The Battle Ground Part 3

Mr. Bill, a stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words, merely bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a theory in the family--a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard by--that Mr.

Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly thirty years before he had made a series of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia Ambler--and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr. Bill to the position of a perpetual mourner.

Now, as he shook his head and helped himself to chicken, Miss Lydia sighed in sympathy.

"I am afraid Mr. Bill must find us very flippant," she offered as a gentle reproof to the Governor.

Mr. Bill started and cast a frightened glance across the table. Thirty years are not as a day, and, after all, his emotion had been hardly more than he would have felt for a prize perch that had wriggled from his line into the stream. The perch, indeed, would have represented more appropriately the pa.s.sion of his life--though a lukewarm lover, he was an ardent angler.

"Ah, Brother Bill understands us," cheerfully interposed the Governor. His keen eyes had noted Mr. Bill's alarm as they noted the emptiness of Miss p.u.s.s.y's cup. "By the way, Julia," he went on with a change of the subject, "Major Lightfoot found Betty in the road and brought her home. The little rogue had run away."

Mrs. Ambler filled Miss p.u.s.s.y's cup and pressed Mr. Bill to take a slice of Sally Lunn. "The Major is so broken that it saddens me," she said, when these offices of hostess were accomplished. "He has never been himself since his daughter ran away, and that was--dear me, why that was twelve years ago next Christmas. It was on Christmas Eve, you remember, he came to tell us. The house was dressed in evergreens, and Uncle Patrick was making punch."

"Poor Patrick was a hard drinker," sighed Miss Lydia; "but he was a citizen of the world, my dear."

"Yes, yes, I perfectly recall the evening," said the Governor, thoughtfully. "The young people were just forming for a reel and you and I were of them, my dear,--it was the year, I remember, that the mistletoe was brought home in a cart,--when the door opened and in came the Major. 'Jane has run away with that dirty scamp Montjoy,' he said, and was out again and on his horse before we caught the words. He rode like a madman that night.

I can see him now, splashing through the mud with Big Abel after him."

Betty came running in with smiling eyes, and fluttered into her seat. "I got here before the waffles," she cried. "Mammy said I wouldn't. Uncle Shadrach, I got here before you!"

"Dat's so, honey," responded Uncle Shadrach from behind the Governor's chair. He was so like his master--commanding port, elaborate shirt-front, and high white stock--that the Major, in a moment of merry-making, had once dubbed him "the Governor's silhouette."

"Say your grace, dear," remonstrated Miss Lydia, as the child shook out her napkin. "It's always proper to offer thanks standing, you know. I remember your great-grandmother telling me that once when she dined at the White House, when her father was in Congress, the President forgot to say grace, and made them all get up again after they were seated. Now, for what are we about--"

"Oh, papa thanked for me," cried Betty. "Didn't you, papa?"

The Governor smiled; but catching his wife's eyes, he quickly forced his benign features into a frowning mask.

"Do as your aunt tells you, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, and Betty got up and said grace, while Virginia took the brownest waffle. When the thanksgiving was ended, she turned indignantly upon her sister. "That was just a sly, mean trick!" she cried in a flash of temper. "You saw my eye on that waffle!"

"My dear, my dear," murmured Miss Lydia.

"She's des an out'n out fire bran', dat's w'at she is," said Uncle Shadrach.

"Well, the Lord oughtn't to have let her take it just as I was thanking Him for it!" sobbed Betty, and she burst into tears and left the table, upsetting Mr. Bill's coffee cup as she went by.

The Governor looked gravely after her. "I'm afraid the child is really getting spoiled, Julia," he mildly suggested.

"She's getting a--a vixenish," declared Mr. Bill, mopping his expansive white waistcoat.

"You des better lemme go atter a twig er willow, Ma.r.s.e Peyton," muttered Uncle Shadrach in the Governor's ear.

"Hold your tongue, Shadrach," retorted the Governor, which was the harshest command he was ever known to give his servants.

Virginia ate her waffle and said nothing. When she went upstairs a little later, she carried a pitcher of b.u.t.termilk for Betty's face.

"It isn't usual for a young lady to have freckles, Aunt Lydia says," she remarked, "and you must rub this right on and not wash it off till morning--and, after you've rubbed it well in, you must get down on your knees and ask G.o.d to mend your temper."

Betty was lying in her little trundle bed, while Petunia, her small black maid, pulled off her stockings, but she got up obediently and laved her face in b.u.t.termilk. "I don't reckon there's any use about the other," she said. "I believe the Lord's jest leavin' me in sin as a warnin' to you and Petunia," and she got into her trundle bed and waited for the lights to go out, and for the watchful Virginia to fall asleep.

She was still waiting when the door softly opened and her mother came in, a lighted candle in her hand, the pale flame shining through her profile as through delicate porcelain, and illumining her worn and fragile figure. She moved with a slow step, as if her white limbs were a burden, and her head, with its smoothly parted bright brown hair, bent like a lily that has begun to fade.

She sat down upon the bedside and laid her hand on the child's forehead.

"Poor little firebrand," she said gently. "How the world will hurt you!"

Then she knelt down and prayed beside her, and went out again with the white light streaming upon her bosom. An hour later Betty heard her soft, slow step on the gravelled drive and knew that she was starting on a ministering errand to the quarters. Of all the souls on the great plantation, the mistress alone had never rested from her labours.

The child tossed restlessly, beat her pillow, and fell back to wait more patiently. At last the yellow strip under the door grew dark, and from the other trundle bed there came a m.u.f.fled breathing. With a sigh, Betty sat up and listened; then she drew the frog's skin from beneath her pillow and crept on bare feet to the door. It was black there, and black all down the wide, old staircase. The great hall below was like a cavern underground.

Trembling when a board creaked under her, she cautiously felt her way with her hands on the bal.u.s.trade. The front door was fastened with an iron chain that rattled as she touched it, so she stole into the dining room, unbarred one of the long windows, and slipped noiselessly out. It was almost like sliding into sunshine, the moon was so large and bright.

From the wide stone portico, the great white columns, looking grim and ghostly, went upward to the roof, and beyond the steps the gravelled drive shone hard as silver. As the child went between the lilac bushes, the moving shadows crawled under her bare feet like living things.

At the foot of the drive ran the big road, and when she came out upon it her trailing gown caught in a fallen branch, and she fell on her face.

Picking herself up again, she sat on a loosened rock and looked about her.

The strong night wind blew on her flesh, and she shivered in the moonlight, which felt cold and brazen. Before her stretched the turnpike, darkened by shadows that bore no likeness to the objects from which they borrowed shape. Far as eye could see, they stirred ceaselessly back and forth like an encamped army of grotesques.

She got up from the rock and slipped the frog's skin into the earth beneath it. As she settled it in place, her pulses gave a startled leap, and she stood terror-stricken beside the stone. A thud of footsteps was coming along the road.

For an instant she trembled in silence; then her st.u.r.dy little heart took courage, and she held up her hand.

"If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Devil, I'm goin' in," she cried.

From the shadows a voice laughed at her, and a boy came forward into the light--a half-starved boy, with a white, pinched face and a dusty bundle swinging from the stick upon his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" he snapped out.

Betty gave back a defiant stare. She might have been a tiny ghost in the moonlight, with her trailing gown and her flaming curls.

"I live here," she answered simply. "Where do you live?"

"Nowhere." He looked her over with a laugh.

"Nowhere?"

"I did live somewhere, but I ran away a week ago."

"Did they beat you? Old Rainy-day Jones beat one of his servants and he ran away."

"There wasn't anybody," said the boy. "My mother died, and my father went off--I hope he'll stay off. I hate him!"

He sent the words out so sharply that Betty's lids flinched.

"Why did you come by here?" she questioned. "Are you looking for the devil, too?"

The boy laughed again. "I am looking for my grandfather. He lives somewhere on this road, at a place named Cheric.o.ke. It has a lot of elms in the yard; I'll know it by that."

Betty caught his arm and drew him nearer. "Why, that's where Champe lives!"

she cried. "I don't like Champe much, do you?"

"I never saw him," replied the boy; "but I don't like him--"