The Battle Ground Part 18

Lightfoot, or you will put notions into the boys' heads. They are at the age when a man has a fancy a day and gets over it before he knows it."

"They are at the age when I had my fancy for you, Molly," gallantly retorted the Major, "and I seem to be carrying it with me to my grave."

"It would be a dull wit that would go roving from Aunt Molly," said Champe, affectionately; "but there aren't many of her kind in the world."

"I never found but one like her," admitted the Major, "and I've seen a good deal in my day, sir."

The old lady listened with a smile, though she spoke in a severe voice.

"You mustn't let them teach you how to flatter, Mr. Morson," she said warningly, as she filled the Major's second cup of coffee--"Cupid, Mr.

Morson will have a partridge."

"The man who sits at your table will never question your supremacy, dear madam," returned Jack Morson, as he helped himself to a bird. "There is little merit in devotion to such bounty."

"Shall I kick him, grandma?" demanded Dan. "He means that we love you because you feed us, the sly scamp."

Mrs. Lightfoot shook her head reprovingly. "Oh, I understand you, Mr.

Morson," she said amiably, "and a compliment to my housekeeping never goes amiss. If a woman has any talent, it will come out upon her table."

"You're right, Molly, you're right," agreed the Major, heartily. "I've always held that there was nothing in a man who couldn't make a speech or in a woman who couldn't set a table."

Dan stirred restlessly in his chair, and at the first movement of Mrs.

Lightfoot he rose and went out into the hall. An hour later he ordered Prince Rupert and started joyously to Uplands.

As he rode through the frosted air he pictured to himself a dozen different ways in which it was possible that he might meet Virginia. Would she be upon the portico or in the parlour? Was she still in pink or would she wear the red gown of yesterday? When she gave him her hand would she smile as she had smiled last night? or would she stand demurely grave with down dropped lashes?

The truth was that she did none of the things he had half expected of her.

She was sitting before a log fire, surrounded by a group of Harrisons and Powells, who had been prevailed upon to spend the night, and when he entered she gave him a sleepy little nod from the corner of a rosewood sofa. As she lay back in the firelight she was like a drowsy kitten that had just awakened from a nap. Though less radiant, her beauty was more appealing, and as she stared at him with her large eyes blinking, he wanted to stoop down and rock her off to sleep. He regarded her calmly this morning, for, with all his tenderness, she did not fire his brain, and the glory of the vision had pa.s.sed away. Half angrily he asked himself if he were in love with a pink dress and nothing more?

An hour afterward he came noisily into the library at Cheric.o.ke and aroused the Major from his Horace by stamping distractedly about the room.

"Oh, it's all up with me, sir," he began despondently. "I might as well go out and hang myself. I don't know what I want and yet I'm going mad because I can't get it."

"Come, come," said the Major, soothingly. "I've been through it myself, sir, and since your grandmother's out of earshot, I'd as well confess that I've been through it more than once. Cheer up, cheer up, you aren't the first to dare the venture--_Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_, you know."

His a.s.surance was hardly as comforting as he had intended it to be. "Oh, I dare say, there've been fools enough before me," returned Dan, impatiently, as he flung himself out of the room.

He grew still more impatient when the day came for him to return to college; and as they started out on horseback, with Zeke and Big Abel riding behind their masters, he declared irritably that the whole system of education was a nuisance, and that he "wished the ark had gone down with all the ancient languages on board."

"There would still be law," suggested Morson, pleasantly. "So cheer up, Beau, there's something left for you to learn."

Then, as they pa.s.sed Uplands, they turned, with a single impulse, and cantered up the broad drive to the portico. Betty and Virginia were in the library; and as they heard the horses, they came running to the window and threw it open.

"So you will come back in the summer--all of you," said Virginia, hopefully, and as she leaned out a white camellia fell from her bosom to the snow beneath. In an instant Jack Morson was off his horse and the flower was in his hand. "We'll bring back all that we take away," he answered gallantly, his fair boyish face as red as Virginia's.

Dan could have kicked him for the words, but he merely said savagely, "Have you left your pocket handkerchief?" and turned Prince Rupert toward the road. When he looked back from beneath the silver poplars, the girls were still standing at the open window, the cold wind flus.h.i.+ng their cheeks and blowing the brown hair and the red together.

Virginia was the first to turn away. "Come in, you'll take cold," she said, going to the fire. "Peggy Harrison never goes out when the wind blows, you know, she says it's dreadful for the complexion. Once when she had to come back from town on a March day, she told me she wore six green veils. I wonder if that's the way she keeps her lovely colour?"

"Well, I wouldn't be Peggy Harrison," returned Betty, gayly, and she added in the same tone, "so Mr. Morson got your camellia, after all, didn't he?"

"Oh, he begged so hard with his eyes," answered Virginia. "He had seen me give Dan a white rose on Christmas Eve, you know, and he said it wasn't fair to be so unfair."

"You gave Dan a white rose?" repeated Betty, slowly. Her face was pale, but she was smiling brightly.

Virginia's soft little laugh pealed out. "And it was your rose, too, darling," she said, nestling to Betty like a child. "You dropped it on the stair and I picked it up. I was just going to take it to you because it looked so lovely in your hair, when Dan came along and he would have it, whether or no. But you don't mind, do you, just a little bit of white rosebud?" She put up her hand and stroked her sister's cheek. "Men are so silly, aren't they?" she added with a sigh.

For a moment Betty looked down upon the brown head on her bosom; then she stooped and kissed Virginia's brow. "Oh, no, I don't mind, dear," she answered, "and women are very silly, too, sometimes."

She loosened Virginia's arms and went slowly upstairs to her bedroom, where Petunia was replenis.h.i.+ng the fire. "You may go down, Petunia," she said as she entered. "I am going to put my things to rights, and I don't want you to bother me--go straight downstairs."

"Is you gwine in yo' chist er draws?" inquired Petunia, pausing upon the threshold.

"Yes, I'm going into my chest of drawers, but you're not," retorted Betty, sharply; and when Petunia had gone out and closed the door after her, she pulled out her things and began to straighten rapidly, rolling up her ribbons with shaking fingers, and carefully folding her clothes into compact squares. Ever since her childhood she had always begun to work at her chest of drawers when any sudden shock unnerved her. After a great happiness she took up her trowel and dug among the flowers of the garden; but when her heart was heavy within her, she shut her door and put her clothes to rights.

Now, as she worked rapidly, the tears welled slowly to her lashes, but she brushed them angrily away, and rolled up a sky-blue sash. She had worn the sash at Cheric.o.ke on Christmas Eve, and as she looked at it, she felt, with the keenness of pain, a thrill of her old girlish happiness. The figure of Dan, as he stood upon the threshold with the powdering of snow upon his hair, rose suddenly to her eyes, and she flinched before the careless humour of his smile. It was her own fault, she told herself a little bitterly, and because it was her own fault she could bear it as she should have borne the joy. There was nothing to cry over, nothing even to regret; she knew now that she loved him, and she was glad--glad even of this. If the bitterness in her heart was but the taste of knowledge, she would not let it go; she would keep both the knowledge and the bitterness.

In the next room Mammy Riah was rocking back and forth upon the hearth, crooning to herself while she carded a lapful of wool. Her cracked old voice, still with its plaintive sweetness, came faintly to the girl who leaned her cheek upon the sky-blue sash and listened, half against her will:--

"Oh, we'll all be done wid trouble, by en bye, little chillun, We'll all be done wid trouble, by en bye.

Oh, we'll set en chatter wid de angels, by en bye, little chillun, We'll set en chatter wid de angels, by en bye."

The door opened and Virginia came softly into the room, and stopped short at the sight of Betty.

"Why, your things were perfectly straight, Betty," she exclaimed in surprise. "I declare, you'll be a real old maid."

"Perhaps I shall," replied Betty, indifferently; "but if I am, I'm going to be a tidy one."

"I never heard of one who wasn't," remarked Virginia, and added, "you've put all your ribbons into the wrong drawer."

"I like a change," said Betty, folding up a muslin skirt.

"Oh, we'll slip en slide on de golden streets, by en bye, little chillun, We'll slip en slide on de golden streets, by en bye,"

sang Mammy Riah, in the adjoining room.

"Aunt Lydia found six red pinks in bloom in her window garden," observed Virginia, cheerfully. "Why, where are you going, Betty?"

"Just for a walk," answered Betty, as she put on her bonnet and cloak. "I'm not afraid of the cold, you know, and I'm so tired sitting still," and she added, as she fastened her fur tippet, "I shan't be long, dear."

She opened the door, and Mammy Riah's voice followed her across the hall and down the broad staircase:--

"Oh, we'll ride on de milk w'ite ponies, by en bye, little chillun, We'll ride on de milk w'ite ponies, by en bye."

At the foot of the stair she called the dogs, and they came bounding through the hall and leaped upon her as she crossed the portico. Then, as she went down the drive and up the desolate turnpike, they ran ahead of her with short, joyous barks.

The snow had melted and frozen again, and the long road was like a gray river winding between leafless trees. The gaunt crows were still flying back and forth over the meadows, but she did not have corn for them to-day.

Had she been happy, she would not have forgotten them; but the pain in her breast made her selfish even about the crows.

With the dogs leaping round her, she pressed bravely against the wind, flying breathlessly from the struggle at her heart. There was nothing to cry over, she told herself again, nothing even to regret. It was her own fault, and because it was her own fault she could bear it quietly as she should have borne the joy.