Chapter 25

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.

“He loved it,” returned Mrs. Ambler, and as the Major rose to go, she followed him into the hall and inquired if Mrs. Lightfoot had been successful with her weaving. “She told me that she intended to have her old looms set up again,” she added, “and I think that I shall follow her example. Between us we might clothe a regiment of soldiers.”

“She has had the servants brushing off the cobwebs for a week,” replied the Major, “and to-day I actually found Car'line at a spinning wheel on the back flagstones. There's not the faintest doubt in my mind that if Molly had been placed in the Commissary department our soldiers would be living to-day on the fat of the land. She has knitted thirty pairs of socks since spring. Good-by, my dear lady, good-by, and may God sustain you in your double affliction.”

He crossed the portico, bowed as he descended the steps, and, mounting in the drive, rode slowly away upon his dappled mare. When he reached the turnpike he lifted his hat again and passed on at an amble.

During the next few months it seemed to Betty that she aged a year each day. The lines closed and opened round them; troops of blue and gray cavalrymen swept up and down the turnpike; the pastures were invaded by each army in its turn, and the hen-house became the spoil of a regiment of stragglers. Uncle Shadrach had buried the silver beneath the floor of his cabin, and Aunt Floretta set her dough to rise each morning under a loose pile of kindling wood. Once a deserter penetrated into Betty's chamber, and the girl drove him out at the point of an old army pistol, which she kept upon her bureau.

“If you think I am afraid of you come a step nearer,” she had said coolly, and the man had turned to run into the arms of a Federal officer, who was sweeping up the stragglers. He was a blue-eyed young Northerner, and for three days after that he had set a guard upon the portico at Uplands. The memory of the small white-faced girl, with her big army pistol and the blazing eyes haunted him from that hour until Appomattox, when he heaved a sigh of relief and dismissed it from his thoughts. “She would have shot the rascal in another second,” he said afterward, “and, by George, I wish she had.”

The Governor's wine cellar was emptied long ago, the rare old wine flowing from broken casks across the hall.

“What does it matter?” Mrs. Ambler had asked wearily, watching the red stream drip upon the portico. “What is wine when our soldiers are starving for bread? And besides, war lives off the soil, as your father used to say.”