The Battle Ground Part 14

"Bravo!" cried Champe, with a whistle, "there spoke the Lightfoot."

"She's a good girl," repeated Dan, furiously, as he flung the other boot at his cousin. Champe caught the boot, and carefully set it beside the door.

"Well, she's welcome to be, as far as I'm concerned," he replied calmly.

"Turn not your speaking eye upon me. I harbour no dark intent, Sir Galahad."

"d.a.m.n Sir Galahad!" said Dan, and blew out the light.

II

BETTY DREAMS BY THE FIRE

Betty, lying back in the deep old carriage as it rolled through the storm, felt a glow at her heart as if a lamp were burning there, shut in from the night. Above the wind and the groaning of the wheels, she heard Hosea calling to the horses, but the sound reached her through m.u.f.fled ears.

"Git along dar!" cried Hosea, with sudden spirit, "dar ain' no oats dis side er home, en dar ain' no co'n, nurr. Git along dar! 'Tain' no use a-mincin'. Git along dar!"

The snow beat softly on the windows, and the Governor's profile was relieved, fine and straight, against the frosted gla.s.s. "Are you asleep, daughter?" he asked, turning to where the girl lay in her dark corner.

"Asleep!" She came back with a start, and caught his hand above the robe in her demonstrative way. "Why, who can sleep on Christmas Eve? there's too much to do, isn't there, mamma? Twenty stockings to fill and I don't know how many bundles to tie up. Oh, no, I shan't sleep tonight."

"We might get up early to-morrow and do them," suggested Virginia, nodding in her pink hood.

"You, at least, must go to bed, dear," insisted Mrs. Ambler. "Betty and I will fix the things."

"Indeed, you shall go to bed, mamma," said Betty, sternly. "Papa and I shall make Christmas this year. You'll help me, won't you, papa?"

"Well, my dear, I don't see how I can help myself," returned the Governor; "I wasn't born to be the father of a Betty for nothing."

"Get along dar!" sang out Hosea again. "'Tain' no use a-mincin', gemmun.

Dar ain' no fiddlin' roun'. Git along dar!"

Miss Lydia had fallen asleep, with her head on her breast, but the sound aroused her, and she opened her eyes and sat up very straight.

"Why, I declare I'd almost dropped off," she said. "Are we nearly there, Peyton?"

"I think so," replied the Governor, "but the snow's so thick I can't see;"

he opened the window and put out his head. "Are we nearly there, Hosea?"

"We des done pas' de clump er cedars, suh," yelled Hosea through the storm.

"I'ud a knowd 'em ef dey'd come a-struttin' down de road--dey cyarn fool me. Den we got ter pas' de wil' cher'y and de gap in de fence, en dar we are."

"Yes, we're nearly there," said the Governor, as he drew in his head, and Miss Lydia slept again until the carriage turned into the drive and stopped before the portico.

Uncle Shadrach, in the open doorway, was grinning with delight. "Ef'n de snow had er kep' you, dar 'ouldn't a been no Christmas for de res' er us,"

he declared.

"Oh, the snow couldn't keep us, Shadrach," returned the Governor, as he gave him his overcoat, and set himself to unfastening his wife's wraps. "We were too anxious to get home. There, Julia, you go to bed, and leave Betty and myself to manage things. Don't say I can't do it. I tell you I've been Governor of Virginia, and I'll not be daunted by an empty stocking. Now go away, and you, too, Virginia--you're as sleepy as a kitten. Miss Lydia, shall I take Mrs. Lightfoot's mixture to Miss p.u.s.s.y, or will you?"

Miss Lydia took the pitcher, and Betty put her arm about her mother and led her upstairs, holding her hand and kissing it as she went. She was always lavish with little ways of love, but to-night she felt tenderer than ever--she felt that she should like to take the world in her arms and hold it to her bosom. "Dearest, sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of pa.s.sion which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could she tell why she was sorrowful.

In Mrs. Ambler's room they found Mammy Riah, awaiting her mistress's return.

"Put her to bed, Mammy," she said; "she is all chilled by the drive," and she gave her mother over to the old negress, and ran down again to the dining room, where the Governor was standing surrounded by the Christmas litter.

"Do you expect to straighten out all these things, daughter?" he asked hopelessly.

"Why, there's hardly anything left to do," was Betty's cheerful a.s.surance.

"You just sit down at the table and put the nuts into the toes of those stockings, and I'll count out these print frocks."

The Governor obediently sat down and went to work. "I am moved to offer thanks that we are not as the beasts that have four legs," he remarked thoughtfully. "I shouldn't care to fill stockings for quadrupeds, Betty."

"Why, you goose, there's only one stocking for each child."

"Ah, but with four feet our expectations might be doubled," suggested the Governor. "You can't convince me that it isn't a merciful providence, my dear."

When the stockings were filled and the packages neatly tied up and separated, Uncle Shadrach came with a hamper, and Betty went out to the kitchen to prepare for the morning gathering of the field hands and their families. Returning after the work was over, she lingered a moment in the path to the house, looking far across the white country. The snow had ceased, and a single star was s.h.i.+ning, through a rift in the scudding clouds, straight overhead. From the northwest the wind blew hard, and the fleecy covering on the ground was fast freezing a foot deep in ice. With a s.h.i.+ver she drew her cloak about her and ran indoors and upstairs to where Virginia lay asleep in the high, white bed.

In the great brick fireplace the logs had fallen apart, and she softly pushed them together again as she threw on a knot of resinous pine. The blaze shot up quickly, and blowing out the candle upon the bureau, she undressed by the firelight, crooning gently as she did so in a voice that was lower than the singing flames. With the glow on her bared arms and her hair unbound upon her shoulders, she sat close against the chimney; and while Virginia slept in the tester bed, went dreaming out into the night.

At first her dreams went back into her childhood, and somehow, she knew not why, she could not bring back her childhood but Dan came with it. She fancied herself in all kinds of impossible places, but she had no sooner got safely into them than she looked up and Dan was there before her, standing very still and laughing at her with his eyes. It was the same thing even when she was a baby. Her earliest memory was of a May morning when they took her out into a field of b.u.t.tercups, and told her that she might pluck her arms full if she could, and then, as she stretched out her little hands and began to gather very fast, she looked across to where the waving yellow b.u.t.tercups stood up against the blue spring sky. That memory had always been her own before; but now, when she went back to it, she knew that all the time she had been gathering b.u.t.tercups for Dan. And she had plucked faster and faster only that she might have a bigger bunch for him when the gathering was done. She saw herself working bonnetless in the suns.h.i.+ne, her baby face red, her lips breathless, working so hard, she did not know for whom. Oh, how funny that he should have been somewhere all the time!

And again on the day when they gave her her first doll, and she let it fall and cried her heart out over its broken pink face. She knew, at last, that somewhere in that ugly town Dan had dropped his toy; and it was for that she was crying, not for her own poor doll. Yes, all her life she had had two griefs to weep for, and two joys to be glad over. She had been really a double self from her babyhood up--from her babyhood up! It had been always up, up, up--like a lark that rises to the sun. She had all her life been rising to the sun, and she was warmed at last.

Then she asked herself if it were happiness, after all, this new restlessness of hers. The melancholy of the early spring was there--the roving impulse that comes on April afternoons when the first buds are on the trees and the air is keen with the smell of the newly turned earth. She felt that it was time for the spring to come again; she wanted to walk alone in the woods and to watch the swallows flying from the north. And again she wanted only to lie close upon the hearth and to hear the flames leap up the chimney. One of her selves cried to be up and roaming; the other to turn over on the rug and sleep again.

But gradually her thoughts returned to him, and she went over, bit by bit, what he had said last evening, asking herself if he had meant much at this time, or little at another. It seemed to her that she found new meanings now in things that she had once overlooked. She read words in his eyes which he had never spoken; and, one by one, she brought back each sentence, each look, each gesture, holding it up to her remembrance, and laying it aside to give place to the next. Oh, there were so many, so many!

And then from the past her dreams went groping out into the future, becoming dimmer, and shaping themselves into unreal forms. Scattered visions came drifting through her mind,--of herself in romantic adventures, and of Dan--always of Dan--appearing like the prince in the fairy tale, at the perilous moment. She saw herself on the breast of a great river, borne, while she stretched her hands at a white rose-bush blooming in the clouds, to a cataract which she could not see, though she heard its thunder far ahead. She tried to call, but no sound came, for the water filled her mouth. The river went on and on, and the falling of the cataract was in her ears, when she felt Dan's arm about her, and saw his eyes laughing at her above the waters.

"Betty!" called Virginia, suddenly, rising on her elbow and rubbing her eyes. "Betty, is it morning?"

Betty awoke with a cry, and stood up in the firelight.

"Oh, no, not yet," she answered.

"What are you doing? Aren't you coming to bed?"

"I--I was just thinking," stammered Betty, twisting her hair into a rope; "yes, I'm coming now," and she crossed the room and climbed into the bed beside her sister.

"I believe I fell asleep by the fire," she said, as she turned over.

III