The Battle Ground Part 7

"I don't want any preserves," sobbed Betty, her ap.r.o.n to her eyes.

"Then you mustn't go fishing for two weeks. Mr. Ambler, you'd better be starting at once, and don't forget to tell the Major that Betty is in great distress--you are, aren't you, Betty?"

"Yes, ma'am," wept Betty.

The Governor went out into the hall and took down his hat and riding-whip.

"The sins of the children are visited upon the fathers," he remarked gloomily as he mounted his horse and rode away from his supper.

V

THE SCHOOL FOR GENTLEMEN

The Governor rode up too late to avert the punishment. Dan had taken his whipping and was sitting on a footstool in the library, facing the Major and a couple of the Major's cronies. His face wore an expression in which there was more resentment than resignation; for, though he took blows doggedly, he bore the memory of them long after the smart had ceased--long, indeed, after light-handed justice, in the Major's person, had forgotten alike the sin and the expiation. For the Major's hand was not steady at the rod, and he had often regretted a weakness of heart which interfered with a physical interpretation of the wisdom of Solomon. "If you get your deserts, you'd get fifty lashes," was his habitual reproof to his servants, though, as a matter of fact, he had never been known to order one. His anger was sometimes of the kind that appalls, but it usually vented itself in a heightened redness of face or a single thundering oath; and a woman's sob would melt his stoniest mood. It was only because his daughter had kept out of his sight that he had never forgiven her, people said; but there was, perhaps, something characteristic in the proof that he was most relentless where he had most loved.

As for Dan's chastis.e.m.e.nt, he had struck him twice across the shoulders, and when the boy had turned to him with the bitter smile which was Jane Lightfoot's own, the Major had choked in his wrath, and, a moment later, flung the whip aside. "I'll be d.a.m.ned,--I beg your pardon, sir,--I'll be ashamed of myself if I give you another lick," he said. "You are a gentleman, and I shall trust you."

He held out his hand, but he had not counted on the Montjoy blood. The boy looked at him and stubbornly shook his head. "I can't shake hands yet because I am hating you just now," he answered. "Will you wait awhile, sir?" and the Major choked again, half in awe, half in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"You don't bear malice, I reckon?" he ventured cautiously.

"I am not sure," replied the boy, "I rather think I do."

Then he put on his coat, and they went out to meet Mr. Blake and Dr. Crump, two hale and jolly gentlemen who rode over every Thursday to spend the night.

As the visitors came panting up the steps, the Major stood in the doorway with outstretched hands.

"You are late, gentlemen, you are late," was his weekly greeting, to which they as regularly responded, "We could never come too early for our pleasure, my dear Major; but there are professional duties, you know, professional duties."

After this interchange of courtesies, they would enter the house and settle themselves, winter or summer, in their favourite chairs upon the hearth-rug, when it was the custom of Mrs. Lightfoot to send in a fluttering maid to ask if Mrs. Blake had done her the honour to accompany her husband. As Mrs. Blake was never known to leave her children and her pet poultry, this was merely a conventionalism by which the elder lady meant to imply a standing welcome for the younger.

On this evening, Mr. Blake--the rector of the largest church in Leicesterburg--straightened his fat legs and folded his hands as he did at the ending of his sermons, and the others sat before him with the strained and reverential faces which they put on like a veil in church and took off when the service was over. That it was not a prayer, but a pleasantry of which he was about to deliver himself, they quite understood; but he had a habit of speaking on week days in his Sunday tones, which gave, as it were, an official weight to his remarks. He was a fleshy wide-girthed gentleman, with a bald head, and a face as radiant as the full moon.

"I was just asking the doctor when I was to have the honour of making the little widow Mrs. Crump?" he threw out at last, with a laugh that shook him from head to foot. "It is not good for man to live alone, eh, Major?"

"That sentence is sufficient to prove the divine inspiration of the Scriptures," returned the Major, warmly, while the doctor blushed and stammered, as he always did, at the rector's mild matrimonial jokes. It was twenty years since Mr. Blake began teasing Dr. Crump about his bachelorship, and to them both the subject was as fresh as in its beginning.

"I--I declare I haven't seen the lady for a week," protested the doctor, "and then she sent for me."

"Sent for you?" roared Mr. Blake. "Ah, doctor, doctor!"

"She sent for me because she had heart trouble," returned the doctor, indignantly. The lady's name was never mentioned between them.

The rector laughed until the tears started.

"Ah, you're a success with the ladies," he exclaimed, as he drew out a neatly ironed handkerchief and shook it free from its folds, "and no wonder--no wonder! We'll be having an epidemic of heart trouble next."

Then, as he saw the doctor wince beneath his jest, his kindly heart reproached him, and he gravely turned to politics and the dignity of nations.

The two friends were faithful Democrats, though the rector always began his very forcible remarks with: "A minister knows nothing of politics, and I am but a minister of the Gospel. If you care, however, for the opinion of an outsider--"

As for the Major, he had other leanings which were a source of unending interest to them all. "I am a Whig, not from principle, but from prejudice, sir," he declared. "The Whig is the gentleman's party. I never saw a Whig that didn't wear broadcloth."

"And some Democrats," politely protested the doctor, with a glance at his coat.

The Major bowed.

"And many Democrats, sir; but the Whig party, if I may say so, is the broadcloth party--the cloth stamps it; and besides this, sir, I think its 'parts are solid and will wear well.'"

Now when the Major began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent, save for an occasional prompting, as, "I was reading the _Spectator_ until eleven last night, sir," or "I have been trying to recall the lines in _The Campaign_ before. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved."

This was the best of the day to Dan, and, as he turned on his footstool, he did not even glare at Champe, who, from the window seat, was regarding him with the triumphant eye with which the young behold the downfall of a brother. For a moment he had forgotten the whipping, but Champe had not; he was thinking of it in the window seat.

But the Major was standing on the hearth-rug, and the boy's gaze went to him. Tossing back his long white hair, and fixing his eagle glance on his friends, the old gentleman, with a free sweep of his arm, thundered his favourite lines:--

"So, when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pa.s.sed), Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."

He had got so far when the door opened and the Governor entered--a little hurriedly, for he was thinking of his supper.

"I am the bearer of an apology, my dear Major," he said, when he had heartily shaken hands all round. "It seems that Betty--I a.s.sure you she is in great distress--set fire to your woodpile this afternoon, and that your grandson was punished for her mischief. My dear boy," he laid his hand on Dan's shoulder and looked into his face with the winning smile which had made him the most popular man in his State, "my dear boy, you are young to be such a gentleman."

A hot flush overspread Dan's face; he forgot the smart and the wounded pride--he forgot even Champe staring from the window seat. The Governor's voice was like salve to his hurt; the upright little man with the warm brown eyes seemed to lift him at once to the plane of his own chivalry.

"Oh, I couldn't tell on a girl, sir," he answered, and then his smothered injury burst forth; "but she ought to be ashamed of herself," he added bluntly.

"She is," said the Governor with a smile; then he turned to the others.

"Major, the boy is a Lightfoot!" he exclaimed.

"Ah, so I said, so I said!" cried the Major, clapping his hand on Dan's head in a racial benediction. "'I'd know you were a Lightfoot if I met you in the road' was what I said the first evening."

"And a Virginian," added Mr. Blake, folding his hands on his stomach and smiling upon the group. "My daughter in New York wrote to me last week for advice about the education of her son. 'Shall I send him to the school of learning at Cambridge, papa?' she asked; and I answered, 'Send him there, if you will, but, when he has finished with his books, by all means let him come to Virginia--the school for gentlemen.'"

"The school for gentlemen!" cried the doctor, delightedly. "It is a prouder t.i.tle than the 'Mother of Presidents.'"

"And as honourably earned," added the rector. "If you want polish, come to Virginia; if you want chivalry, come to Virginia. When I see these two things combined, I say to myself, 'The blood of the Mother of Presidents is here.'"

"You are right, sir, you are right!" cried the Major, shaking back his hair, as he did when he was about to begin the lines from _The Campaign_.

"Nothing gives so fine a finish to a man as a few years spent with the influences that moulded Washington. Why, some foreigners are perfected by them, sir. When I met General Lafayette in Richmond upon his second visit, I remember being agreeably impressed with his dignity and ease, which, I have no doubt, sir, he acquired by his a.s.sociation, in early years, with the Virginia gentlemen."

The Governor looked at them with a twinkle in his eye. He was aware of the humorous traits of his friends, but, in the peculiar sweetness of his temper, he loved them not the less because he laughed at them--perhaps the more. In the rector's fat body and the Major's lean one, he knew that there beat hearts as chivalrous as their words. He had seen the Major doff his hat to a beggar in the road, and the rector ride forty miles in a snowstorm to read a prayer at the burial of a slave. So he said with a pleasant laugh, "We are surely the best judges, my dear sirs," and then, as Mrs.

Lightfoot rustled in, they rose and fell back until she had taken her seat, and found her knitting.

"I am so sorry not to see Mrs. Blake," she said to the rector. "I have a new recipe for yellow pickle which I must write out and send to her." And, as the Governor rose to go, she stood up and begged him to stay to supper.

"Mr. Lightfoot, can't you persuade him to sit down with us?" she asked.

"Where you have failed, Molly, it is useless for me to try," gallantly responded the Major, picking up her ball of yarn.