The Battle Ground Part 4

"He's mighty good," said Betty, honestly; then, as she looked at the boy again, she caught her breath quickly. "You do look terribly hungry," she added.

"I haven't had anything since--since yesterday."

The little girl thoughtfully tapped her toes on the road. "There's a currant pie in the safe," she said. "I saw Uncle Shadrach put it there. Are you fond of currant pie?--then you just wait!"

She ran up the carriage way to the dining-room window, and the boy sat down on the rock and buried his face in his hands. His feet were set stubbornly in the road, and the bundle lay beside them. He was dumb, yet disdainful, like a high-bred dog that has been beaten and turned adrift.

As the returning patter of Betty's feet sounded in the drive, he looked up and held out his hands. When she gave him the pie, he ate almost wolfishly, licking the crumbs from his fingers, and even picking up a bit of crust that had fallen to the ground.

"I'm sorry there isn't any more," said the little girl. It had seemed a very large pie when she took it from the safe.

The boy rose, shook himself, and swung his bundle across his arm.

"Will you tell me the way?" he asked, and she gave him a few childish directions. "You go past the wheat field an' past the maple spring, an' at the dead tree by Aunt Ailsey's cabin you turn into the road with the chestnuts. Then you just keep on till you get there--an' if you don't ever get there, come back to breakfast."

The boy had started off, but as she ended, he turned and lifted his hat.

"I am very much obliged to you," he said, with a quaint little bow; and Betty bobbed a courtesy in her nightgown before she fled back into the house.

III

THE COMING OF THE BOY

The boy trudged on bravely, his stick sounding the road. Sharp pains ran through his feet where his shoes had worn away, and his head was swimming like a top. The only pleasant fact of which he had consciousness was that the taste of the currants still lingered in his mouth.

When he reached the maple spring, he swung himself over the stone wall and knelt down for a drink, dipping the water in his hand. The spring was low and damp and fragrant with the breath of mint which grew in patches in the little stream. Overhead a wild grapevine was festooned, and he plucked a leaf and bent it into a cup from which he drank. Then he climbed the wall again and went on his way.

He was wondering if his mother had ever walked along this road on so brilliant a night. There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told him--not a shrub of sa.s.safras or sumach that she had not carried in her thoughts. The clump of cedars, the wild cherry, flowering in the spring like snow, the blasted oak that stood where the branch roads met, the perfume of the grape blossoms on the wall--these were as familiar to him as the streets of the little crowded town in which he had lived. It was as if nature had stood still here for twelve long summers, or as if he were walking, ghostlike, amid the ever present memories of his mother's heart.

His mother! He drew his sleeve across his eyes and went on more slowly. She was beside him on the road, and he saw her clearly, as he had seen her every day until last year--a bright, dark woman, with slender, blue-veined hands and merry eyes that all her tears had not saddened. He saw her in a long, black dress, with upraised arm, putting back a crepe veil from her merry eyes, and smiling as his father struck her. She had always smiled when she was hurt--even when the blow was heavier than usual, and the blood gushed from her temple, she had fallen with a smile. And when, at last, he had seen her lying in her coffin with her baby under her clasped hands, that same smile had been fixed upon her face, which had the brightness and the chill repose of marble.

Of all that she had thrown away in her foolish marriage, she had retained one thing only--her pride. To the end she had faced her fate with all the insolence with which she faced her husband. And yet--"the Lightfoots were never proud, my son," she used to say; "they have no false pride, but they know their place, and in England, between you and me, they were more important than the Was.h.i.+ngtons. Not that the General wasn't a great man, dear, he was a very great soldier, of course--and in his youth, you know, he was an admirer of your Great-great-aunt Emmeline. But she--why, she was the beauty and belle of two continents--there's an ottoman at home covered with a piece of her wedding dress."

And the house? Was the house still as she had left it on that Christmas Eve? "A simple gentleman's home, my child--not so imposing as Uplands, with its pillars reaching to the roof, but older, oh, much older, and built of brick that was brought all the way from England, and over the fireplace in the panelled parlour you will find the Lightfoot arms.

"It was in that parlour, dear, that grandmamma danced a minuet with General Lafayette; it looks out, you know, upon a white thorn planted by the General himself, and one of the windows has not been opened for fifty years, because the spray of English ivy your Great-aunt Emmeline set out with her own hands has grown across the sash. Now the window is quite dark with leaves, though you can still read the words Aunt Emmeline cut with her diamond ring in one of the tiny panes, when young Harry Fitzhugh came in upon her just as she had written a refusal to an English earl. She was sitting in the window seat with the letter in her hand, and, when your Great-uncle Harry--she afterwards married him, you know--fell on his knees and cried out that others might offer her fame and wealth, but that he had nothing except love, she turned, with a smile, and wrote upon the pane 'Love is best.' You can still see the words, very faint against the ivy that she planted on her wedding day--"

Oh, yes, he knew it all--Great-aunt Emmeline was but the abiding presence of the place. He knew the lawn with its grove of elms that overtopped the peaked roof, the hall, with its s.h.i.+ning floor and detached staircase that crooked itself in the centre where the tall clock stood, and, best of all, the white panels of the parlour where hung the portrait of that same fascinating great-aunt, painted, in amber brocade, as Venus with the apple in her hand.

And his grandmother, herself, in her stiff black silk, with a square of lace turned back from her thin throat and a fluted cap above her corkscrew curls--her daguerreotype, taken in all her pride and her precision, was tied up in the bundle swinging on his arm.

He pa.s.sed Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and turned into the road with the chestnuts.

A mile farther he came suddenly upon the house, standing amid the grove of elms, dwarfed by the giant trees that arched above it. A dog's bark sounded snappily from a kennel, but he paid no heed. He went up the broad white walk, climbed the steps to the square front porch, and lifted the great bra.s.s knocker. When he let it fall, the sound echoed through the shuttered house.

The Major, who was sitting in his library with a volume of Mr. Addison open before him and a decanter of Burgundy at his right hand, heard the knock, and started to his feet. "Something's gone wrong at Uplands," he said aloud; "there's an illness--or the brandy is out." He closed the book, pushed aside the bedroom candle which he had been about to light, and went out into the hall. As he unbarred the door and flung it open, he began at once:--

"I hope there's no ill news," he exclaimed.

The boy came into the hall, where he stood blinking from the glare of the lamplight. His head whirled, and he reached out to steady himself against the door. Then he carefully laid down his bundle and looked up with his mother's smile.

"You're my grandfather, and I'm very hungry," he said.

The Major caught the child's shoulders and drew him, almost roughly, under the light. As he towered there above him, he gulped down something in his throat, and his wide nostrils twitched.

"So you're poor Jane's boy?" he said at last.

The boy nodded. He felt suddenly afraid of the spare old man with his long Roman nose and his fierce black eyebrows. A mist gathered before his eyes and the lamp shone like a great moon in a cloudy circle.

The Major looked at the bundle on the floor, and again he swallowed. Then he stooped and picked up the thing and turned away.

"Come in, sir, come in," he said in a knotty voice. "You are at home."

The boy followed him, and they pa.s.sed the panelled parlour, from which he caught a glimpse of the painting of Great-aunt Emmeline, and went into the dining room, where his grandfather pulled out a chair and bade him to be seated. As the old man opened the huge mahogany sideboard and brought out a shoulder of cold lamb and a plate of bread and b.u.t.ter, he questioned him with a quaint courtesy about his life in town and the details of his journey. "Why, bless my soul, you've walked two hundred miles," he cried, stopping on his way from the pantry, with the ham held out. "And no money!

Why, bless my soul!"

"I had fifty cents," said the boy, "that was left from my steamboat fare, you know."

The Major put the ham on the table and attacked it grimly with the carving-knife.

"Fifty cents," he whistled, and then, "you begged, I reckon?"

The boy flushed. "I asked for bread," he replied, stung to the defensive.

"They always gave me bread and sometimes meat, and they let me sleep in the barns where the straw was, and once a woman took me into her house and offered me money, but I would not take it. I--I think I'd like to send her a present, if you please, sir."

"She shall have a dozen bottles of my best Madeira," cried the Major. The word recalled him to himself, and he got up and raised the lid of the cellaret, lovingly running his hand over the rows of bottles.

"A pig would be better, I think," said the boy, doubtfully, "or a cow, if you could afford it. She is a poor woman, you know."

"Afford it!" chuckled the Major. "Why, I'll sell your grandmother's silver, but I'll afford it, sir."

He took out a bottle, held it against the light, and filled a wine gla.s.s.

"This is the finest port in Virginia," he declared; "there is life in every drop of it. Drink it down," and, when the boy had taken it, he filled his own gla.s.s and tossed it off, not lingering, as usual, for the priceless flavour. "Two hundred miles!" he gasped, as he looked at the child with moist eyes over which his red lids half closed. "Ah, you're a Lightfoot,"

he said slowly. "I should know you were a Lightfoot if I pa.s.sed you in the road." He carved a slice of ham and held it out on the end of the knife.

"It's long since you've tasted a ham like this--browned in bread crumbs,"

he added temptingly, but the boy gravely shook his head.

"I've had quite enough, thank you, sir," he answered with a quaint dignity, not unlike his grandfather's and as the Major rose, he stood up also, lifting his black head to look in the old man's face with his keen gray eyes.

The Major took up the bundle and moved toward the door. "You must see your grandmother," he said as they went out, and he led the way up the crooked stair past the old clock in the bend. On the first landing he opened a door and stopped upon the threshold. "Molly, here is poor Jane's boy," he said.

In the centre of a big four-post bed, curtained in white dimity, a little old lady was lying between lavender-scented sheets. On her breast stood a tall silver candlestick which supported a well-worn volume of "The Mysteries of Udolpho," held open by a pair of silver snuffers. The old lady's face was sharp and wizened, and beneath her starched white nightcap rose the knots of her red flannel curlers. Her eyes, which were very small and black, held a flickering brightness like that in live embers.

"Whose boy, Mr. Lightfoot?" she asked sharply.