The Battle Ground Part 26

"Well, you ought to be something better, and you must be."

"I'll be anything you please, Betty; I'll be President, if you wish it."

"No, thank you, I don't care in the least for Presidents."

"Then I'll be a beggar, you like beggars."

"You'll be just yourself, if you want to please me, Dan," she said earnestly. "You will be your best self--neither the flattering Lightfoot, nor the rude Montjoy. You will learn to work, to wait patiently, and to love one woman. Whoever she may be, I shall say, G.o.d bless her."

"G.o.d bless her, Betty," he echoed fervently, and added, "Since it's a man you want, I'll be a man, but I almost wish you had said a President. I could have been one for you, Betty."

Then he held out his hand. "I don't suppose you will kiss me good-by?" he pleaded.

"No, I shan't kiss you good-by," she answered.

"Never, Betty?"

Smiling brightly, she gave him her hand. "When you have loved me two years, perhaps,--or when you marry another woman. Good-by, dear, good-by."

He turned quickly away and went up the little path to the gate. There he paused for an instant, looked back, and waved his hand. "Good-by, my darling!" he called, boldly, and pa.s.sed under the honeysuckle arbour. As he mounted his horse in the drive he saw her still standing as he had left her, the roses falling about her, and the suns.h.i.+ne full upon her bended head.

Until he was hidden by the trees she watched him breathlessly, then, kneeling in the path, she laid her cheek upon the long gra.s.s he had trodden underfoot. "O my love, my love," she whispered to the ground.

Miss Lydia called her from the house, and she went to her with some loose roses in her muslin ap.r.o.n. "Did you call me, Aunt Lydia?" she asked, lifting her radiant eyes to the old lady's face. "I haven't gathered very many leaves."

"I wanted you to pot some white violets for me, dear," answered Miss Lydia, from the back steps. "My winter garden is almost full, but there's a spot where I can put a few violets. Poor Mr. Bill asked for a geranium for his window, so I let him take one."

"Oh, let me pot them for you," begged Betty, eager to be of service. "Send Petunia for the trowel, and I'll choose you a lovely plant. It's too bad to see all the dear verbenas bitten by the frost." She tossed a rose into Miss Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden.

A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with him for a week at Cheric.o.ke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. "We need your hands to put it straight again," he added, "and Molly told me on no account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear."

"Why, I should love to go," replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her heart. "I'll be ready in a minute," and she ran upstairs to find her mother, and to pack her things.

The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the old coach before the portico.

"It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty," he said, as he stepped in after her and slammed the door. "It isn't often that I carry off a pretty girl so easily."

"Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily," returned Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. "She has told me the whole story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelors.h.i.+p, sir, so you needn't boast."

The Major chuckled in his corner. "I don't doubt that Molly told you so,"

he replied, "but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly romances she reads in bed--and, take my word for it, you'll find it somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a sensible woman, my child,--I'm the last man to deny it--but she always did read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding--and, bless my soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape."

"Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world," said Betty, "and I'm quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot."

"My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina," dissented the Major, warmly, "but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said that it ruined poor Jane, with all her pride. She got into her head all kind of notions about that scamp Montjoy, with his pale face and his long black hair. Poor girl, poor girl! I tried to bring her up on Homer and Milton, but she took to her mother's bookshelf as a duck to water." He wiped his eyes, and Betty patted his hand, and wondered if "the scamp Montjoy" looked the least bit like his son.

When they reached Cheric.o.ke she shook hands with the servants and ran upstairs to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber. The old lady, in her ruffled nightcap, which she always put on when she took to bed, was sitting upright under her dimity curtains, weeping over "Thaddeus of Warsaw." There was a little bookstand at her bedside filled with her favourite romances, and at the beginning of the year she would start systematically to read from the first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a t.i.tle--and an unt.i.tled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr.

d.i.c.kens's stories the other day and it was actually about a chimney sweep--a common chimney sweep from a workhouse! Why, I really felt as if I had been keeping low society."

Now, as she caught sight of Betty, she laid aside her book, wiped her eyes on a stiffly folded handkerchief, and became cheerful at once. "I warned Mr. Lightfoot not to dare to show his face without you," she began; "so I suppose he brought you off by force."

"I was only too glad to come," replied Betty, kissing her; "but what must I do for you first? Shall I rub your head with bay rum?"

"There's nothing on earth the matter with my head, child," retorted Mrs.

Lightfoot, promptly, "but you may go downstairs, as soon as you take off your things, and make me some decent tea and toast. Cupid brought me up two waiters at dinner, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a ten-foot pole."

Betty took off her bonnet and shawl and hung them on a chair. "I'll go down at once and see about it," she answered, "and I'll make Car'line put away my things. It's my old room I'm to have, I suppose."

"It's the whole house, if you want it, only don't let any of the darkies have a hand at my tea. It's their nature to slop."

"But it isn't mine," Betty answered her, and ran, laughing, down into the dining room.

"Dar ain' been no sich chunes sense young Miss rid away in de dead er de night time," muttered Cupid, in the pantry. "Lawd, Lawd, I des wish you'd teck up wid Ma.r.s.e Champe, en move 'long over hyer fer good en all. I reckon dar 'ud be times, den, I reckon, dar 'ould."

"There are going to be times now, Uncle Cupid," responded Betty, cheerfully, as she arranged the tray for Mrs. Lightfoot. "I'm going to make some tea and toast right on this fire for your old Miss. You bring the kettle, and I'll slice the bread."

Cupid brought the kettle, grumbling. "I ain' never hyern tell er sich a mouf es ole Miss es got," he muttered. "I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin er stomick, case she ain' never let de stuff git down dat fur--en de stomick hit ain' never tase it yit."

"Oh, stop grumbling, Uncle Cupid," returned Betty, moving briskly about the room. She brought the daintiest tea cup from the old sideboard, and leaned out of the window to pluck a late microphylla rosebud from the creeper upon the porch. Then, with the bread on the end of a long fork, she sat before the fire and asked Cupid about the health and fortunes of the house servants and the field hands.

"I ain' mix wid no fiel' han's," grunted Cupid, with a social pride befitting the Major. "Dar ain' no use er my mixin' en I ain' mix. Dey stay in dere place en I stay in my place--en dere place hit's de quarters, en my place hit's de dinin' 'oom."

"But Aunt Rhody--how's she?" inquired Betty, pleasantly, "and Big Abel? He didn't go back to college, did he?"

"Zeke, he went," replied Cupid, "en Big Abel he wuz bleeged ter stay behint 'case his wife Saphiry she des put 'er foot right down. Ef'n he 'uz gwine off again, sez she, she 'uz des gwine tu'n right in en git mah'ed agin. She ain' so sho', nohow, dat two husban's ain' better'n one, is Saphiry, en she got 'mos' a min' ter try hit. So Big Abel he des stayed behint."

"That was wise of Big Abel," remarked Betty. "Now open the door, Uncle Cupid, and I'll carry this upstairs," and as Cupid threw open the door, she went out, holding the tray before her.

The old lady received her graciously, ate the toast and drank the tea, and even admitted that it couldn't have been better if she had made it with her own hands. "I think that you will have to come and live with me, Betty,"

she said good-humouredly. "What a pity you can't fancy one of those useless boys of mine. Not that I'd have you marry Dan, child, the Major has spoiled him to death, and now he's beginning to repent it; but Champe, Champe is a good and clever lad and would make a mild and amiable husband, I am sure.

Don't marry a man with too much spirit, my dear; if a man has any extra spirit, he usually expends it in breaking his wife's."

"Oh, I shan't marry yet awhile," replied Betty, looking out upon the falling autumn leaves.

"So I said the day before I married Mr. Lightfoot," rejoined the old lady, settling her pillows, "and now, if you have nothing better to do, you might read me a chapter of 'Thaddeus of Warsaw'; you will find it to be a book of very pretty sentiment."

IX

THE MONTJOY BLOOD

In the morning Betty was awakened by the tapping of the elm boughs on the roof above her. An autumn wind was blowing straight from the west, and when she looked out through the small greenish panes of gla.s.s, she saw eddies of yellowed leaves beating gently against the old brick walls. Overhead light gray clouds were flying across the sky, and beyond the waving tree-tops a white mist hung above the dim blue chain of mountains.

When she went downstairs she found the Major, in his best black broadcloth, pacing up and down before the house. It was Sunday, and he intended to drive into town where the rector held his services.

"You won't go in with me, I reckon?" he ventured hopefully, when Betty smiled out upon him from the library window. "Ah, my dear, you're as fresh as the morning, and only an old man to look at you. Well, well, age has its consolations; you'll spare me a kiss, I suppose?"