Yorktown broke the British heart, and General Dale, still weak from
wounds, went home to Red Oaks. It was not long before, with gentle
inquiry, he had pieced out the full story of Barbara and Erskine and
Dane Grey, and wisely he waited his chance with each phase of the
situation. Frankly he told her first of Grey's dark treachery, and the
girl listened with horrified silence, for she would as soon have
distrusted that beloved father as the heavenly Father in her prayers.
She left him when he finished the story and he let her go without
another word. All day she was in her room and at sunset she gave him her
answer, for she came to him dressed in white, knelt by his chair, and
put her head in his lap. And there was a rose in her hair.
"I have never understood about myself and--and that man," she said, "and
I never will."
"I do," said the general gently, "and I understand you through my sister
who was so like you. Erskine's father was as indignant as Harry is now,
and I am trying to act toward you as my father did toward her." The girl
pressed her lips to one of his hands.
"I think I'd better tell you the whole story now," said General Dale,
and he told of Erskine's father, his wildness and his wanderings, his
marriage, and the capture of his wife and the little son by the Indians,
all of which she knew, and the girl wondered why he should be telling
her again. The general paused:
"You know Erskine's mother was not killed. He found her." The girl
looked up amazed and incredulous.
"Yes," he went on, "the white woman whom he found in the Indian village
was his mother."
"Father!" She lifted her head quickly, leaned back with hands caught
tight in front of her, looked up into his face--her own crimsoning and
paling as she took in the full meaning of it all. Her eyes dropped.
"Then," she said slowly, "that Indian girl--Early Morn--is his
half-sister. Oh, oh!" A great pity flooded her heart and eyes. "Why
didn't Erskine take them away from the Indians?"
"His mother wouldn't leave them." And Barbara understood.
"Poor thing--poor thing!"
"I think Erskine is going to try now."
"Did you tell him to bring them here?" The general put his hand on her
head.
"I hoped you would say that. I did, but he shook his head."
"Poor Erskine!" she whispered, and her tears came. Her father leaned
back and for a moment closed his eyes.
"There is more," he said finally. "Erskine's father was the eldest
brother--and Red Oaks----"
The girl sprang to her feet, startled, agonized, shamed: "Belongs to
Erskine," she finished with her face in her hands. "God pity me," she
whispered, "I drove him from his own home."
"No," said the old general with a gentle smile. He was driving the barb
deep, but sooner or later it had to be done.
"Look here!" He pulled an old piece of paper from his pocket and handed
it to her. Her wide eyes fell upon a rude boyish scrawl and a rude
drawing of a buffalo pierced by an arrow:
"It make me laugh. I have no use. I give hole dam plantashun Barbara."
"Oh!" gasped the girl and then--"where is he?"
"Waiting at Williamsburg to get his discharge." She rushed swiftly down
the steps, calling:
"Ephraim! Ephraim!"
And ten minutes later the happy, grinning Ephraim, mounted on the
thoroughbred, was speeding ahead of a whirlwind of dust with a little
scented note in his battered slouch hat:
"You said you would come whenever I wanted you. I want you to come
now.
"Barbara."
The girl would not go to bed, and the old general from his window saw
her like some white spirit of the night motionless on the porch. And
there through the long hours she sat. Once she rose and started down the
great path toward the sun-dial, moving slowly through the flowers and
moonlight until she was opposite a giant magnolia. Where the shadow of
it touched the light on the grass, she had last seen Grey's white face
and scarlet breast. With a shudder she turned back. The night whitened.
A catbird started the morning chorus. The dawn came and with it Ephraim.
The girl waited where she was. Ephraim took off his battered hat.
"Marse Erskine done gone, Miss Barbary," he said brokenly. "He done gone
two days."
The girl said nothing, and there the old general found her still
motionless--the torn bits of her own note and the torn bits of Erskine's
scrawling deed scattered about her feet.