The Battle Ground Part 33

After the first glance, his master pa.s.sed him by and moved on to the adjoining cabin. "Does Mahaley live here?" he asked again and yet again, until, suddenly, he had no need to put the question for from the last room he heard a low voice praying, and upon looking in saw his wife kneeling with her open Bible near the bedside.

With his hat in his hand, he stood within the shadow of the doorway and waited for the earnest voice to fall silent. Mahaley was dying, this he saw when his glance wandered to the shrunken figure beneath the patchwork quilt; and at the same instant he realized how small a part was his in Mahaley's life or death. He should hardly have known her had he met her last week in the corn field; and it was by chance only that he knew her now when she came to die.

As he stood there the burden of his responsibility weighed upon him like old age. Here in this scant cabin things so serious as birth and death showed in a pathetic bareness, stripped of all ceremonial trappings, as mere events in the orderly working out of natural laws--events as seasonable as the springing up and the cutting down of the corn. In these simple lives, so closely lived to the ground, grave things were sweetened by an unconscious humour which was of the soil itself; and even death lost something of its strangeness when it came like the grateful shadow which falls over a tired worker in the field.

Mrs. Ambler finished her prayer and rose from her knees; and as she did so two slave women, crouching in a corner by the fire, broke into loud moaning, which filled the little room with an animal and inarticulate sound of grief.

"Come away, Julia," implored the Governor in a whisper, resisting an impulse to close his ears against the cry.

But his wife shook her head and spoke for a moment with the sick woman before she wrapped her shawl about her and came out into the open air. Then she gave a sigh of relief, and, with her hand through her husband's arm, followed the path across the orchard.

"So you came home, after all," she said. For a moment he made no response; then, glancing about him in the darkness, he spoke in a low voice, as if fearing the sound of his own words.

"Bad news brought me home, Julia," he replied, "At the tavern they told me a message had come to Leicesterburg from Harper's Ferry. An attack was made on the a.r.s.enal at midnight, and, it may be but a rumour, my dear, it was feared that the slaves for miles around were armed for an uprising."

His voice faltered, and he put out his hand to steady her, but she looked up at him and he saw her clear eyes shining in the gloom.

"Oh, poor creatures," she murmured beneath her breath.

"Julia, Julia," he said softly, and lifted the lantern that he might look into her face. As the light fell on her he knew that she was as much a mystery to him now as she had been twenty years ago on her wedding-day.

When they went into the house, he followed Uncle Shadrach about and carefully barred the windows, shooting bolts which were rusted from disuse.

After the old negro had gone out he examined the locks again; and then going into the hall took down a bird gun and an army pistol from their places on the rack. These he loaded and laid near at hand beside the books upon his table.

There was no sleep for him that night, and until dawn he sat, watchful, in his chair, or moved softly from window to window, looking for a torch upon the road and listening for the sound of approaching steps.

XIII

CRABBED AGE AND CALLOW YOUTH

With the morning came trustier tidings. The slaves had taken no part in the attack, the weapons had dropped from the few dark hands into which they had been given, and while the shots that might bring them freedom yet rang at Harper's Ferry, the negroes themselves went with cheerful faces to their work, or looked up, singing, from their labours in the field. In the green valley, set amid blue mountains, they moved quietly back and forth, raking the wind-drifts of fallen leaves, or ploughing the rich earth for the autumn sowing of the grain.

As the Governor was sitting down to breakfast, the Lightfoot coach rolled up to the portico, and the Major stepped down to deliver himself of his garnered news. He was in no pleasant humour, for he had met Dan face to face that morning as he pa.s.sed the tavern, and as if this were not sufficient to try the patience of an irascible old gentleman, a spasm of gout had seized him as he made ready to descend.

But at the sight of Mrs. Ambler, he trod valiantly upon his gouty toe, and screwed his features into his blandest smile--an effort which drew so heavily upon the source of his good-nature, that he arrived at Cheric.o.ke an hour later in what was known to Betty as "a purple rage."

"You know I have always warned you, Molly," was his first offensive thrust as he entered Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber, "that your taste for trash would be the ruin of the family. It has ruined your daughter, and now it is ruining your grandson. Well, well, you can't say that it is for lack of warning."

From the centre of her tester bed, the old lady calmly regarded him. "I told you to bring back the boy, Mr. Lightfoot," she returned. "You surely saw him in town, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, I saw him," replied the Major, loosening his high black stock.

"But where do you suppose I saw him, ma'am? and how? Why, the young scapegrace has actually gone and hired himself out as a stagedriver--a common stagedriver. And, bless my soul, he had the audacity to tip his hat to me from the box--from the box with the reins in his hand, ma'am!"

"What stage, Mr. Lightfoot?" inquired his wife, with an eye for particulars.

"Oh, I wash my hands of him," pursued the Major, waving her question aside.

"I wash my hands of him, and that's the end of it. In my day, the young were supposed to show some respect for their elders, and every calf wasn't of the opinion that he could bellow like a bull--but things are changed now, and I wash my hands of it all. A more ungrateful family, I am willing to maintain, no man was ever blessed with--which comes, I reckon, from sparing the rod and spoiling the child--but I'm sure I don't see how it is that it is always your temper that gets inherited."

The personal note fell unheeded upon his wife's ears.

"You don't mean to tell me that you came away and left the boy sitting on the box of a stagecoach?" she demanded sharply.

"Would you have me claim a stagedriver as a grandson?" retorted the Major, "because I may as well say now, ma'am, that there are some things I'll not stoop to. Why, I'd as lief have an uncle who was a chimney sweep."

Mrs. Lightfoot turned uneasily in bed. "It means, I suppose, that I shall have to get up and go after him," she remarked, "and you yourself heard the doctor tell me not to move out of bed for a week. It does seem to me, Mr.

Lightfoot, that you might show some consideration for my state of health.

Do ride in this afternoon, and tell Dan that I say he must behave himself properly."

But the Major turned upon her the terrific countenance she had last seen on Jane's wedding day, and she fell silent from sheer inability to utter a protest befitting the occasion.

"If that stagedriver enters my house, I leave it, ma'am," thundered the old gentleman, with a stamp of his gouty foot. "You may choose between us, if you like,--I have never interfered with your fancies--but, by G.o.d, if you bring him inside my doors I--I will horsewhip him, madam," and he went limping out into the hall.

On the stair he met Betty, who looked at him with pleading eyes, but fled, affrighted, before the colour of his wrath; and in his library he found Champe reading his favourite volume of Mr. Addison.

"I hope you aren't scratching up my books, sir," he observed, eying the pencil in his great-nephew's hand.

Champe looked at him with his cool glance, and rose leisurely to his feet.

"Why, I'd as soon think of scrawling over Aunt Emmeline's window pane," he returned pleasantly, and added, "I hope you had a successful trip, sir."

"I got a lukewarm supper and a cold breakfast," replied the Major irritably, "and I heard that the Marines had those Kansas raiders entrapped like rats in the a.r.s.enal, if that is what you mean."

"No, I wasn't thinking of that," replied Champe, as quietly as before. "I came home to find out about Dan, you know, and I hoped you went into town to look him up."

"Well, I didn't, sir," declared the Major, "and as for that scamp--I have as much knowledge of his whereabouts as I care for.--Do you know, sir," he broke out fiercely, "that he has taken to driving a common stage?"

Champe was sharpening his pencil, and he did not look up as he answered.

"Then the sooner he leaves off the better, eh, sir?" he inquired.

"Oh, there's your everlasting wrangling!" exclaimed the Major with a hopeless gesture. "You catch it from Molly, I reckon, and between you, you'll drive me into dotage yet. Always arguing! Never any peace. Why, I believe if I were to take it into my head to remark that white is white, you would both be setting out to convince me that it is black. I tell you now, sir, that the sooner you curb that tendency of yours, the better it will be."

"Aren't we rather straying from the point?" interposed Champe half angrily.

"There it is again," gasped the Major.

The knife slipped in Champe's hand and scratched his finger. "Surely you don't intend to leave Dan to knock about for himself much longer?" he said coolly. "If you do, sir, I don't mind saying that I think it is a d.a.m.n shame."

"How dare you use such language in my presence?" roared the old gentleman, growing purple to the neck. "Have you, also, been fighting for barmaids and taking up with gaol-birds? It is what I have to expect, I suppose, and I may as well accustom my ears to profanity; but d.a.m.n you, sir, you must learn some decency;" and going into the hall he shouted to Congo to bring him a julep.

Champe said nothing more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in an exhausted voice.

"But what does he say? tell me," questioned Betty, as she moved to a little peaked window which overlooked the lawn.

"What doesn't he say?" groaned Champe with his eyes upon her as she stood relieved against the greenish panes of gla.s.s.