The Battle Ground Part 21

"Here we are!" he exclaimed, in a moment, as he turned the horse round the blasted tree into the little path amid the vegetables. "If you are soaked through, we might as well go on; but if you're half dry, build a fire and get warm." He put her down upon the square stone before the doorway, and slipping the reins over the branch of a young willow tree, followed her into the cabin. "Why, you're hardly damp," he said, with his hand on her arm. "I got the worst of it."

He crossed over to the great open fireplace, and kneeling upon the hearth raked a hollow in the old ashes; then he kindled a blaze from a pile of lightwood knots, and stood up brus.h.i.+ng his hands together. "Sit down and get warm," he said hospitably. "If I may take upon myself to do the duties of free Levi's castle, I should even invite you to make yourself at home."

With a laugh he glanced about the bare little room,--at the uncovered rafters, the rough log walls, and the empty cupboard with its swinging doors. In one corner there was a pallet hidden by a ragged patchwork quilt, and facing it a small pine table upon which stood an ash-cake ready for the embers.

The laughter was still in his eyes when he looked at Betty. "Now where's the sense of going walking in the rain?" he demanded.

"I didn't," replied Betty, quickly. "It was clear when I started, and the clouds came up before I knew it. I had been across the fields to the woods, and I was coming home along the turnpike." She loosened her hair, and kneeling upon the smooth stones, dried it before the flames. As she shook the curling ends a sparkling shower of rain drops was scattered over Dan.

"Well, I don't see much sense in that," he returned slowly, with his gaze upon her.

She laughed and held out her moist hands to the fire. "Well, there was more than you see," she responded pleasantly, and added, while she smiled at him with narrowed eyes, "dear me, you've grown so much older."

"And you've grown so much prettier," he retorted boldly.

A flush crossed her face, and her look grew a little wistful. "The rain has bewitched you," she said.

"You may call me a fool if you like," he pursued, as if she had not spoken, "but I did not know until to-day that you had the most beautiful hair in the world. Why, it is always suns.h.i.+ne about you." He put out his hand to touch a loose curl that hung upon her shoulder, then drew it quickly back.

"I don't suppose I might," he asked humbly.

Betty gathered up her hair with shaking hands, which gleamed white in the firelight, and carelessly twisted it about her head.

"It is not nearly so pretty as Virginia's," she said in a low voice.

"Virginia's? Oh, nonsense!" he exclaimed, and walked rapidly up and down the room.

Beyond the open door the rain fell heavily; he heard it beating softly on the roof and dripping down upon the smooth square stone before the threshold. A red maple leaf was washed in from the path and lay a wet bit of colour upon the floor. "I wonder where old man Levi is?" he said suddenly.

"In the rain, I'm afraid," Betty answered, "and he has rheumatism, too; he was laid up for three months last winter."

She spoke quietly, but she was conscious of a quiver from head to foot, as if a strong wind had swept over her. Through the doorway she saw the young willow tree trembling in the storm and felt curiously akin to it.

Dan came slowly back to the hearth, and leaning against the crumbling mortar of the chimney, looked thoughtfully down upon her. "Do you know what I thought of when I saw you with your hair down, Betty?"

She shook her head, smiling.

"I don't suppose I'd thought of it for years," he went on quickly; "but when you took your hair down, and looked up at me so small and white, it all came back to me as if it were yesterday. I remembered the night I first came along this road--G.o.d-forsaken little chap that I was--and saw you standing out there in your nightgown--with your little cold bare feet. The moonlight was full upon you, and I thought you were a ghost. At first I wanted to run away; but you spoke, and I stood still and listened. I remember what it was, Betty.--'Mr. Devil, I'm going in,' you said. Did you take me for the devil, I wonder?"

She smiled up at him, and he saw her kind eyes fill with tears. The wavering smile only deepened the peculiar tenderness of her look.

"I had been sitting in the briers for an hour," he resumed, after a moment; "it was a day and night since I had eaten a bit of bread, and I had been digging up sa.s.safras roots with my bare fingers. I remember that I rooted at one for nearly an hour, and found that it was sumach, after all. Then I got up and went on again, and there you were standing in the moonlight--"

He broke off, hesitated an instant, and added with the gallant indiscretion of youth, "By George, that ought to have made a man of me!"

"And you are a man," said Betty.

"A man!" he appeared to snap his fingers at the thought. "I am a weather-vane, a leaf in the wind, a--an a.s.s. I haven't known my own mind ten minutes during the last two years, and the only thing I've ever gone honestly about is my own pleasure. Oh, yes, I have the courage of my inclinations, I admit."

"But I don't understand--what does it mean?--I don't understand," faltered Betty, vaguely troubled by his mood.

"Mean? Why, it means that I've been ruined, and it's too late to mend me.

I'm no better than a pampered poodle dog. It means that I've gotten everything I wanted, until I begin to fancy there's nothing under heaven I can't get." Then, in one of his quick changes of temper, his face cleared with a burst of honest laughter.

She grew merry instantly, and as she smiled up at him, he saw her eyes like rays of hazel light between her lashes. "Has the black crow gone?" she asked. "Do you know when I have a gray day Mammy calls it the black crow flying by. As long as his shadow is over you, there's always a gloom at the brain, she says. Has he quite gone by?"

"Oh, he flew by quickly," he answered, laughing, "he didn't even stay to flap his wings." Then he became suddenly grave. "I wonder what kind of a man you'll fall in love with, Betty?" he said abruptly.

She drew back startled, and her eyes reminded him of those of a frightened wild thing he had come upon in the spring woods one day. As she shrank from him in her dim blue dress, her hair fell from its coil and lay like a gold bar across her bosom, which fluttered softly with her quickened breath.

"I? Why, how can I tell?" she asked.

"He'll not be black and ugly, I dare say?"

She shook her head, regaining her composure.

"Oh, no, fair and beautiful," she answered.

"Ah, as unlike me as day from night?"

"As day from night," she echoed, and went on after a moment, her girlish visions s.h.i.+ning in her eyes:--

"He will be a man, at least," she said slowly, "a man with a faith to fight for--to live for--to make him n.o.ble. He may be a beggar by the roadside, but he will be a beggar with dreams. He will be forever travelling to some great end--some clear purpose." The last words came so faintly that he bent nearer to hear. A deep flush swept to her forehead, and she turned from him to the fire. These were things that she had hidden even from Virginia.

But as he looked steadily down upon her, something of her own pure fervour was in his face. Her vivid beauty rose like a flame to his eyes, and for a single instant it seemed to him that he had never looked upon a woman until to-day.

"So you would sit with him in the dust of the roadside?" he asked, smiling.

"But the dust is beautiful when the sun s.h.i.+nes on it," answered the girl; "and on wet days we should go into the pine woods, and on fair ones rest in the open meadows; and we should sing with the robins, and make friends with the little foxes."

He laughed softly. "Ah, Betty, Betty, I know you now for a dreamer of dreams. With all your pudding-mixing and your potato-planting you are moon-mad like the rest of us."

She made a disdainful little gesture. "Why, I never planted a potato in my life."

"Don't scoff, dear lady," he returned warningly; "too great literalness is the sin of womankind, you know."

"But I don't care in the least for vegetable-growing," she persisted seriously.

The humour twinkled in his eyes. "Thriftless woman, would you prefer to beg?"

"When the Major rode by," laughed Betty; "but when I heard you coming, I'd lie hidden among the briers, and I'd scatter signs for other gypsies that read, 'Beware the Montjoy.'"

His face darkened and he frowned. "So it's the Montjoy you're afraid of,"

he rejoined gloomily. "I'm not all Lightfoot, though I'm apt to forget it; the Montjoy blood is there, all the same, and it isn't good blood."

"Your blood is good," said Betty, warmly.

He laughed again and met her eyes with a look of whimsical tenderness.

"Make me your beggar, Betty," he prayed, smiling.

"You a beggar!" She shook a scornful head. "I can shut my eyes and see your fortune, sir, and it doesn't lie upon the roadside. I see a well-fed country gentleman who rises late to breakfast and storms when the birds are overdone, who drinks his two cups of coffee and eats syrup upon his cakes--"