CHAPTER XII

THE LITTLE LADY

Gritting his teeth to keep his will-power up to the task, Dad began mounting the spiral stairs that led from the big hallway to the upper regions of the house. He leaned heavily on the mahogany banisters on one side, and as lightly as possible on the little lady’s black bombazine shoulder upon the other.

Once or twice dizziness again overcame him. But he forced it back.

They reached the upper hall. Dad would have stopped, but his inexorable guide urged him on.

Down the hall they went, and at the farther end came to a door that she unlocked and opened. Before them rose a shorter, narrower, steeper flight of steps.

A herculean struggle brought Dad to the summit of these. Around him were dim spaces, vaguely redolent of old lavender. Somewhere near bees were sleepily booming and crooning.

His eyes growing used to the dim light, he saw that he was in a huge garret--a garret wherein were strewn quaint bits of bygone furniture, horse-hide trunks, ghostly garments in white muslin wrappings, and broken-down household goods of every description.

“Sit there!” ordered the little lady, thrusting him gently into the depths of a soft, old armchair whose upholstery was shamelessly moth-eaten.

“Now,” as he gratefully followed her command, “just stay there till I come back.”

She vanished.

Dad stared after her in dull wonder. His mind was still hazy. He knew he had fainted momentarily through loss of blood. But he wondered that he had since then felt no weaker as the minutes had gone on. Gingerly he unwound the coat from his injured arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.

Then he understood.

The vein that had been tapped--it was assuredly no artery nor even one of the very largest veins--had bled in crass profusion for a space. Then the caking of the blood had checked further flow.

Dad was surgeon enough to realize that that meant there could be little if any more flow of blood from so petty a wound.

He was looking from side to side in search of something better than a uniform jacket wherewith to bind the hurt, when again the little lady stood before him.

Tucked under one arm was a black case, under the other were rolls of white bandages. In both hands she bore a basin of hot water in which a soft sponge bobbed like a floating island.

“There!” she said soothingly. “Just you lean back and rest. I’ll ’tend to the wound.”

With deft fingers she bathed the arm, then sponged the bullet-graze clean of blood. From the black case she drew a bottle filled with some pungent liquid. With this liquid she washed out the wound, then proceeded to bind it skillfully with a roll of the bandages.

So slight was the hurt that, but for the accident of its touching the wrong vein, it might well have caused so healthy a man no more annoyance than would the process of vaccination.

Yet for once in his life Dad felt no inclination to belittle a physical mishap.

He discovered--and wondered vaguely at the discovery--that it was marvelously pleasant to lie back like this and let his strange little hostess minister to his hurt. Her touch, too, held for him a strange and soothing magnetism all its own. Not for twenty years had a gentlewoman laid her hand upon him.

The novelty of it was delightful. Yet in his heart Dad felt the novelty was by no means all.

As she worked, the little lady’s tongue went as nimbly as her fingers.

“Isn’t this what Ehud used to call rank good luck?” she was saying. “This afternoon of all afternoons, too. Why, three days out of four I’m as busy as tunket all afternoon. And here, just to-day, I said to myself: ‘I guess I’ll sit on the stoop a spell and play lady, and do some knitting.’ And I hadn’t been there three minutes, hardly, when past you came prancing.

“There’s another piece of luck, too. Only this noon I let all three of the house servants run over to the Winstons’ plantation to a wedding in the servants’ quarters over there. And I sent Tom--he’s my gardener, the only man slave I’ve got left here--over to see they didn’t stay too late. Any other day they’d be screeching like a pack of wildcats at sight of a Yankee.”

“But, madam,” expostulated Dad, finding his voice at last, “surely you run a risk, harboring a fugitive Union soldier. It was selfish in me not to--”

“Risks?” She caught him up gayly. “Sakes! I run risks every day of my blessed life these times. When the Confederates aren’t stealing my chickens the Yankees are stealing my pigs. Or both of them in turns are stealing my cows. It’s a mercy my teeth are my own, or those would have gone, too, long ago.”

“Still, there must surely be a risk in hiding me here. You said those men would come back. And if they do--”

“If they do,” she finished, “I’ll have to ask the recording angel to blot out some of the fibs I’ll tell them. Risk? There’s no risk. They aren’t likely to search the house. Not upstairs, anyhow. The servants won’t know anything, and I don’t believe anyone will search the magnolia thicket to see if there’s a horse tethered there.

“Just you rest easy. There’s no risk--either for you or for me.”

“I can’t thank you,” he faltered. “I haven’t words to. But I think you know how grateful I am.”

“Grateful for what? For not letting you ride on until you ran into some picket-party down the road? Nonsense! There’s nothing to be grateful about.

“When I saw you streaking past my house, wounded, on that fine big horse of yours, I knew well enough no Yankee soldier would be choosing these parts to take a pleasure ride in, I knew by the way you rode there must be someone after you. So what was there to do but ask you in?”

“I--I thought you Southern ladies hated all Yankees like poison. I hardly expected--”

“Southern ladies? _Me?_ Dear man, southern Massachusetts is the farthest south _I_ was born. Born and bred there. In South Wilbr’am, ten miles out of Springfield. Do I talk Southern?”

“No. I--that is why I wondered--”

“We came South here, to Virginia, ten years ago. My husband--he was Captain Ehud Sessions--captain in the Mexican War, you know--his health failed him, and Dr. Ballard said he’d best go South to live. So we sold out in Wilbr’am and came down here. We and our daughter. She’s married now and living out in New York City.

“A couple of years later Ehud died. It didn’t seem to do him any good down here, and all the time he kept peaking for the Wilbr’am mountains. After he died I kept on running the place here. Because it was less lonely here than it would have been back home without Ehud.

“I’ve been doing it now for eight years. All alone. Except the servants. But a body that’s busy hasn’t much time for pining. So--Have I fastened that bandage too tight?”

“No. It is perfect. You are a wonderful nurse.”

“Ehud always said so,” she answered, highly gratified at the praise. “He knew a lot about doctoring and nursing. Picked it up in the Mexican War. And he taught it to me. I’ve thought sometimes, if this war keeps up, maybe I’ll close the place here and run up to Washington and volunteer as a nurse. They say they’re needed badly sometimes after battle; and there aren’t any too many of them.”

“You would put a premium on recklessness. Every man would be trying to get sick or step in the way of a bullet.”

“Now isn’t that a real pretty speech!” she cried, flushing delicately. “And a woman fifty years old her last birthday, too.”

“Madam,” said Dad, right gallantly, “I beg you won’t tax my credulity by saying you are a day over thirty.”

“Listen to the man!” she laughed happily. “Yes, sir. I’m fifty years old last May. According to the record in my family Bible.”

“Never before in my life,” returned Dad, “have I been tempted to doubt the truth of one word that is written in the Book of Books. But--”

“Wait!” she said, as though reminded of some neglected duty; and again she vanished.

This time she was gone for fully ten minutes; leaving the fugitive to dream strange, sweet, vague dreams in the shadows of the quaint, old-world garret.

At last she came back, bearing this time a tray whereon rested a most delectable little supper.

Dad had eaten nothing since dawn. At her behest he fell to with a will. And as he ate his strength came slowly back to him. Rest and food were steadily repairing whatever damage the temporary loss of blood might have wrought upon his seasoned constitution.

“I took a good look for those guerrillas of yours,” she said, as he finished eating. “But there’s no sign of them yet. This road, in the direction you were going, winds and twists like a sick adder. They might ride on for ten miles before they could be sure you weren’t riding just ahead of them. And they’d have to search all along the way back before they could get here.”

“I must go,” he said, starting up. “I’ve lost too much time already.”

“If you’re aiming to lose time,” said she, “go by all means. But if you want to get safely to wherever you were riding, you’ll stand a better chance after nightfall, and especially after those fellows pass here on their way back. Otherwise you might run into them at the gate. There’s much less traveling at night on these roads. Only the patrols. And they generally sing to keep from falling asleep in their saddles. So you’ll probably hear them in time to get out of their way. Oh, and I sneaked out and fed and watered your horse.”

Inclination for once sided with common-sense, and Dad sank back again in the big chair. The thought that this utterly charming little woman might be annoyed by a search of her house on his account sent his hand involuntarily to his pistol holster.

It was empty.

With a thrill of dismay the man realized that he must make the rest of his perilous journey weaponless.

He remembered thrusting back the revolver into its holster after his brush with the guerrillas on the byroad. He had thrust it back carelessly. And hard riding had evidently caused it to slip out of its resting place and tumble, unnoted by him, to the ground.

His start of surprise drew the little lady’s attention.

“What ails you?” she asked solicitously. “Does the wound hurt?”

“I wish it did,” he replied in the ponderous gallantry which suddenly had seemed to come so easy to him, “so that I might get you to bind it for me again. But it is something more important than a petty scratch on the forearm that bothers me just now. I’ve somehow lost my pistol. I have no weapon to protect you in case those ruffians should try to come in; and no weapon to protect myself for the balance of my ride.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” she sympathized. “It beats all how careless a man is about losing weapons. Ehud was just like that with his razors.

“Don’t you worry about protecting _me_. I won’t need any protecting. But if you want something to fight with in case you should be held up on the road--why, I’ve got just the very thing for you. Take good care of it, though, won’t you?”

She darted across the attic floor and in among the shadows; returning presently with a straight-bladed infantry sword of a somewhat antique make.

Handling it almost with reverence, she offered it hilt foremost to Dad.

“It was Ehud’s,” she said gently. “He set a lot of store by it. He carried it all through the Mexican War. I think I told you he was a captain there. It cost thirty-two dollars and seventy-five cents, including the lettering. Is the light too dim for you to see the lettering? It’s on the blade.

“It says ‘_Draw me not without cause. Sheathe me not without honor._’

“I--I kind of think you’re the kind of man who can keep that commandment. Take the sword.”