A Soldier of Virginia Part 33

"What have I done?" she asked, and raised her face to mine. "What have I not done, rather? I have been a cold, hard woman, Tom. I have forgot what right and justice and honor were. But I shall forget no longer. Do you know what I have here in my breast?" she cried, and she s.n.a.t.c.hed forth a paper and held it before my eyes. "You could never guess. It is a letter you wrote to me."

"A letter I wrote to you?" I repeated, and then as I saw the superscription, I felt my cheeks grow hot. For it read, "To be delivered at once to Mrs. Stewart."

"Ay," she said, "a letter you wrote to me, and which I should never have received had you not forgot it and left it lying on my table in my study at Riverview. Can you guess what I felt, Tom, when they brought it to me here, and I opened it and read that you had gone to the swamp alone amongst those devils? I thought that you were dead, since the letter had been delivered, and the whole extent of the wrong I had done you sprang up before me. But they told me you were not dead,--that Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton had come for you, and that you had ridden hastily away with him. I could guess the story, and I should never have known that you had saved the place but for the chance which made you forget this letter."

I had tried to stop her more than once. She had gone on without heeding me, but now she paused.

"It was nothing," I said. "Nothing. There was no real danger. Thank Long.

He was with me. He is a better man than I."

"Oh, yes," she cried, "they are all better men than you, I dare say! Do not provoke me, sir, or you will have me quarreling with you before I have said what I came here to say. Can you guess what that is?" and she paused again, to look at me with a great light in her eyes.

But I was far past replying. I gazed up at her, bewildered, dazzled. I had never known this woman.

"I see you cannot guess," she said. "Of course you cannot guess! How could you, knowing me as you have known me? 'Tis this. Riverview is yours, Tom, and shall be always yours from this day forth, as of right it has ever been."

Riverview mine? No, no, I did not want Riverview. It was something else I wanted.

"I shall not take it, aunt," I said quite firmly. "I am going to make a name for myself,--with my sword, you know," I added with a smile, "and when I have once done that, there is something else which I shall ask you for, which will be dearer to me--oh, far dearer--than a hundred Riverviews."

What ailed the women? Here was Dorothy too on her knees and kissing my bandaged hand.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," she cried, "do you not understand?"

"Understand?" I repeated blankly. "Understand what, Dorothy?"

"Don't you remember, dear, what happened just before the troops came?"

"Oh, very clearly," I answered. "The Indians got Brightson down and stabbed him, and just then you sprang up and cried the troops were coming, and sure enough, there they were just entering the clearing, and the Indians paused only for one look and then fled down the stairs as fast as they could go. 'T was you who saved us all, Dorothy."

"Oh, but there was something more!" she cried. "There was one Indian who did not run, Tom, but who stopped to aim at me. I saw him do it, and I closed my eyes, for I knew that he would kill me, and I heard his gun's report, but no bullet struck me. For it was you whom it struck, dear, through your hand and into your side, and for long we thought you dying."

"Yes," I said, "but you see I am not dying, nor like to die, dear Dorothy, so that I may still rejoin the troops erelong."

She was looking at me with streaming eyes.

"Do you mean that I am not going to get well, Dorothy?" I asked, for I confess her tears frightened me.

"Oh, not so bad as that, dear!" she cried. "Thank G.o.d, not so bad as that! But your hand, Tom, your right hand is gone. You can never wield a sword again, dear, never go to war. You will have to stay at home with me."

I know not how it was, but she was in my arms, and her lips were on mine, and I knew that was no more parting for us.

CHAPTER XVIII

AND SO, GOOD-BY

Well, a right hand is a little price to pay for the love of a wife like mine, and if I have made no name in the world, I at least live happy in it, which is perhaps a greater thing. And I have grown to use my left hand very handily. I have learnt to write with it, as the reader knows,--and when I hold my wife to me, I have her ever next my heart.

It is the fas.h.i.+on, I know well, to stop the story on the altar's steps, and leave the reader to guess at all that may come after, but as I turn over the pages I have writ, they seem too much a tale of failure and defeat, and I would not have it so. For the lessons learned at Fort Necessity and Winchester and at Duquesne have given us strength to drive the French from the continent and the Indian from the frontier. So that now we dwell in peace, and live our lives in quiet and content, save for some disagreements with the king about our taxes, which Lord Grenville has made most irksome.

And even to my dearest friend, whose life, as I have traced it here, has been so full of sorrow and reverse, has come great happiness. He is honored of all men, and has found love as well, for he has brought a wife home to Mount Vernon. Dorothy declares that Mistress Was.h.i.+ngton is the very image of that Mary Cary who used him so ill years ago,--but this may be only a woman's leaning toward romance.

Indeed, we have a romance in our own home,--a bright-eyed girl of twenty, who, I fear, is soon to leave us, if a certain pert young blade who lives across the river has his way. It will be I who give her away at the altar, for her father lies dead beside the Monongahela,--brave, gentle-hearted Spiltdorph. My eyes grow dim even now when I think of you, yet I trust that I have done as you would have had me do. For I found the girl at Hampton, after a weary search,--perhaps some day I shall tell the story.

It is in the old seat by the river's edge I write these words, and as I lay down the pen, my hand falls on those carved letters, T and D, with a little heart around them,--very faint, now, and worn with frequent kisses,--and as I lift my head, I see coming to me across the gra.s.s the woman who carved them there and whom I love.