in a trembling voice, “and I
didn't get the news until a half hour ago. The saddest day of my life,
madam, is the one upon which I learn that I have outlived him.”
“He loved you, Major,” said Mrs. Ambler, meeting his swimming eyes.
“Loved me!” repeated the old man, quivering in his chair, “I tell you,
madam, I would rather have been Peyton Ambler's friend than President of
the Confederacy! Do you remember the time he gave me his last keg of brandy
and went without for a month?”
She nodded, smiling, and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands,
wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friendship. To Betty these
trivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed them
eagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in a
low voice to herself characteristic stories which she had not heard before.
“I remember that--we had been married six months then,” she would say, with
the unearthly light upon her face. “It is almost like living again to hear
you, Major.”
“Well, madam, life is a sad affair, but it is the best we've got,”
responded the old gentleman, gravely.