The Battle Ground Part 23

"Don't ask me what he means, sir," protested the Major. "If a man in love has any meaning in him, it takes a man in love to find it out. Maybe you'll be better at it than I am; but I give it up--I give it up."

With a gloomy face Dan sat down again, and resting his arms on his knees, stared at the vase of golden-rod between the tall bra.s.s andirons. Cupid came in to light the lamps, and stopped to inquire if Mrs. Lightfoot would like a blaze to be started in the fireplace. "It's a little chilly, my dear," remarked the Major, slapping his arm. "There's been a sharp change in the weather;" and Cupid removed the vase of golden-rod and laid an armful of sticks crosswise on the andirons.

"Draw up to the hearth, my boy," said the Major, when the fire burned.

"Even if you aren't cold, it looks cheerful, you know--draw up, draw up,"

and he at once began to question his grandson about the London streets, evoking as he talked dim memories of his own early days in England. He asked after St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey half as if they were personal friends of whose death he feared to hear; and upon being answered that they still stood unchanged, he pressed eagerly for the gossip of the Strand and Fleet Street. Was Dr. Johnson's coffee-house still standing? and did Dan remember to look up the haunts of Mr. Addison in his youth? "I've gotten a good deal out of Champe," he confessed, "but I like to hear it again--I like to hear it. Why, it takes me back forty years, and makes me younger."

And when Champe came in from his ride, he found the old gentleman upon the hearth-rug, his white hair tossing over his brow, as he recited from Mr.

Addison with the zest of a schoolboy of a hundred years ago.

"h.e.l.lo, Beau! I hope you got your clothes," was Champe's greeting, as he shook his cousin's hand.

"Oh, they turned up all right," said Dan, carelessly, "and, by-the-way, there was an India shawl for grandma in that very trunk."

Champe crossed to the fireplace and stood fingering one of the tall vases.

"It's a pity you didn't stop by Uplands," he observed. "You'd have found Virginia more blooming than ever."

"Ah, is that so?" returned Dan, flus.h.i.+ng, and a moment afterward he added with an effort, "I met Betty in the turnpike, you know."

Six months ago, he remembered, he had raved out his pa.s.sion for Virginia, and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to surround the thought of her.

"So she told me," replied Champe, looking steadily at Dan. For a moment he seemed about to speak again; then changing his mind, he left the room with a casual remark about dressing for supper.

"I'll go, too," said Dan, rising from his seat. "If you'll believe me, I haven't spoken to my old love, Aunt Emmeline. So proud a beauty is not to be treated with neglect."

He lighted one of the tall candles upon the mantel-piece, and taking it in his hand, crossed the hall and went into the panelled parlour, where Great-aunt Emmeline, in the l.u.s.tre of her amber brocade, smiled her changeless smile from out the darkened canvas. There was wit in her curved lip and spirit in her humorous gray eyes, and the marble whiteness of her brow, which had brought her many lovers in her lifetime, shone undimmed beneath the ma.s.ses of her chestnut hair. With her fair body gone to dust, she still held her immortal apple by the divine right of her remembered beauty.

As Dan looked at her it seemed to him for the first time that he found a likeness to Betty--to Betty as she smiled up at him from the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin. It was not in the mouth alone, nor in the eyes alone, but in something indefinable which belonged to every feature--in the kindly fervour that shone straight out from the smiling face. Ah, he knew now why Aunt Emmeline had charmed a generation.

He blew out the candle, and went back into the hall where the front door stood half open. Then taking down his hat, he descended the steps and strolled thoughtfully up and down the gravelled drive.

The air was still moist, and beyond the gray meadows the white clouds huddled like a flock of sheep upon the mountain side. From the branches of the old elms fell a few yellowed leaves, and among them birds were flying back and forth with short cries. A faint perfume came from the high urns beside the steps, where a flowering creeper was bruised against the marble basins.

With a cigar in his mouth, Dan pa.s.sed slowly to and fro against the lighted windows, and looked up tenderly at the gray sky and the small flying birds.

There was a glow in his face, for, with a total cessation of time, he was back in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and the rain was on the roof.

In one of those rare moods in which the least subjective mind becomes that of a mystic, he told himself that this hour had waited for him from the beginning of time--had bided patiently at the crossroads until he came up with it at last. All his life he had been travelling to meet it, not in ignorance, but with half-unconscious knowledge, and all the while the fire had burned brightly on the hearth, and Betty had knelt upon the flat stones drying her hair. Again it seemed to him that he had never looked into a woman's face before, and the shame of his wandering fancies was heavy upon him. He called himself a fool because he had followed for a day the flutter of Virginia's gown, and a dotard for the many loves he had sworn to long before. In the twilight he saw Betty's eyes, grave, accusing, darkened with reproach; and he asked himself half hopefully if she cared--if it were possible for a moment that she cared. There had been humour in her smile, but, for all his effort, he could bring back no deeper emotion than pity or disdain--and it seemed to him that both the pity and the disdain were for himself.

The library window was lifted suddenly, as the Major called out to him that "supper was on its way"; and, with an impatient movement of the shoulders, he tossed his cigar into the gra.s.s and went indoors.

The next afternoon he rode over to Uplands, and found Virginia alone in the dim, rose-scented parlour, where the quaint old furniture stood in the gloom of a perpetual solemnity. The girl, herself, made a bright spot of colour against the damask curtains, and as he looked at her he felt the same delight in her loveliness that he felt in Great-aunt Emmeline's.

Virginia had become a picture to him, and nothing more.

When he entered she greeted him with her old friendliness, gave him both her cool white hands, and asked him a hundred shy questions about the countries over sea. She was delicately cordial, demurely glad.

"It seems an age since you went away," she said flatteringly, "and so many things have happened--one of the big trees blew down on the lawn, and Jack Powell broke his arm--and--and Mr. Morson has been back twice, you know."

"Yes, I know," he answered, "but I rather think the tree's the biggest thing, isn't it?"

"Well, it is the biggest," admitted Virginia, sweetly. "I couldn't get my arms halfway round it--and Betty was so distressed when it fell that she cried half the day, just as if it were a human being. Aunt Lydia has been trying to build a rockery over the root, and she's going to cover it with portulaca." She went to the long window and pointed out the spot where it had stood. "There are so many one hardly misses it," she added cheerfully.

At the end of an hour Dan asked timidly for Betty, to hear that she had gone riding earlier with Champe. "She is showing him a new path over the mountain," said Virginia. "I really think she knows them all by heart."

"I hope she hasn't taken to minding cattle," observed Dan, irritably. "I believe in women keeping at home, you know," and as he rose to go he told Virginia that she had "an Irish colour."

"I have been sitting in the sun," she answered shyly, going back to the window when he left the room.

Dan went quickly out to Prince Rupert, but with his foot in the stirrup, he saw Miss Lydia training a coral honeysuckle at the end of the portico, and turned away to help her fasten up a broken string. "It blew down yesterday," she explained sadly. "The storm did a great deal of damage to the flowers, and the garden looked almost desolate this morning, but Betty and I worked there until dinner. I tell Betty she must take my place among the flowers, she has such a talent for making them bloom. Why, if you will come into the garden, you will be surprised to see how many summer plants are still in blossom."

She spoke wistfully, and Dan looked down on her with a tender reverence which became him strangely. "Why, I shall be delighted to go with you," he answered. "Do you know I never see you without thinking of your roses? You seem to carry their fragrance in your clothes." There was a touch of the Major's flattery in his manner, but Miss Lydia's pale cheeks flushed with pleasure.

Smiling faintly, she folded her knitted shawl over her bosom, and he followed her across the gra.s.s to the little whitewashed gate of the garden.

There she entered softly, as if she were going into church, her light steps barely treading down the tall gra.s.s strewn with rose leaves. Beyond the high box borders the gay October roses bent toward her beneath a light wind, and in the square beds tangles of summer plants still flowered untouched by frost. The splendour of the scarlet sage and the delicate cl.u.s.ters of the four-o'clocks and sweet Williams made a single blur of colour in the suns.h.i.+ne, and under the neatly clipped box hedges, blossoms of petunias and verbenas straggled from their trim rows across the walk.

As he stood beside her, Dan drew in a long breath of the fragrant air. "I declare, it is like standing in a bunch of pinks," he remarked.

"There has been no hard frost as yet," returned Miss Lydia, looking up at him. "Even the verbenas were not nipped, and I don't think I ever had them bloom so late. Why, it is almost the first of October."

They strolled leisurely up and down the box-bordered paths, Miss Lydia talking in her gentle, monotonous voice, and Dan bending his head as he flicked at the tall gra.s.s with his riding-whip.

"He is a great lover of flowers," said the old lady after he had gone, and thought in her simple heart that she spoke the truth.

For two days Dan's pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother.

As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand and her cla.s.s of little negroes at her feet. Beyond her there was a strip of green and the autumn glory of the garden, and the sunlight coming from without fell straight upon the leaves of the open book.

She was reading from the gospel of St. John, and she did not pause until the chapter was finished; then she looked up and said, smiling: "Shall I ask you to join my cla.s.s, or will you look for the girls out of doors?

Virginia, I think, is in the garden, and Betty has just gone riding down the tavern road."

"Oh, I'll go after Betty," replied Dan, promptly, and with a gay "good-by"

he untied Prince Rupert and started at a canter for the turnpike.

A quarter of a mile beyond Uplands the tavern road branched off under a deep gloom of forest trees. The white sand of the turnpike gave place to a heavy clay soil, which went to dust in summer and to mud in winter, impeding equally the pa.s.sage of wheels. On either side a thick wood ran for several miles, and the suns.h.i.+ne filtered in bright drops through the green arch overhead.

When Dan first caught sight of Betty she was riding in a network of sun and shade, her face lifted to the bit of blue sky that showed between the tree-tops. At the sound of his horse she threw a startled look behind her, and then, drawing aside from the sunken ruts in the "corduroy" road, waited, smiling, until he galloped up.

"Why, it's never you!" she exclaimed, surprised.

"Well, that's not my fault, Betty," he gayly returned. "If I had my way, I a.s.sure you it would be always I. You mustn't blame a fellow for his ill luck, you know." Then he laid his hand on her bridle and faced her sternly.

"Look here, Betty, you haven't been treating me right," he said.

She threw out a deprecating little gesture. "Do I need to put on more humility?" she questioned, humbly. "Is it respect that I have failed in, sir?"

"Oh, bos.h.!.+" he interposed, rudely. "I want to know why you went riding three afternoons with Champe--it wasn't fair of you, you know."

Betty sighed sadly. "No one has ever asked me before why I went riding with Champe," she confessed, "and the mighty secret has quite gnawed into my heart."

"Share it with me," begged Dan, gallantly, "only I warn you that I shall have no mercy upon Champe."