After more than three months spent in hospitals, Wully came home the
next March, honorably discharged from the army. His father met him
at the end of the railroad, and before dawn they started westward
over the all but impassable paths called roads. Rain began falling
when the sun should have begun shining. Hour after slow hour of the
morning their horses strained and plunged and splashed through deep,
black mud. At every slough the men alighted to pull and tug at the
sunken wagon, and returned bemired to their wet blankets. From noon
till dusk they rode on, pulling grain sacks helmetwise down over
their caps to protect the back of their necks from trickles of water,
rearranging their soaked garments, hearing, when their voices fell
silent, only the splashing of the horses’ feet down into the thawed
mud, and the sucking of the water around hoofs reluctantly lifted to
take the next step. Darkness set in early, but they made the ford
while there was still a soggy twilight. More soaked, more dripping,
they went on, peering into the wall of blackness which settled down
in front of them. They were hungry. They were tired. They were
chilled to the bone. Wully’s teeth chattered in spite of all he could
do to prevent them. And they were both immeasurably happy. On they
went, caressing the fine joy in their hearts. The father had his son
home safe from battles. The son, each shivering step, was nearing the
queen of the afternoon light.
At half-past eight they drew near the welcoming lighted window
towards which they had strained their eyes so eagerly. If the boy
had had a lesser mother, if he had been well, he would have gone on
through the four miles of pouring darkness to Chirstie. But here was
shelter and rest for his feebleness, a fire, food, light, a mother,
and the children, caresses sprung from the warmest places in human
hearts--all things, in short, that a man needs, except one. It seemed
that the very kitchen breathed in great, deep sighs of thankfulness
and content, this great night of its life, the night Wully got home
from the army. The younger children sat watching him till they sank
down from their chairs asleep, for no one thought to send them away
to bed.
He had so many things to tell them that he forgot how weary he
was. Now that his danger was over, he had no need of minimizing
for his mother’s sake the discomforts he had been suffering. He
said feelingly what he thought of a government that couldn’t get
letters from a soldier’s home in Iowa to a military hospital in New
Orleans. He shouldn’t have minded the fever so much if he could have
heard from home, and if he had been stronger he would likely have
been more sensible about not getting letters. It seemed to him he
had been confined in a madhouse devised for his torture. He would
have preferred a battle months long to those endless, helpless,
sick-minded days. And now he never wanted to speak of that time or
hear of it again as long as he lived.
Young Peter had torn his coat half off his back at play that day, and
it must be mended before school time next morning. It was a piece
of patching not long or difficult, but his mother laid it down to
look at her Wully--she laid it down and took it again a dozen times
before it was done. She couldn’t deny her eyes the sight of his
white, thin, beautiful face. He ought to go to bed. She could see
that. She urged him to again and again, as they sat around the stove.
But he had always one more thing to tell as he started to go. He had
never written in full about getting back to his regiment after his
last visit home, had he? Well, when he got back, there was not an
officer left whom he had known. And the one to whom he had to tell
his tale of escaping from his guard--oh, he was a new man, most hated
by the boys--he had put Wully and two others in prison in the loft
of a barn, on bread and water. And every night the guard, who knew
them, used to hand up on the end of bayonets all the food they could
desire. And the officer heard of it, and was more angry. He was a
man who raged. And he changed the guard, and yet the men who hated
his being there, in place of the colonel they had liked, Wully’s
friends, managed some way to feed the prisoners, so that really in
the loft they had nothing to do but to sleep well-fed, and rest. And
presently the new colonel waxed more raging and swearing, and sent
the three away to another place to be disciplined, sent them--guess
where, of all places--to Colonel Ingersoll for punishment!
“What? Not that infidel!”
Yes, exactly, and that was just how Wully had felt about it! The
prisoners made Wully their spokesman in the first hearing. Colonel
Ingersoll listened to them kindly till he had finished speaking. He
had a boil on the back of his neck and was not able to turn his head,
and he sat there, just looking at Wully, a long time, too long, Wully
began to fear. And then he said:
“I wouldn’t punish you if you were my man, McLaughlin. And I don’t
see why I should because you aren’t.” And he called an orderly and
told him to take the men to a mess.
“Ingersoll did that? That infidel?”
“Yes.”
His mother was leaning forward, Peter’s coat forgotten.
“Yon’s a grand man,” she cried with conviction.
“He’s an infidel,” her husband reminded her.
“He’s a grand man for a’ that!” she asserted.
“But he’s an _infidel_!”
“He’s a grand man, I’m telling you, for a’ that!” After that, every
time she sang the antichrist’s praise to her neighbors she had the
last word of characterization. (After all, _her_ family had not been
Covenanters.) Presently she laid the coat down again--the children
were in bed now, and Wully, too, with only his father and mother
beside him in the kitchen.
“Your father told you about Jeannie’s death, Wully?” His father
_had_ told him briefly about it on the way home. He didn’t say to
his mother that the news had thrilled him with the certainty that
now his plans could have no opposition, since Chirstie was left
quite unprotected, and must be needing him. He was ashamed of the
hope he had had from it, when he saw his mother’s face harden with
grief and resentment as she went on to relate the details of her
friend’s death, a death grim enough to be in keeping with Jeannie’s
life. For her part, she hoped to live till Alex McNair got home,
till she could get one good chance to tell him what she thought of
him! Oh, it had been altogether a terrible winter, almost as bad as
that worst early one, just one fierce-driven blizzard after another.
Jeannie had known in that darkening afternoon that it was no common
illness coming over her. Chirstie, terrified by her isolation, had
begged to be allowed at once to go for her aunt. But even then so
thick was the storm raging that from the window she could not see the
barn, and to venture out into the storm could mean only death. As the
night had hurled itself upon the poor little shelter, almost hidden
under drifts, and the maniac wind unchecked by a tree, unhindered
by a considerable hill for a thousand miles, tore on in its deadly
course, inside the cabin where the candle flickered gustily out,
Jeannie had whispered to her children that she was dying. One thing
they must promise her so that she might die in peace. They must not
venture out for help, even in the morning, unless the storm was over.
She lay then moaning inarticulately, which was frightful for the
children, but not so frightful as the silence that followed, when
they could in no way make her answer their cries of agony. All that
night Chirstie sat watching beside her, relighting the candle, while
the other children slept. In the quieted morning she had helped her
brother dig an entrance to the stable, and together they had got the
horse out. She had wrapped him as securely as possible, and sent him
across the blinding snow to his uncle’s, John Keith’s. And when Aunt
Libby finally got there, she found the baby playing on the floor,
the dinner cooking on the stove, and Chirstie on her mother’s bed
unconscious.
Tears were running down Isobel McLaughlin’s face as she finished.
Though she never doubted that God was infinitely kind, she wondered
at times why that something else, called life, or nature, should be
so cruel. She wondered why it was that while with her all things
prospered, with the good Jeannie nothing ever refrained from turning
itself into tragedy. And besides all that, now that the spring seemed
coming, that stubborn girl Chirstie, refusing longer to stay with her
Aunt Libby, had suddenly taken her small brother and sister, and gone
back to her empty house, and there she was, living alone, with no
company but occasionally a neighboring girl, or her distressed Aunt
Libby. Wully’s mother had gone to her, and begged her to come and
stay with her. Other faithful friends had invited her to their home,
but they had begged and pleaded in vain. Chirstie would listen to no
one. It was a most unfitting and dangerous thing, a young girl like
that alone there. She kept saying her father would be home any day
now, but Isobel McLaughlin would prophesy that he would not be back
till he had a new wife to bring with him. They would all see whether
she was right about that or not!
Wully, the ardent, jumped instantly to the hope that Chirstie had
known he was coming, and had gone back to the cabin to be there alone
to receive him. That was the explanation of her “stubbornness” and
indeed it was a brave thing for a girl to do for her lover. Alone
there she would be this rainy night, grieving for her mother and
waiting for him! Of course she would marry him at once! He would put
in a crop there for her father. Tomorrow, not later than the next
day, at most, they would be married! He slept but excitedly that
night....
In the morning it was still raining. Breakfast and worship over, he
went to the barn, where the men were setting about those rainy-day
tasks which all well-regulated farms have in waiting. In the old
thatched barn, three sides of which were stacked slough grass, his
father was greasing the wagon’s axles; Andy was repairing the rope
ox harness; Peter and Hughie were struggling to lift wee Sarah into
their playhouse cave in a haystack side of the barn, and having at
length all but upset the wagon on themselves, propped up as it was by
only three wheels, they had to be shooed away to play on the cleaner
floor of the new barn. Wully took up a hoe that needed sharpening for
the weeding of the corn that was to be planted. They talked of the
new machine that was being made for the corn planting. Wully answered
absent-mindedly that he had seen one in Davenport once. He spoke with
one eye on the hoe, and one on the heavens. After an hour’s waiting,
the sky still forbade a journey. But his father, presently, looking
up from his work, saw him climbing on a horse, wrapping himself
in bedraggled blankets as best he might, against the downpour. He
naturally asked in surprise:
“Wherever are you going, Wully?”
Wully replied:
“Just down the road!”
Fancy that, now! A McLaughlin answering his father in a tone that
implied that what he asked was none of his business! But it was Wully
who was answering, just home after four years of absence. His father
was amused. The thought came gradually into his slow mind that there
would be a lassie in this. A feverish man wasn’t riding out through a
rain like that one without some very good reason. What lassie would
it be? He must ask his wife about it.
The path which Wully took required caution, but the cause demanded
speed. The way seemed to have stretched out incredibly since he
had last gone over it. After riding a hundred miles or so, he got
to the little shanty of a barn on the McNair place. Chirstie’s
twelve-year-old brother Dod was there, and Wully gave his horse to
his care. That horse had to be watched carefully, Wully vowed. He had
never seen such tricks as it had been doing on the way over. Dod must
not take his eyes from it. Wully hurried to the house.
The door of the house opened, and-- Oh, damn, and all other
oaths!--Scotch and army! Chirstie’s _aunt_ stood there in it, Libby
Keith. She was Wully’s aunt, too, that sister of his father’s who had
married Jeannie McNair’s brother, John Keith! This was the first time
that Wully had wanted really to curse an aunt, though he liked this
one but dutifully. She saw him, and her voice fell in dismay.
“Lawsie me!” she bewailed. “I thought it was my Peter!”
Bad enough to be taken for her Peter at any time! And she had to
stand there stupidly a moment, to recover from the disappointment, as
it were, and then looking straight at him, it was like her to ask:
“Is it you, Wully?” As if she couldn’t see that it was! Standing
there filling the door, hiding the room from him! “Whatever is the
matter?”
Where was the girl? Was his aunt a permanent blockade? He came
vigorously towards her, hurrying her slow cordiality. There she was!
There was Chirstie! She had seen him. He went towards her----
And she shrank away from him!
Not only had she not an impulse of welcome, she shrank away from him!
She gave him her hand because she couldn’t help herself.
“Chirstie!” he faltered.
“Are you back?” she asked. She pulled her hand away in a panic. “It’s
a fine day,” he heard her murmur.
It was the bitterest day of his life! He sat down weakly. Men stagger
down helplessly that way when bullets go through them. The damnable
aunt began now welcoming him fondly. He didn’t know what he was
answering her. It couldn’t be possible, could it, that Chirstie
didn’t want to see him? She had taken a seat just as far away from
him as the room permitted. She sat about her knitting industriously.
Sometimes she raised her eyes to look into the fire, but never once
did she raise them to satisfy Wully’s hunger. His eagerness, her
refusal, became apparent at length to even the stupid aunt. She
understood that Wully had got home only the night before, and in the
morning, rain and all, had ridden over to see the girl who didn’t
want to see him. He really was looking very ill. Well, well! Isobel
McLaughlin would have been mightily “set up” by such a match. If
Chirstie had not been Peter’s own cousin, Libby Keith would have
liked nothing better than the girl for her son. She had fancied at
times her son had thought of it, too. Her sympathy was with the
soldier. She rose heavily after really only a few minutes, and said:
“I doubt the setting hens have left the nests, Chirstie.”
She put a shawl over her head, and went to the door, and closed it
after her. Wully jumped to his feet, and went to bend down over his
sweetheart.
“What’s the matter, Chirstie? What’s the matter? What have I done?”
She shrank back into her chair.
“You haven’t forgotten! You remember that afternoon! I thought now
that you are alone here, we needn’t wait!”
“Sit down in your chair!” she commanded. “Don’t!”
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
“You’re in my light!”
He drew back only a little way.
“I didn’t say it all, but you know! Didn’t you get my letters either?”
She moved farther away from him. “Now that I think of it, I guess I
did. I got one or two.” She looked as if she was trying to recall
something trivial!
He stood absolutely dazed, looking at her hard face. Then she said:
“It’s near dinner time. You’ll be going back.”
“I _will_ not!” he cried, outraged. “I came for you, Chirstie! I
thought we could be married right away. That’s what I meant. You knew
that!” He bent over her again, and she struggled away angrily. She
went to the door, and called:
“Auntie! Wully’s going! Do you want to see him?”
Aunt Libby came heavily in. She urged him to stay for dinner. At
least she would make him something hot. Why, he was all wet from the
ride!
“Don’t bother about me!” he said angrily, hardly knowing his own
voice. “I just rode over to see a calf of Stevenson’s. I’ll be on my
way!” Out of the house he rushed, leaving his aunt to meditate upon
her theories.
Turning back, he saw, through tears, that the girl was looking after
him. He wouldn’t ride towards the Stevensons. He would ride straight
home, and she would know why he had come. He was chilling severely
now, from the shock of her denial, from rage and humiliation and
sorrow. He hardly knew whether it was tears or rain in his face.
“Fool!” he kept saying to himself. _Fool_ that he had been! Why had
he ever taken so much for granted? He had had only a little letter
from her, a shy letter. But he had never doubted she wrote often
to him, letters which, like his mother’s, had never reached him.
Of course she had never really said that she would wait for him.
She had never promised. But that was what that afternoon meant to
him. It must be that some other man had won her. They must all be
wanting her. While he had been lying in that hospital, living only
on the dreams of their lovemaking, some other man had taken his place
against her face. Or could it be that the tragic death of her mother
had made her cold? It was no use trying to imagine that, for what
ordinary, unkissed girl of the neighborhood would not have given him
a decent welcome home? A mere acquaintance would have been more glad
to see him back than she had been. Glad! She had not only not been
glad. She had shrunk away in fear, and dread, even disgust. If it had
been but mourning for her mother, she would have come to him. If he
had been disconsolate, he would have known where to go for comfort!
He had simply been a fool to suppose he had won her. Still, there
was that afternoon to justify his hope. Could it be possible that
that had meant nothing to her? Could he believe that that had been
to her an accustomed experience? If only her face had blossomed just
a little for him, that was all he would have asked. He could have
waited, respecting her bereavement. But that shrinking away, that
fear--what could he make of that? And he had supposed, fool that he
was, that she felt toward him somewhat as he had felt toward her! She
wanted nothing of him but his absence. All the family would hear now
of his visit from Aunt Libby. Not that he would mind that, if only
she had welcomed it! The wound was sickening him.