The Battle Ground Part 44

The old doubt--the old distrust of his own strength--was fallen from him.

At the moment he could have gone to Betty, fearless and full of hope, and have said, "Come, for I am grown up at last--at last I have grown up to my love." A great tenderness was in his heart, and the tears, which had not risen for all the bodily suffering of the past two weeks, came slowly to his eyes. The purpose of life seemed suddenly clear to him, and the large patience of the sky pa.s.sed into his own nature as he sat facing the white dawn. At rare intervals in the lives of all strenuous souls there comes this sense of kinship with external things--this pa.s.sionate recognition of the appeal of the dumb world. Sky and mountains and the white sweep of the fields awoke in him the peculiar tenderness he had always felt for animals or plants. His old childish petulance was gone from him forever; in its place he was aware of a kindly tolerance which softened even the common outlines of his daily life. It was as if he had awakened breathlessly to find himself a man.

And Betty came to him again--not in detached visions, but entire and womanly. When he remembered her as on that last night at Cheric.o.ke it was with the impulse to fall down and kiss her feet. Reckless and blind with anger as he had been, she would have come cheerfully with him wherever his road led; and it was this pa.s.sionate betrayal of herself that had taught him the full measure of her love. An attempt to trifle, to waver, to bargain with the future, he might have looked back upon with tender scorn; but the gesture with which she had made her choice was as desperate as his own mood--and it was for this one reckless moment that he loved her best.

The east paled slowly as the day broke in a cloud, and the long shadows beside the fire lost their reddish glimmer. A little bird, dazed by the cold and the strange light, flew into the smoke against the stunted pine, and fell, a wet ball of feathers at Dan's feet. He picked it up, warmed it in his coat, and fed it from the loose crumbs in his pocket.

When Pinetop awoke he was gently stroking the bird while he sang in a low voice:--

"Gay and happy, gay and happy, We'll be gay and happy still."

VII

"I WAIT MY TIME"

When he returned to Winchester it was to find Virginia already there as Jack Morson's wife. Since her marriage in late summer she had followed her husband's regiment from place to place, drifting at last to a big yellow house on the edge of the fiery little town. Dan, pa.s.sing along the street one day, heard his name called in a familiar voice, and turned to find her looking at him through the network of a tall, wrought-iron gate.

"Virginia! Bless my soul! Where's Betty?" he exclaimed amazed.

Virginia left the gate and gave him her hand over the dried creepers on the wall.

"Why, you look ten years older," was her response.

"Indeed! Well, two years of beggary, to say nothing of eight months of war, isn't just the thing to insure immortal youth, is it? You see, I'm turning gray."

The pallor of the long march was in his face, giving him a striking though unnatural beauty. His eyes were heavy and his hair hung dishevelled about his brow, but the change went deeper still, and the girl saw it. "You're bigger--that's it," she said, and added impulsively, "Oh, how I wish Betty could see you now."

Her hand was upon the wall and he gave it a quick, pleased pressure.

"I wish to heaven she could," he echoed heartily.

"But I shall tell her everything when I write--everything. I shall tell her that you are taller and stronger and that you have been in all the fights and haven't a scar to show. Betty loves scars, you see, and she doesn't mind even wounds--real wounds. She wanted to go into the hospitals, but I came away and mamma wouldn't let her."

"For G.o.d's sake, don't let her," said Dan, with a shudder, his Southern instincts recoiling from the thought of service for the woman he loved.

"There are a plenty of them in the hospitals and it's no place for Betty, anyway."

"I'll tell her you think so," returned Virginia, gayly. "I'll tell her that--and what else?"

He met her eyes smiling.

"Tell her I wait my time," he answered, and began to talk lightly of other things. Virginia followed his lead with her old shy merriment. Her marriage had changed her but little, though she had grown a trifle stately, he thought, and her coquetry had dropped from her like a veil. As she stood there in her delicate lace cap and soft gray silk, the likeness to her mother was very marked, and looking into the future, Dan seemed to see her beauty ripen and expand with her growing womanhood. How many of her race had there been, he wondered, shaped after the same pure and formal plan.

"And it is all just the same," he said, his eyes delighting in her beauty.

"There is no change--don't tell me there is any change, for I'll not believe it. You bring it all back to me,--the lawn and the lilacs and the white pillars, and Miss Lydia's garden, with the rose leaves in the paths.

Why are there always rose leaves in Miss Lydia's paths, Virginia?"

Virginia shook her head, puzzled by his whimsical tone.

"Because there are so many roses," she answered seriously.

"No, you're wrong, there's another reason, but I shan't tell you."

"My boxes are filled with rose leaves now," said Virginia. "Betty gathered them for me."

The smile leaped to his eyes. "Oh, but it makes me homesick," he returned lightly. "If I tell you a secret, don't betray me, Virginia--I am downright homesick for Betty."

Virginia patted his hand.

"So am I," she confessed, "and so is Mammy Riah--she's with me now, you know--and she says that I might have been married without Jack, but never without Betty. Betty made my dress and iced my cake and pinned on my veil."

"Ah, is that so?" exclaimed Dan, absent-mindedly. He was thinking of Betty, and he could almost see her hands as she pinned on the wedding veil--those small white hands with the strong fingers that had closed about his own.

"When you get your furlough you must go home, Dan," Virginia was saying; "the Major is very feeble and--and he quarrels with almost everyone."

"My furlough," repeated Dan, with a laugh. "Why, the war may end to-morrow and then we'll all go home together and kill the fatted calf among us. Yes, I'd like to see the old man again before I die."

"I pray every night that the war may end tomorrow," said Virginia, "but it never does." Then she turned eagerly to the Governor, who was coming toward them under the leafless trees along the street.

"Here's Dan, papa, do make him come in and be good."

The Governor, holding himself erect in his trim gray uniform, insisted, with his hand upon Dan's shoulder, that Virginia should be obeyed; and the younger man, yielding easily, followed him through the iron gate and into the yellow house.

"I don't see you every day, my boy, sit down, sit down," began the Governor, as he took his stand upon the hearth-rug. "Daughter, haven't you learned the way to the pantry yet? Dan looks as if he'd been on starvation rations since he joined the army. They aren't living high at Romney, eh?"

and then, as Virginia went out, he fell to discussing the questions on all men's lips--the prospect of peace in the near future; hopes of intervention from England; the att.i.tude of other foreign powers; and the reasons for the latest appointments by the President. When the girl came in again they let such topics go, and talked of home while she poured the coffee and helped Dan to fried chicken. She belonged to the order of women who delight in feeding a hungry man, and her eyes did not leave his face as she sat behind the tray and pressed the food upon him.

"Dan thinks the war will be over before he gets his furlough," she said a little wistfully.

A shadow crossed the Governor's face.

"Then I may hope to get back in time to watch the cradles in the wheat field," he remarked. "There's little doing on the farm I'm afraid while I'm away."

"If they hold out six months longer--well, I'll be surprised," exclaimed Dan, slapping the arm of his chair with a gesture like the Major's.

"They've found out we won't give in so long as there's a musket left; and that's enough for them."

"Maybe so, maybe so," returned the Governor, for it was a part of his philosophy to cast his conversational lines in the pleasant places. "Please G.o.d, we'll drink our next Christmas gla.s.s at Cheric.o.ke."

"In the panelled parlour," added Dan, his eyes lighting.

"With Aunt Emmeline's portrait," finished Virginia, smiling.

For a time they were all silent, each looking happily into the far-off room, and each seeing a distinct and different vision. To the Governor the peaceful hearth grew warm again--he saw his wife and children gathered there, and a few friendly neighbours with their long-lived, genial jokes upon their lips. To Virginia it was her own bridal over again with the fear of war gone from her, and the quiet happiness she wanted stretching out into the future. To Dan there was first his own honour to be won, and then only Betty and himself--Betty and himself under next year's mistletoe together.

"Well, well," sighed the Governor, and came back regretfully to the present. "It's a good place we're thinking of, and I reckon you're sorry enough you left it before you were obliged to. We all make mistakes, my boy, and the fortunate ones are those who live long enough to unmake them."

His warm smile shone out suddenly, and without waiting for a reply, he began to ask for news of Jack Powell and his comrades, all of whom he knew by name. "I was talking to Colonel Burwell about you the other day," he added presently, "and he gave you a fighting record that would do honour to the Major."