Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

“ Dan, halting to rest in the mild weather, would fall often into a revery long and patient, like those of extreme old age. With the sun shining upon his relaxed body and his eyes on the bright dust that floated in the slanting beams, he would lie for hours speechless, absorbed, filled with visions. One day he found a mountain laurel flowering in the woods, and gathering a spray he sat with it in his hands and dreamed of Betty. When Big Abel touched him on the arm he turned with a laugh and struggled to his feet. ”

“ Come up, Prince Rupert, your highness is to go ahead of me; it's to oblige a lady, you know.”
Then, as Prince Rupert was led away, Dan looked at Betty.
“Shall it be the turnpike or the meadow path?” he inquired, with the gay deference he used toward women, as if a word might turn it to a jest or a look might make it earnest.
“The meadow, but not the path,” replied the girl; “the path is asleep under the snow.” She cast a happy glance over the white landscape, down the long turnpike, and across the broad meadow where a cedar tree waved like a snowy plume. ”

“ Virginia's dead, you know.”
“Dead!” cried Dan, and raised himself upon his cushion. The room went black before him, and he steadied himself by clutching at Big Abel's arm. At the instant the horrors of the battle-field, where he had seen men fall like grass before the scythe, became as nothing to the death of this one young girl. He thought of her living beauty, of the bright glow of her flesh, and it seemed to him that the earth could not hide a thing so fair.
“I left her in Richmond in the spring,” explained Jack, gripping himself hard. ”

“ Dan, fevered, pallid, leaning heavily upon Big Abel, passed unnoticed amid a throng which was, for the most part, worse off than himself. Men with old wounds breaking out afresh, or new ones staining red the cloths they wore, pushed wildly by him, making, as all made, for the country roads that led from war to peace. It was as if the hospitals of the world had disgorged themselves in the sunshine on the bright September fields. ”

“ The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate, hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her hair—all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the night. Betty, Betty,—he whispered her name softly beneath his breath, he spoke it aloud in the silence of the turnpike, he even cried it out against the mountains, and waited for the echo—Betty, Betty. ”

“ From free Levi's cabin, which was still standing, though a battle had raged in the fallen woods beyond it, and men had fought and been buried within a stone's throw of the doorstep, they heard the steady falling of a hammer and caught the red glow from the rude forge at which the old negro worked. With the half-forgotten sound, Dan returned as if in a vision to his last night at Chericoke, when he had run off in his boyish folly, with free Levi's hammer beating in his ears. ”

“ Bennett looked at him seriously through his glasses, and then his eyes wandered to the small slave, Mitty, whose chief end in life was the finding of Mrs. Lightfoot's spectacles. He was an earnest young man, but he could not keep his eyes away from Mitty when she was in the room; and at the old lady's, “Mitty, my girl, find me my glasses,” he felt like jumping from his seat and calling upon her to halt. It seemed a survival of the dark ages that one immortal soul should spend her life hunting for the spectacles of another. To Mr. Bennett, a soul was a soul in any colour ”

“ Dan lay down upon the blanket, and, with his hand upon his knapsack, gazed at the small red ember burning amid the ashes. When the last spark faded into blackness it was as if his thoughts went groping for a light. Sleep came fitfully in flights and pauses, in broken dreams and brief awakenings. Losing himself at last it was only to return to the woods at Chericoke and to see Betty coming to him among the dim blue bodies of the trees. He saw the faint sunshine falling upon her head and the stir of the young leaves above her as a light wind passed. ”

“ The Major leaned eagerly toward him.
“He said,” pursued the rector, laughing softly. “'God forbid, my boy, that I should question the right of any man or any country to pursue folly.'”
“Folly!” cried the Major, sharply, firing at the first sign of opposition. “It was a brave deed, sir, a brave deed—and I—yes, I envy the honour for Virginia. And as for Peyton Ambler, it is my belief that it is he who has sapped the courage of the state. Why, my honest opinion is that there are not fifty men in Virginia with the spirit to secede—and they are women.” ”

“ As for going back to college, the very idea was absurd. At twenty years it was quite time for him to settle down and keep open house like other men. Virginia, in rose pink, flitted up the crooked stair and across the white panels of the parlor, and with a leap, his heart went after her. He saw Great-aunt Emmeline lean down from her faded canvas as if to toss her apple at the young girl's feet. Ah, poor old beauty, hanging in a gilded frame, what was her century of dust to a bit of living flesh that had bright eyes and was coloured like a flower? ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was hot blood in him also, thought Dan, as he looked at him—and yet of all the men that he had ever known he would have called the Governor the most humane.
“I dare say—I'll get used to it, sir,” he answered. “Yes, it was a glorious victory.”
He broke away and went off into the twilight over the wide meadow to the little wayside spring. Across the road there was a field of clover, where a few campfires twinkled, and he hastened toward it eager to lie down in the darkness and fall asleep. ”

“ Behind her in the dim room Dan seemed to rise as suddenly as a ghost—and that high-flown chivalry of his, which delighted in sounding phrases as in heroic virtues, was loosened from the leaves of the old romance.
“For there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman but they loved one better than another, and worship in arms may never be foiled; but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady; and such love I call virtuous love.” ”

“ Where nature was suggestive of the long repose of ages, the brief passions of a single generation became as the flicker of a candle or the glow of a firefly in the night.
“Dat's a steep road ahead er us,” remarked Big Abel suddenly, as he stared into the shadows.
Dan came back with a start.
“Where shall we sleep?” he asked. “No, not in that field—the open sky would keep me awake, I think. Let's bivouac in the woods as usual.”
They moved on a little way and entered a young pine forest, where Big Abel gathered a handful of branches and kindled a light blaze. ”

“ Betty's glance sought the lawn outside where the warm May sunshine fell in shafts of light upon the purple lilacs.
“They are fighting now in the Wilderness,” she answered, her thoughts rushing to the famished army closed in the death grapple with its enemy. “Dan got a letter to me and he says it is like fighting in a jungle, the vines are so thick they can't see the other side. He has to aim by ear instead of sight.”
Mrs. Ambler's fingers moved quickly.
“He has become a very fine man,” she said. ”

“ It was a bright and stately society that filled the capital that year; and on pleasant Sundays when Virginia walked from church, in her Leghorn bonnet and white ruffles flaring over crinoline as they neared the ground, men, who had bled on fields of honour for the famous beauties of the South, would drop their talk to follow her with warming eyes. Cities might fall and battles might be lost and won, but their joy in a beautiful woman would endure until a great age. ”

“ Betty looked round with a smile, but as she did so, her eyes went beyond Champe, and saw Dan standing in the doorway, his soft slouch hat in his hand, and a powdering of snow on his dark hair. He had grown bigger and older in the last few months, and the Lightfoot eyes, with the Lightfoot twinkle in their pupils, gave an expression of careless humour to his pale, strongly moulded face. The same humour was in his voice even as he held his grandfather's hand. ”

“ At sunrise on the morning of the battle Betty and Virginia, from the whitewashed porch of a little railway inn near Manassas, watched the Governor's regiment as it marched down the single street and into the red clay road. Through the first faint sunshine, growing deeper as the sun rose gloriously above the hills, there sounded a peculiar freshness in the martial music as it triumphantly floated back across the fields. ”

“ But to Dan, sitting in the gray dawn in the fence corner, the first horror faded quickly into an emotion almost triumphant. The great field was silent, reproachful, filled with accusing eyes—but was it not filled with glory, too? He was young, and his weakened pulses quickened at the thought. Since men must die, where was a brighter death than to fall beneath the flutter of the colours, with the thunder of the cannon in one's ears? He knew now why his fathers had loved a fight, had loved the glitter of the bayonets and the savage smell of the discoloured earth. ”

“ The July sun fell straight and hot upon the camp, and Dan, as he sat on a woodpile and ate a green apple, wistfully cast his eyes about for a deeper shade. But the young tree from which he had just shaken its last fruit stood alone between the scattered tents and the blur of willows down the gentle slope, and beneath its speckled shadow the mess had gathered sleepily, after the mid-day meal.
In the group of privates, stretched under the gauzy shade on the trampled grass, the first thing to strike an observer would have been, perhaps, their surprising youth. ”

“ To see him stand amid the swinging cradles in the wheat field, ordering the slaves and arguing with the overseer, was sufficient delight unto the Major's day. “Nonsense, Molly,” he would reply half angrily to his wife's remonstrances. “The child can't be spoiled. I tell you he's too fine a boy. I couldn't spoil him if I tried,” and once out of his grandmother's sight, Dan's arrogance was laughed at, and his recklessness was worshipped. “Ah, you will make a man, you will make a man!” ”

“ To Dan these terrible days were as the anguish of a new birth, in which the thing to be born suffered the conscious throes of awakening life. He could never be the same again; something was altered in him forever; this he felt dimly as he dragged his aching body onward. Days like these would prove the stuff that had gone into the making of him. When the march to Romney lay behind him he should know himself to be either a soldier or a coward. A soldier or a coward! ”

“ She shut her eyes and brought back the long gray line passing across the sunbeams: the tanned eager faces, the waving flags, the rapid, almost impatient tread of the men as they swung onward. A laugh had run along the column as it went by her and she had smiled in quick sympathy with some foolish jest. It was all so natural to her, the gayety and the ardour and the invincible dash of the young army—it was all so like the spirit of Dan and so dear to her because of the likeness. ”

“ In the grass a small insect broke into a low humming, and the silence, closing the next instant, struck upon Dan's ears like a profound and solemn melody. He took off his cap, and still leaning upon Big Abel, looked with rested eyes on the sloping meadow brushed with the first gold of autumn. Something that was not unlike shame had fallen over him—as if the horrors of the morning were a mere vulgar affront which man had put upon the face of nature. ”

“ Ambler smiled. “Your grandpa used to say 'get a woman to judge a woman and there comes a hanging.'”
“Oh, I don't mean that,” responded Betty, blushing. “Jack Montjoy was a scoundrel, I suppose—but I think that even if Dan had been a scoundrel, instead of so big and noble—I could have made his life so much better just because I loved him; if love is only large enough it seems to me that all such things as being good and bad are swallowed up.” ”

“ In his sympathy for the slave, whose bondage he and his race had striven to make easy, he had overlooked the white sharer of the negro's wrong. To men like Pinetop, slavery, stern or mild, could be but an equal menace, and yet these were the men who, when Virginia called, came from their little cabins in the mountains, who tied the flint-locks upon their muskets and fought uncomplainingly until the end. Not the need to protect a decaying institution, but the instinct in every free man to defend the soil, had brought Pinetop, as it had brought Dan, into the army of the South. ”

“ A keen wind was still blowing, and as he descended the steps he felt it lifting the dampened hair from his forehead. With a breath of relief he stood bareheaded in the drive and raised his face to the cool elm leaves that drifted slowly down. After the heated atmosphere of the library there was something pleasant in the mere absence of light, and in the soft rustling of the branches overhead. The humour of his blood went suddenly quiet as if he had plunged headlong into cold water. ”

“ 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, God bless her.”
“God 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. ”

“ The famished army fell back inch by inch, and at Uplands the battle grew more desperate with the days. Without horses it was impossible to plant the crops and on the open turnpike swept by bands of raiders as by armies, it was no less impossible to keep the little that was planted. Betty, standing at her window in the early mornings, would glance despairingly over the wasted fields and the quiet little cabins, where the negroes were stirring about their work. ”

“ Sometimes distinguished strangers would go by, men from the far South in black broadcloth and slouch hats; then the President, slim and erect and very grave, riding his favourite horse to one of the encampments near the city; and then a noted beauty from another state, her chin lifted above the ribbons of her bonnet, a smile tucked in the red corners of her lips. Following there would surge by the same eager, staring throng—men too old to fight who had lost their work; women whose husbands fought in the trenches for the money that would hardly buy a sack of flour ”

“ The old “worm” fence went down, and as Dan piled up some loose rails before him, a creeping brier tore his fingers until the blood spurted upon his sleeve. Then, kneeling on the ground, he raised his musket and fired at one of the skirmishers advancing briskly through the broom-sedge. In an instant the meadow and the hill beyond were blue with swarming infantry, and the little gray band fell back, step by step, loading and firing as it went across the field. ”

“ All day in the bright sunshine they crept slowly onward, halting at brief intervals to rest in the short grass by the roadside, and stopping to ask information of the countrymen or stragglers whom they met. At last in the red glow of the sunset they entered a strip of thin woodland, and found an old negro gathering resinous knots from the bodies of fallen pines.
“Bless de Lawd!” he exclaimed as he faced them. “Is you done come fer de sick sodger at my cabin?”
“A sick soldier? Why, we are all sick soldiers,” answered Dan. ”

“ Amid a blur of young foliage they saw first the smoking chimneys of Uplands, and then the Doric columns beyond a lane of flowering lilacs. The stone wall had crumbled in places, and strange weeds were springing up among the high blue-grass; but here and there beneath the maples he caught a glimpse of small darkies uprooting the intruders, and beyond the garden, in the distant meadows, ploughmen were plodding back and forth in the purple furrows. Peace had descended here at least, and, with a smile, he detected Betty's abounding energy in the moving spirit of the place. ”

“ There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told him—not a shrub of sassafras 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. ”

“ As he came slowly to himself a sudden yearning for the army awoke within him. He wanted the red campfires and his comrades smoking against the dim pines; the peaceful bivouac where the long shadows crept among the trees and two men lay wrapped together beneath every blanket; above all, he wanted to see the Southern Cross wave in the sunlight, and to hear the charging yell as the brigade dashed into the open. He was homesick for it all to-night, and yet it was dead forever—dead as his own youth which he had given to the cause. ”