Chapter 3

"Heavens, no!" The Major's deep voice was full of assurance. "Last week," he added thoughtfully, "the coffee was pretty weak, but it never occurred to me that--" he stopped abruptly, rose from his chair with sudden energy, violently blew his nose, and tramped down to the end of the hall and back. "Damn the Fairfax pride!" he exclaimed fiercely. "Here Uncle Noah has been coming into the library Wednesday nights and telling the Colonel that the stock had all been bedded down for the night when all the time there's been nothing left but this confounded old turkey gobbler we've been hearing about. He swore last week that somebody had stolen the silver teapot. Abominable old liar! He must have sold it." The Major threw out his arms with a wrathful gesture. "All this comedy, if you please, for my benefit. Here I've been there every week, and never suspected, thanks to the infernal stratagems of that black fiend of an Uncle Noah. Damn the Fairfax pride!"

The Major sat down as suddenly as he had risen, and, bending over, attacked the fire with vicious energy.

"Tell me, Major," Dick presently asked, "have you ever mentioned me to the Colonel since I went North?"

"Once." The Major made a wry face. "I never tried again."

Dick colored. "Does he know about Ruth?"

"No, I dared not mention it." The Major looked at the other intently. "Dick," he said, "what was this quarrel all about, anyway?"

"In the beginning, Major," admitted the young man, flushing, "it was so childish--I'm ashamed to speak of it."

"Out with it!" commanded the Major. "I won't be hoodwinked by a Fairfax any longer."

"Well, sir, if you must know, it was about--the War."

"The War!" exploded the Major. "By gad, sir, what about the War?"

"Dad and I were talking it over, and--well, to be frank, Major, I said I thought the North had been right, and that, if I had been in the world at the time, I would have fought with them despite my kinsmen."

"Go on! Did you fight in any other post-mortem wars? The Revolution, or the fall of Rome?"

Dick ignored the sarcasm. "My sympathy for the North made him furious," he went on. "We quarreled terribly and both of us said things that I know we didn't mean. It was the Fairfax temper, sir; I--"

"Damn the Fairfax temper!" roared the Major. "Thank Heavens, the Verneys are mild!"

Dick laughed, in spite of himself. "I apologized," he continued soberly, "but he wouldn't listen; told me to get out; said if I chose to change my opinions about the North, we'd talk it over, and I, of course, refused."

"Of course!" interpolated the Major trimly.

"I've written since, suggesting that we forget it all and start anew, but he won't listen, sir."

The Major stroked his beard ominously. "Did it ever occur to you, Dick," he demanded, "that enough families were estranged by that War without carrying it over into the Twentieth Century? Let me see--how long after the War were you born? Twenty years, wasn't it? I remember; your father and Ruth's were married about the same time."

"Every man has a right to his opinions, Major," Dick asserted with spirit. "Of course I've no personal knowledge of the War, but"--stubbornly--"the North was right."

"Fairfax to the core!" thought the Major in secret admiration. "The boy's his father all over again. Well, Dick," he said mildly, "we older men of the South feel a little differently about this War; but, my boy, these post-bellum disputes don't pay, particularly when one participant was born long after the guns were quiet. In my opinion you didn't know enough about the War to quarrel over it. Great Scott, quarreling over the War! Dick, you deserved to be spanked."

The jingle of sleigh-bells rang blithely through the silence that followed, and the Major sprang to his feet. "Merciful Heavens!" he exclaimed, staring at his watch, "it's twelve o'clock. That must be Uncle Neb still waiting, and Grandmother Verney's probably standing on the church porch yet, mad as a hornet." He was at the door now, calling wildly to the negro: "Uncle Neb, why under the canopy didn't you call me?"

The darky scratched his head. "Massa Edward," he confessed, "I ain't been yere. I jus' druv Missy Ruth over to Brierwood with Uncle Noah to see Colonel Fairfax."

The Major summoned Dick in great excitement. "Dick," he exclaimed, "get into your overcoat as fast as you can and drive over to Brierwood with Uncle Neb. Ruth's gone ahead of you, and you couldn't have a better deputy short of an angel."

Dick wrung the Major's hand and fled to the waiting sleigh, the color flooding his face.

"And, Uncle Neb," called the Major frantically, "hurry back, or Grandmother Verney will be tramping home in the snow, rheumatism or no rheumatism."

With a wild jingle of bells that seemed to Dick the hysterical echo of his own heartbeats the sleigh was off.

VI

The Colonel's Christmas

VI

At Brierwood the Colonel, wrought to a high tension of excitement by the mysterious flood of Christmas prosperity, of which the latest manifestation had been a fresh newspaper dated the night before, surmounted by a cigar of no mean label, had been vainly searching for Uncle Noah, bewildered by the darky's odd vagaries which had culminated in the culprit's disappearance. Just as the Colonel had returned to the library, drawn his favorite chair up to the cheerful blaze of the wood fire, and opened his favorite volume, a door in the rear of the house shut softly, and, convinced that Uncle Noah had returned, the Colonel closed his book and adjusted his glasses, determined to have an immediate reckoning with the author of all this Christmas cheer.

A light step sounded behind his chair, and the Colonel turned, quite primed for an altercation. In an instant, however, the old man was on his feet, bowing grandly in spite of his astonishment. A girl stood in the doorway, her cloak falling loosely about her figure. Her cheeks were blazing scarlet from the cold, and the deep gray eyes, fringed in black, bore something in their warm depths that stirred familiar memories.

"Colonel," she said, stretching out a slim, white hand, "I'm Ruth Verney, Major Edward's niece. I've just driven one of your servants" (rare tact was but one of the Verney charms) "over from Fernlands and I thought you wouldn't mind if I ran in for an instant to enjoy your fire."

"Why, child," the Colonel cried, forgetting all else in his delight, "you must be Walter Verney's daughter." Ruth smilingly nodded. "I knew it," he went on; "you have his eyes. Sit down here. I knew your father well; when we were boys he and I were inseparable." He paused and added simply:

"That was before the War."

The dark lashes veiled for an instant, a certain excitement in the gray eyes. "I'm down for Christmas with Uncle Edward," Ruth explained; and before the Colonel had fully realized it they were chatting happily together like old friends. Suddenly the girl exclaimed: "Colonel Fairfax, I know you'll be glad to hear that Dad and the Major are friends again."

"Indeed I am!" agreed the Colonel heartily. "In the old days we would have laughed at the man who could possibly have suggested a quarrel for the Verney twins."

"Nothing but a cruel war could have done it," said the girl quietly. "What does it matter now," she demanded impetuously, "if Daddy did fight for the North and the Major for the South? It's all so long ago that a quarrel about it is foolish."

The Colonel cleared his throat. "Yes, it is foolish," he admitted.

"You see," Ruth leaned eagerly forward, "I met a man who knew the Major, and he praised him so highly that I lay awake all one night thinking what a pity it was that two such splendid men as Daddy and his brother should still be enemies over an old bygone war. You know, Colonel, they would have been friends ages ago, only each was too proud to make the first advance. Wasn't it foolish?"

The Colonel nodded, carefully shading his eyes from the fire.

"They were just wasting precious years of companionship," went on the girl. "That thought came to me as I lay awake in bed, and the very next morning I wrote to the Major. You see, Colonel Fairfax, I feel this way," she explained. "There's no North and no South. Daddy and the Major are citizens of the United States."

The Colonel rose and busied himself about the fire. When he put back the tongs and reseated himself his cheeks were hot from its blazing warmth.

"And that's what I told Uncle Edward in the letter, and, Colonel, he wrote me such a glorious letter back that I had to show it to Daddy. He was delighted, and he said that any two men who fought over the battles of a dead war were 'old fools.'"

Colonel Fairfax winced.

"So," finished the girl with glowing eyes, "Uncle Edward came rushing North in a great state of excitement, and that's how I came to be down here over Christmas."

In her impetuous criticism of the war-time quarrel that had separated the Verney twins for more than forty years, and the expression of her broad, impulsive patriotism. Colonel Fairfax had listened to certain truths which had long been subconsciously germinating in his own mind. Before he could recover from the surprise of finding that he agreed with her, Ruth, touched by the lines of care graven upon his fine old face, had caught her breath with a little sob, slipped from her place by the fire, and was kneeling, beside his chair, her eyes starry with light, her lovely face glorified with its tender appeal.

"Colonel," she cried, a catch in her voice, "I'm going to marry Dick! It was he who praised Uncle Edward so."

The Colonel's face grew scarlet; then he laid a trembling hand upon the girl's bowed head. "Child," he said, "you--you--" Tears blinded his eyes and he stopped.

In the silence that followed came the sharp sound of a quick footfall. The Colonel looked up. Dick Fairfax stood in the doorway, his eyes burning strangely in the white misery of his face.

The father rose and straightened himself with something of his old, stern dignity; but at a warm, girlish touch he gulped.

"Dick," he said queerly, holding out a trembling hand, "we're--we're both citizens of the United States, and--it's Christmas Day."

Almost before he had finished the boy had bounded across the floor and wrung the outstretched hand, his face radiant with delight. By the fire Ruth cried softly and the Colonel gently patted her dark head, his eyes full of tenderness. Then taking refuge from the sharp pain of his emotion in austere command:

"Dick," he said sternly, "go to your mother."

When Uncle Noah, in a state of beatification impossible to describe, summoned the four to the wonderful Christmas dinner Colonel Fairfax was eagerly listening to the tales of Dick's success as told by Ruth, and Dick was gently patting his mother's gray hair, a halo of silver crowning a face radiant with happiness--a Christmas quartet whose reconciliation Uncle Noah could as yet but imperfectly comprehend. That he had been the unconscious instrument of it all the gray-eyed lady had already told him; but Uncle Noah, busy with numberless culinary problems in the kitchen, had not as yet had time to ferret it out.

At four o'clock Major Verney, who had been restrained from dashing over to Brierwood hours before only by the necessity of soothing the ruffled feelings of his irate mother after her long wait for a belated sleigh on the porch of the Cotesville church, blustered in with the aggrieved old lady upon his arm.

"We've come to supper," announced the Major. "No, Dick," as the Colonel rose, "sit down. I know all about it, and to-night you're all going back to Fernlands with me to celebrate the betrothal of these two youngsters."

"It has been a day of mysteries," the Colonel said; "but will someone please tell me what Uncle Noah was doing over at Fernlands this morning when he was needed here?"

A silence fell over the little group. The subject was one whose delicacy forbade the ghost of a blunder.

It was the Major who at last drew his old friend into the deep window recess where but the night before he had watched Uncle Noah pursuing the elusive Job, and told him the story of the faithful old negro's Christmas Eve.

The Colonel listened intently, the snowy landscape outside growing blurred and misty as the record of the old man's devotion gradually unfolded. Before the Major had finished the Colonel's hand had crept to the bell at his side, and, as the darky's shuffling footsteps echoed along the corridor, he turned again and stared with unseeing eyes at the outline of the old barn. Dick shifted the log and a crimson glow irradiated the old library, making a halo of soft fire about the figure of the old darky as he paused before his master.

"Uncle Noah," said the Colonel brokenly, "I--" but his voice failed him, and he wrung the old man's hand in silence.

The Major bent and whispered a few swift words to the startled darky and a great light illumined the brown face. "Doan yoh go foh to thank me, Massa Dick," he crooned, patting the Colonel's hand with reverent devotion; "I ain't wuth it. All I needs, sah, is jus' a good kick for disobeyin' orders. 'Spects I doan understan' it all, but I does know, sah, dat de lady wid de gray eyes whut's at Major Verney's is--is a good fairy, sah. An', Colonel, de Christmas supper am ready."

Joyously they filed out, Dick lingering in the firelight for a word with Ruth. Grandmother Verney, in high good humor, went out on the Colonel's arm, the grievance of the morning's belated sleigh quite forgotten in the genial warmth of the Fairfax hospitality.

"And what, Uncle Noah," asked the Colonel of the old darky as usual, "have we to-night for supper?"

"Well, sah," beamed Uncle Noah, "we has ham an' turkey, an' cranberry sauce an' celery, an' baked apples an' mince pie an' fruitcake an'--an'--laws-a-massy, Massa, I'se too kerflusterated to ricomember any mo'."

"We'll have them all!" cried the Colonel.

A terrific gobbling arose beneath the dining-room window, and the Major rose and stared out in astonishment.

"Merciful goodness, Dick," he demanded, "what is that horrible racket?'

"Laws-a-massy, Massa," cried the old darky, "it's Job! I let him out a while back, sah, an' I done fohgot to put him to roost. I reckon he's come to remind me."

And, beaming happily at the radiant Christmas party, Uncle Noah flung up the window and in a terrible voice commanded the tyrant to be silent.