The Shades of the Wilderness Part 28

Water rose in Harry's eyes. He knew how terribly his father's heart had been torn by the quarrel between North and South, and that he had thoughts which he did not tell to his son. Harry was beginning at last to think some of the same thoughts himself. If the South succeeded, then, after the war, what? Another war later on or reunion.

The rest of the letter was wholly personal, and in the end it directed Harry, when writing to him, to address his letters care of the Western Army under General Bragg. Harry was moved and he responded at once.

He went to the hotel in which he had met the young men who const.i.tuted the leading lights in what was called the Mosaic Club, and, securing writing materials, made a long reply, which he posted with every hope that it would soon reach its destination.

Early in the evening he rejoined Dalton at the house of the Lanhams and they found that Mrs. Lanham had done wonders with their best uniforms.

When they were dressed in them they felt that it was no harder to charge the Curtis house than to rush a battery.

"You young men go early," said Mr. Lanham. "Mrs. Lanham and I will appear later."

They departed, daring to practice their dance steps in the street to the delight of small boys who did not hesitate to chaff them. But Harry and Dalton did not care. They answered the chaff in kind, and soon approached the Curtis home, all the windows of which were blazing with light.

The house stood in extensive grounds, and lofty white pillars gave it an imposing appearance. Guests were arriving fast. Most of the men were military, but there was a fair sprinkling of civilians nevertheless.

The lads saw their friends of the Mosaic Club pa.s.s in just ahead of them, all dressed with extreme care. Generals and colonels and other officers were in most favor now, but these men, with their swift and incisive wit and their ability to talk well about everything, fully made up for the lack of uniform.

Harry and Dalton, before pa.s.sing through the side gateway that led to the house, paused awhile to look at those who came. Many people, and they ranked among the best in Richmond, walked. They had sent all their horses to the front long ago to be ridden by cavalrymen or to draw cannon. Others, not so self-sacrificing, came in heavy carriages with negroes driving.

Harry noticed that in many cases the clothing of the men showed a little white at the seams, and there were cuffs the ends of which had been trimmed with great care. But it was these whom he respected most.

He remembered that Virginia had not really wanted to go into the war, and that she had delayed long, but, being in it, she was making supreme sacrifices.

And there were many young girls who did not need elaborate dress.

In their simple white or pink, often but cotton, their cheeks showing the delicate color that is possessed only by the girls in the border states of the South, they seemed very beautiful to Harry and George, who had known nothing but camps and armies so long.

It was the healthy admiration of the brave youth of one s.e.x for the fair youth of the other, but there was in it a deeper note, too. Age can stand misfortune. Youth wonders why it is stricken, and Harry felt as they pa.s.sed by, bright of face and soft of voice, that the clouds were gathering heavily over them.

But he was too young himself for the feeling to endure long. Dalton was proposing that they go in and they promptly joined the stream of entering guests. Randolph soon found them and presented them to Mrs. Curtis, a large woman of middle years, and dignified manner, related to nearly all the old families of Virginia, and a descendant of a collateral branch of the Washingtons. Her husband, William Curtis, seemed to be of a different type, a man of sixty, tall, thin and more reserved than most Southerners of his time. His thin lips were usually compressed and his pale blue eyes were lacking in warmth. But the long strong line of his jaw showed that he was a man of strength and decision.

"A Northern bough on a Southern tree," whispered Dalton, as they pa.s.sed on. "He comes from some place up the valley and they say that the North itself has not his superior in financial skill."

"I did not warm to him at first," said Harry, "but I respect him.

As you know, George, we've put too little stress upon his kind of ability. We'll need him and more like him when the Confederacy is established. We'll have to build ourselves up as a great power, and that's done by trade and manufactures more than by arms."

"It's so, Harry. But listen to that music!"

A band of four pieces placed behind flowers and shrubbery was playing.

Here was no blare of trumpets or call of bugles. It was the music of the dance and the sentimental old songs of the South, nearly all of which had a sad and wailing note. Harry heard the four black men play the songs that he had heard Samuel Jarvis sing, deep in the Kentucky mountains, and his heart beat with an emotion that he could not understand. Was it a cry for peace? Did his soul tell him that an end should come to fighting? Then throbbed the music of the lines:

Soft o'er the fountain lingering falls the Southern moon Far o'er the mountain breaks the day too soon.

In thy dark eyes' splendor, where the moonlight loves to dwell Weary looks, yet tender, speak their fond farewell.

Nita, Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part, Nita, Juanita! Lean thou on my heart!

The music of the sad old song throbbed and throbbed, and sank deep into Harry's heart. At another time he might not have been stirred, but at this moment he was responsive in every fiber. He saw once more the green wilderness, and he heard once more the mellow tones of the singer coming back in far echoes from the gorges.

"Nita, Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part," hummed Dalton, but Harry was still far away in the green wilderness, listening to the singer of the mountains. Then the singer stopped suddenly, and he was listening once more to the startling prediction of the old, old woman:

"I am proud that our house has sheltered you, but it is not for the last time. You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door. I see you coming with these two eyes of mine."

That prediction had been made a long time ago, years since, it seemed, but whenever it returned to him, and it returned at most unexpected times, it lost nothing of its amazing vividness and power; rather they were increased. Could it be true that the supremely old had a vision or second sight? Then he rebuked himself angrily. There was nothing supernatural in this world.

"Wake up, Harry! What are you thinking about?" whispered Dalton sharply.

"You seem to be dreaming, and here's a house full of pretty girls, with more than a half-dozen looking at you, the gallant young officer of the Army of Northern Virginia, the story of whose romantic exploits had already reached Richmond."

"I was dreaming and I apologize," said Harry. That minute in which he had seen so much, so far away, pa.s.sed utterly, and in another minute both he and Dalton were dancing with Virginia girls, as fair as dreams to these two, who had looked so long only upon the tanned faces of soldiers.

Both he and Dalton were at home in a half-hour. People in the Old South then, as in the New South now, are closely united by ties of kinship which are acknowledged as far as they run. One is usually a member of a huge clan and has all the privileges that clanship can confer. Kentucky was the daughter of Virginia, and mother and daughter were fond of each other, as they are to-day.

After the third dance Harry was sitting with Rosamond Lawrence of Petersburg in a window seat. She was a slender blonde girl, and the dancing had made the pink in her cheeks deepen into a flush.

"You're from Kentucky, I know," said Miss Lawrence, "but you haven't yet told me your town."

"Pendleton. It's small but it's on the map. My father is a colonel in the Western army."

"Aren't you a Virginian by blood? Most all Kentuckians are."

"Partly. My great grandfather, though, was born in Maryland."

"What was his name, Lieutenant Kenton?"

"Henry Ware!"

"Henry Ware! Kentucky's first and greatest governor."

"Yes, he was my great grandfather. I'm proud to be his descendant."

"I should think you would be."

"But his wife, who was Lucy Upton, my great grandmother, was of Virginia blood, and all of the next two generations intermarried with people of Virginia stock."

"Then you are a Kentuckian and a Virginian, too. I knew it! You have a middle name, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"Cary."

The girl laughed.

"Harry Cary Kenton. Why Cary is one of our best old Virginia names.

Will you tell me too what was your mother's name before she was married?"

"Parham."

"Another. Oh, all this unravels finely. And what was your grandmother's name?"

"Brent."

"Nothing could be more Virginian than Brent. Oh, you're one of us, Lieutenant Kenton, a real Virginian of the true blood."

"And heart and soul too!" giving her one of his finest young military glances.