Chapter 16

At the tavern he found Jack Hicks and a neighbouring farmer or two, seated upon the porch discussing the raid upon Harper's Ferry. They would have drawn him into the talk, but he asked at once for Dan, and upon learning the room in which he lodged, ran up the narrow stair and rapped upon the door. Then, without waiting for a response, he burst into the room with outstretched hand. “Why, they've put you into a tenpin alley,” were his words of greeting.

With a laugh Dan sprang up from his chair beside the window. “What on earth are you doing here, old man?” he asked.

“Well, just at present I'm trying to pull you out of the hole you've stumbled into. I say, in the name of all that's rational, why did you allow yourself to get into such a scrape?”

Dan sat down again and motioned to a split-bottomed chair he had used for a footstool.

“There's no use going into that,” he replied frowning, “I raised the row and I'm ready to bear the consequences.”

“Ah, that's the point, my dear fellow; Aunt Molly and I have been bearing them all the morning.”

“Of course, I'm sorry for that, but I may as well tell you now that things are settled so far as I am concerned. I've been kicked out and I wouldn't go back again if they came for me in a golden chariot.”

“I hardly think that's likely to happen,” was Champe's cheerful rejoinder. “The old gentleman has had his temper touched, as, I dare say, you're aware, and, as ill-luck would have it, he saw you on the stagecoach this morning. My dear Beau, you ought to have crawled under the box.”

“Nonsense!” protested Dan, “it's no concern of his.” He turned his flushed boyish face angrily away.

Champe looked at him steadily with a twinkle in his eyes. “Well, I hope your independence will come buttered,” he remarked. “I doubt if you will find the taste of dry bread to your liking. By the way, do you intend to enter Jack Hicks's household?”

“For a fortnight, perhaps. I've written to Judge Compton, and if he'll take me into his office, I shall study law.”

Champe gave a long whistle. “I should have supposed that your taste would be for tailoring,” he observed, “your genius for the fashions is immense.”

“I hope to cultivate that also,” said Dan, smiling, as he glanced at his coat.

“What? on bread and cheese and Blackstone?”

“Oh, Blackstone! I never heard he wasn't a well-dressed old chap.”

“At least you'll take half my allowance?”

Dan shook his head. “Not a cent--not a copper cent.”

“But how will you live, man?”

“Oh, somehow,” he laughed carelessly. “I'll live somehow.”

“It's rather a shame, you know,” responded Champe, “but there's one thing of which I am very sure--the old gentleman will come round. We'll make him do it, Aunt Molly and I--and Betty.”

Dan started.

“Betty sent you a message, by the way,” pursued Champe, looking through the window. “It was something about coming home; she says you are to come home now--or when you will.” He rose and took up his hat and riding-whip.

“Or when I will,” said Dan, rising also. “Tell her--no, don't tell her anything--what's the use?”

“She doesn't need telling,” responded Champe, going toward the door; and he added as they went together down the stair, “She always understands without words, somehow.”

Dan followed him into the yard, and watched him, from under the oaks beside the empty stagecoach, as he mounted and rode away.

“For heaven's sake, remember my warning,” said Champe, turning in the saddle, “and don't insist upon eating dry bread if you're offered butter.”

“And you will look after Aunt Molly and Betty?” Dan rejoined.

“Oh, I'll look after them,” replied the other lightly, and rode off at an amble.

Dan looked after the horse and rider until they passed slowly out of sight; then, coming back to the porch, he sat down among the farmers, and listened, abstractedly, to the drawling voice of Jack Hicks.

When Champe reached Chericoke, he saw Betty looking for him from Aunt Emmeline's window seat; and as he dismounted, she ran out and joined him upon the steps.

“And you saw him?” she asked breathlessly.

“It was pleasant to think that you came to meet me for my own sake,” he returned; and at her impatient gesture, caught her hand and looked into her eyes.

“I saw him, my dear,” he said, “and he was in a temper that would have proved his descent had he been lost in infancy.”

She eagerly questioned him, and he answered with forbearing amusement. “Is that all?” she asked at last, and when he nodded, smiling, she went up to Mrs. Lightfoot's bedside and besought her “to make the Major listen to reason.”

“He never listened to it in his life, my child,” the old lady replied, “and I think it is hardly to be expected of him that he should begin at his present age.” Then she gathered, bit by bit, the news that Champe had brought, and ended by remarking that “the ways of men and boys were past finding out.”

“Do you think the Major will ever forgive him?” asked Betty, hopelessly.

“He never forgave poor Jane,” answered Mrs. Lightfoot, her voice breaking at the mention of her daughter. “But whether he forgives him or not, the silly boy must be made to come home; and as soon as I am out of this bed, I must get into the coach and drive to that God-forsaken tavern. After ten years, nothing will content them, I suppose, but that I should jolt my bones to pieces.”

Betty looked at her anxiously. “When will you be up?” she inquired, flushing, as the old lady's sharp eyes pierced her through.

“I really think, my dear, that you are less sensible than I took you to be,” returned Mrs. Lightfoot. “It was very foolish of you to allow yourself to take a fancy to Dan. You should have insisted upon preferring Champe, as I cautioned you to do. In entering into marriage it is always well to consider first, family connections and secondly, personal disposition; and in both of these particulars there is no fault to be found with Champe. His mother was a Randolph, my child, which is greatly to his credit. As for Dan, I fear he will make anything but a safe husband.”

“Safe!” exclaimed Betty indignantly, “did you marry the Major because he was 'safe,' I wonder?”

Mrs. Lightfoot accepted the rebuke with meekness.

“Had I done so, I should certainly have proved myself to be a fool,” she returned with grim humour, “but since you have fully decided that you prefer to be miserable, I shall take you with me tomorrow when I go for Dan.”

But on the morrow the old lady did not leave her bed, and the doctor, who came with his saddlebags from Leicesterburg, glanced her over and ordered “perfect repose of mind and body” before he drank his julep and rode away.

“Perfect repose, indeed!” scoffed his patient, from behind her curtains, when the visit was over. “Why, the idiot might as well have ordered me a mustard plaster. If he thinks there's any 'repose' in being married to Mr. Lightfoot, I'd be very glad to have him try it for a week.”

Betty made no response, for her throat was strained and aching; but in a moment Mrs. Lightfoot called her to her bedside and patted her upon the arm.

“We'll go next week, child,” she said gently. “When you have been married as long as I have been, you will know that a week the more or the less of a man's society makes very little difference in the long run.”

And the next week they went. On a ripe October day, when the earth was all red and gold, the coach was brought out into the drive, and Mrs. Lightfoot came down, leaning upon Champe and Betty.

The Major was reading his Horace in the library, and though he heard the new pair of roans pawing on the gravel, he gave no sign of displeasure. His age had oppressed him in the last few days, and he carried stains, like spilled wine, on his cheeks. He could not ease his swollen heart by outbursts of anger, and the sensitiveness of his temper warned off the sympathy which he was too proud to unbend and seek. So he sat and stared at the unturned Latin page, and the hand he raised to his throat trembled slightly in the air.

Outside, Betty, in her most becoming bonnet, with her blue barege shawl over her soft white gown, wrapped Mrs. Lightfoot in woollen robes, and fluttered nervously when the old lady remembered that she had left her spectacles behind.

“I brought the empty case; here it is, my dear,” she said, offering it to the girl. “Surely you don't intend to take me off without my glasses?”

Mitty was sent upstairs on a search for them, and in her absence her mistress suddenly decided that she needed an extra wrap. “The little white nuby in my top drawer, Betty--I felt a chill striking the back of my neck.”

Betty threw her armful of robes into the coach, and ran hurriedly up to the old lady's room, coming down, in a moment, with the spectacles in one hand and the little white shawl in the other.

“Now, we must really start, Congo,” she called, as she sat down beside Mrs. Lightfoot, and when the coach rolled along the drive, she leaned out and kissed her hand to Champe upon the steps.

“It is a heavenly day,” she said with a sigh of happiness. “Oh, isn't it too good to be real weather?”

Mrs. Lightfoot did not answer, for she was busily examining the contents of her black silk bag.

“Stop Congo, Betty,” she exclaimed, after a hasty search. “I have forgotten my handkerchief; I sprinkled it with camphor and left it on the bureau. Tell him to go back at once.”

“Take mine, take mine!” cried the girl, pressing it upon her; and then turning her back upon the old lady, she leaned from the window and looked over the valley filled with sunshine.

The whip cracked, the fat roans kicked the dust, and on they went merrily down the branch road into the turnpike; past Aunt Ailsey's cabin, past the wild cherry tree, where the blue sky shone through naked twigs; down the long curve, past the tuft of cedars--and still the turnpike swept wide and white, into the distance, dividing gay fields dotted with browsing cattle. At Uplands Betty caught a glimpse of Aunt Lydia between the silver poplars, and called joyfully from the window; but the words were lost in the rattling of the wheels; and as she lay back in her corner, Uplands was left behind, and in a little while they passed into the tavern road and went on beneath the shade of interlacing branches.

Underfoot the ground was russet, and through the misty woods she saw the leaves still falling against a dim blue perspective. The sunshine struck in arrows across the way, and far ahead, at the end of the long vista, there was golden space.

With the ten miles behind them, they came to the tavern in the early afternoon, and, as a small tow-headed boy swung open the gate, the coach rolled into the yard and drew up before the steps.

Jack Hicks started from his seat, and throwing his pipe aside, came hurriedly to the wheels, but before he laid his hand upon the door, Betty opened it and sprang lightly to the ground, her face radiant in the shadow of her bonnet.

“Let me speak, child,” called Mrs. Lightfoot after her, adding, with courteous condescension, “How are you, Mr. Hicks? Will you go up at once and tell my grandson to pack his things and come straight down. As soon as the horses are rested we must start back again.”

With visible perturbation Jack looked from the coach to the tavern door, and stood awkwardly scraping his feet upon the road.

“I--I'll go up with all the pleasure in life, mum,” he stammered; “but I don't reckon thar's no use--he--he's gone.”

“Gone?” cried the aghast old lady; and Betty rested her hand upon the wheel.

“Big Abel, he's gone, too,” went on Jack, gaining courage from the accustomed sound of his own drawl. “Mr. Dan tried his best to git away without him--but Lord, Lord, the sense that nigger's got. Why, his marster might as well have tried to give his own skin the slip--”

“Where did they go?” sharply put in the old lady. “Don't mumble your words, speak plainly, if you please.”

“He wouldn't tell me, mum; I axed him, but he wouldn't say. A letter came last night, and this morning at sunup they were off--Mr. Dan in front, and Big Abel behind with the bundle on his shoulder. They walked to Leicestersburg, that's all I know, mum.”

“Let me get inside,” said Betty, quickly. Her face had gone white, but she thanked Jack when he picked up the shawl she dropped, and went steadily into the coach. “We may as well go back,” she added with a little laugh.

Mrs. Lightfoot threw an anxious look into her face.

“We must consider the horses, my dear,” she responded. “Mr. Hicks, will you see that the horses are well fed and watered. Let them take their time.”

“Oh, I forgot the horses,” returned Betty apologetically, and patiently sat down with her arm leaning in the window. There was a smile on her lips, and she stared with bright eyes at the oak trees and the children playing among the acorns.

XIV

THE HUSH BEFORE THE STORM

The autumn crept into winter; the winter went by, short and fitful, and the spring unfolded slowly. With the milder weather the mud dried in the roads, and the Major and the Governor went daily into Leicesterburg. The younger man had carried his oratory and his influence into the larger cities of the state, and he had come home, at the end of a month of speech-making, in a fervour of almost boyish enthusiasm.

“I pledge my word for it, Julia,” he had declared to his wife, “it will take more than a Republican President to sever Virginia from the Union--in fact, I'm inclined to think that it will take a thunderbolt from heaven, or the Major for a despot!”

When, as the spring went on, men came from the political turmoil to ask for his advice, he repeated the words with a conviction that was in itself a ring of emphasis.

“We are in the Union, gentlemen, for better or for worse”--and of all the guests who drank his Madeira under the pleasant shade of his maples, only the Major found voice to raise a protest.

“We'll learn, sir, we'll live and learn,” interposed the old gentleman.

“Let us hope we shall live easily,” said the doctor, lifting his glass.

“And learn wisdom,” added the rector, with a chuckle.

Through the spring and summer they rode leisurely back and forth, bringing bundles of newspapers when they came, and taking away with them a memory of the broad white portico and the mellow wine.

The Major took a spasmodic part in the discussions of peace or war, sitting sometimes in a moody silence, and flaring up, like an exhausted candle, at the news of an abolition outbreak. In his heart he regarded the state of peace as a mean and beggarly condition and the sure resort of bloodless cowards; but even a prospect of the inspiring dash of war could not elicit so much as the semblance of his old ardour. His smile flashed but seldom over his harsh features--it needed indeed the presence of Mrs. Ambler or of Betty to bring it forth--and his erect figure had given way in the chest, as if a strong wind bent him forward when he walked.

“He has grown to be an old man,” his neighbours said pityingly; and it is true that the weight of his years had fallen upon him in a night--as if he had gone to bed in a hale old age, with the sap of youth in his veins, to awaken with bleared eyes and a trembling hand. Since the day of his wife's return from the tavern, when he had peered from his hiding-place in his library window, he had not mentioned his grandson by name; and yet the thought of him seemed forever lying beneath his captious exclamations. He pricked nervously at the subject, made roundabout allusions to the base ingratitude from which he suffered; and the desertion of Big Abel had damned for him the whole faithful race from which the offender sprang.

“They are all alike,” he sweepingly declared. “There is not a trustworthy one among them. They'll eat my bread and steal my chickens, and then run off with the first scapegrace that gives them a chance.”

“I think Big Abel did just right,” said Betty, fearlessly.

The old gentleman squared himself to fix her with his weak red eyes.

“Oh, you're just the same,” he returned pettishly, “just the same.”

“But I don't steal your chickens, sir,” protested the girl, laughing.

The Major grunted and looked down at her in angry silence; then his face relaxed and a frosty smile played about his lips.

“You are young, my child,” he replied, in a kind of austere sadness, “and youth is always an enemy to the old--to the old,” he repeated quietly, and looked at his wrinkled hand.

But in the excitement of the next autumn, he showed for a time a revival of his flagging spirit. When the elections came he followed them with an absorption that had in it all the violence of a mental malady. The four possible Presidents that stood before the people were drawn for him in bold lines of black and white--the outward and visible distinction between, on the one side, the three “adventurers” whom he heartily opposed, and, on the other, the “Kentucky gentleman,” for whom he as heartily voted. There was no wavering in his convictions--no uncertainty; he was troubled by no delicate shades of indecision. What he believed, and that alone, was God-given right; what he did not believe, with all things pertaining to it, was equally God-forsaken error.

Toward the Governor, when the people's choice was known, he displayed a resentment that was almost touching in its simplicity.

“There's a man who would tear the last rag of honour from the Old Dominion,” he remarked, in speaking of his absent neighbour.

“Ah, Major,” sighed the rector, for it was upon one of his weekly visits, “what course would you have us gird our loins to pursue?”

“Course?” promptly retorted the Major. “Why, the course of courage, sir.”

The rector shook his great head. “My dear friend, I fear you recognize the virtue only when she carries the battle-axe,” he observed.

For a moment the Major glared at him; then, restrained by his inherited reverence for the pulpit, he yielded the point with the soothing acknowledgment that he was always “willing to make due allowance for ministers of the gospel.”

“My dear sir,” gasped Mr. Blake, as his jaw dropped. His face showed plainly that so professional an allowance was exactly what he did not take to be his due; but he let sleeping dangers lie, and it was not until a fortnight later, when he rode out with a copy of the _Charleston Mercury_ and the news of the secession of South Carolina, that he found the daring to begin a direct approach.

It was a cold, bright evening in December, and the Major unfolded the paper and read it by the firelight, which glimmered redly on the frosted window panes. When he had finished, he looked over the fluttering sheet into the pale face of the rector, and waited breathlessly for the first decisive words.

“May she depart in peace,” said the minister, in a low voice.

The old gentleman drew a long breath, and, in the cheerful glow, the other, looking at him, saw his weak red eyes fill with tears. Then he took out his handkerchief, shook it from its folds, and loudly blew his nose.

“It was the Union our fathers made, Mr. Blake,” he said.

“And the Union you fought for, Major,” returned the rector.

“In two wars, sir,” he glanced down at his arm as if he half expected to see a wound, “and I shall never fight for another,” he added with a sigh. “My fighting days are over.”

They were both silent, and the logs merrily crackled on the great brass andirons, while the flames went singing up the chimney. A glass of Burgundy was at the rector's hand, and he lifted it from the silver tray and sipped it as he waited. At last the old man spoke, bending forward from his station upon the hearth-rug.

“You haven't seen Peyton Ambler, I reckon?”

“I passed him coming out of town and he was trembling like a leaf,” replied the rector. “He looks badly, by the way. I must remember to tell the doctor he needs building up.”

“He didn't speak about this, eh?”

“About South Carolina? Oh, yes, he spoke, sir. It happened that Jack Powell came up with him when I did--the boy was cheering with all his might, and I heard him ask the Governor if he questioned the right of the state to secede?”

“And Peyton said, sir?” The Major leaned eagerly toward him.

“He said,” pursued the rector, laughing softly. “'God forbid, my boy, that I should question the right of any man or any country to pursue folly.'”

“Folly!” cried the Major, sharply, firing at the first sign of opposition. “It was a brave deed, sir, a brave deed--and I--yes, I envy the honour for Virginia. And as for Peyton Ambler, it is my belief that it is he who has sapped the courage of the state. Why, my honest opinion is that there are not fifty men in Virginia with the spirit to secede--and they are women.”

The rector laughed and tapped his wine-glass.

“You mustn't let that reach Mrs. Lightfoot's ears, Major,” he cautioned, “for I happen to know that she prides herself upon being what the papers call a 'skulker.'” He stopped and rose heavily to his feet, for, at this point, the door was opened by Cupid and the old lady rustled stiffly into the room.

“I came down to tell you, Mr. Lightfoot, that you really must not allow yourself to become excited,” she explained, when the rector had comfortably settled her upon the hearth-rug.

“Pish! tush! my dear, there's not a cooler man in Virginia,” replied the Major, frowning; but for the rest of the evening he brooded in troubled silence in his easy chair.

In February, a week after a convention of the people was called at Richmond, the old gentleman surrendered to a sharp siege of the gout, and through the long winter days he sat, red and querulous, before the library fire, with his bandaged foot upon the ottoman that wore Aunt Emmeline's wedding dress. From Leicesterburg a stanch Union man had gone to the convention; and the Major still resented the selection of his neighbours as bitterly as if it were an affront to aspirations of his own.

“Dick Powell! Pooh! he's another Peyton Ambler,” he remarked testily, “and on my word there're too many of his kind--too many of his kind. What we lack, sir, is men of spirit.”

When his friends came now he shot his angry questions, like bullets, from the fireside. “Haven't they done anything yet, eh? How much longer do you reckon that roomful of old women will gabble in Richmond? Why, we might as well put a flock of sheep to decide upon a measure!”

But the “roomful of old women” would not be hurried, and the Major grew almost hoarse with scolding. For more than two months, while North and South barked at each other across her borders, Virginia patiently and fruitlessly worked for peace; and for more than two months the Major writhed a prisoner upon the hearth.

With the coming of the spring his health mended, and on an April morning, when Betty and the Governor drove over for a quiet chat, they found him limping painfully up and down the drive with the help of a great gold-knobbed walking-stick.

He greeted them cordially, and limped after them into the library where Mrs. Lightfoot sat knitting. While he slowly settled his foot, in its loose “carpet” slipper, upon the ottoman, he began a rambling story of the War of 1812, recalling with relish a time when rations grew scant in camp, and “Will Bolling and myself set out to scour the country.” His thoughts had made a quick spring backward, and in the midst of events that fired the Governor's blood, he could still fondly dwell upon the battles of his youth.

The younger man, facing him upon the hearth, listened with his patient courtesy, and put in a sympathetic word at intervals. No personal anxiety could cloud his comely face, nor any grievance of his own sharpen the edge of his peculiar suavity. It was only when he rose to go that he voiced, for a single instant, his recognition of the general danger, and replied to the Major's inquiry about his health with the remark, “Ah, grave times make grave faces, sir.”

Then he bowed over Mrs. Lightfoot's hand, and with his arm about Betty went out to the carriage.