The Governor rode up too late to avert the punishment. Dan had taken his whipping and was sitting on a footstool in the library, facing the Major and a couple of the Major's cronies. His face wore an expression in which there was more resentment than resignation; for, though he took blows doggedly, he bore the memory of them long after the smart had ceased—long, indeed, after light-handed justice, in the Major's person, had forgotten alike the sin and the expiation. For the Major's hand was not steady at the rod, and he had often regretted a weakness of heart which interfered with a physical interpretation of the wisdom of Solomon. “If you get your deserts, you'd get fifty lashes,” was his habitual reproof to his servants, though, as a matter of fact, he had never been known to order one. His anger was sometimes of the kind that appalls, but it usually vented itself in a heightened redness of face or a single thundering oath; and a woman's sob would melt his stoniest mood. It was only because his daughter had kept out of his sight that he had never forgiven her, people said; but there was, perhaps, something characteristic in the proof that he was most relentless where he had most loved.
As for Dan's chastisement, he had struck him twice across the shoulders, and when the boy had turned to him with the bitter smile which was Jane Lightfoot's own, the Major had choked in his wrath, and, a moment later, flung the whip aside. “I'll be damned,—I beg your pardon, sir,—I'll be ashamed of myself if I give you another lick,” he said. “You are a gentleman, and I shall trust you.”
He held out his hand, but he had not counted on the Montjoy blood. The boy looked at him and stubbornly shook his head. “I can't shake hands yet because I am hating you just now,” he answered. “Will you wait awhile, sir?” and the Major choked again, half in awe, half in amusement.
“You don't bear malice, I reckon?” he ventured cautiously.
“I am not sure,” replied the boy, “I rather think I do.”
Then he put on his coat, and they went out to meet Mr. Blake and Dr. Crump, two hale and jolly gentlemen who rode over every Thursday to spend the night.
As the visitors came panting up the steps, the Major stood in the doorway with outstretched hands.
“You are late, gentlemen, you are late,” was his weekly greeting, to which they as regularly responded, “We could never come too early for our pleasure, my dear Major; but there are professional duties, you know, professional duties.”
After this interchange of courtesies, they would enter the house and settle themselves, winter or summer, in their favourite chairs upon the hearth-rug, when it was the custom of Mrs. Lightfoot to send in a fluttering maid to ask if Mrs. Blake had done her the honour to accompany her husband. As Mrs. Blake was never known to leave her children and her pet poultry, this was merely a conventionalism by which the elder lady meant to imply a standing welcome for the younger.
On this evening, Mr. Blake—the rector of the largest church in Leicesterburg—straightened his fat legs and folded his hands as he did at the ending of his sermons, and the others sat before him with the strained and reverential faces which they put on like a veil in church and took off when the service was over. That it was not a prayer, but a pleasantry of which he was about to deliver himself, they quite understood; but he had a habit of speaking on week days in his Sunday tones, which gave, as it were, an official weight to his remarks. He was a fleshy wide-girthed gentleman, with a bald head, and a face as radiant as the full moon.
“I was just asking the doctor when I was to have the honour of making the little widow Mrs. Crump?” he threw out at last, with a laugh that shook him from head to foot. “It is not good for man to live alone, eh, Major?”
“That sentence is sufficient to prove the divine inspiration of the Scriptures,” returned the Major, warmly, while the doctor blushed and stammered, as he always did, at the rector's mild matrimonial jokes. It was twenty years since Mr. Blake began teasing Dr. Crump about his bachelorship, and to them both the subject was as fresh as in its beginning.
“I—I declare I haven't seen the lady for a week,” protested the doctor, “and then she sent for me.”
“Sent for you?” roared Mr. Blake. “Ah, doctor, doctor!”
“She sent for me because she had heart trouble,” returned the doctor, indignantly. The lady's name was never mentioned between them.
The rector laughed until the tears started.
“Ah, you're a success with the ladies,” he exclaimed, as he drew out a neatly ironed handkerchief and shook it free from its folds, “and no wonder—no wonder! We'll be having an epidemic of heart trouble next.” Then, as he saw the doctor wince beneath his jest, his kindly heart reproached him, and he gravely turned to politics and the dignity of nations.
The two friends were faithful Democrats, though the rector always began his very forcible remarks with: “A minister knows nothing of politics, and I am but a minister of the Gospel. If you care, however, for the opinion of an outsider—”
As for the Major, he had other leanings which were a source of unending interest to them all. “I am a Whig, not from principle, but from prejudice, sir,” he declared. “The Whig is the gentleman's party. I never saw a Whig that didn't wear broadcloth.”
“And some Democrats,” politely protested the doctor, with a glance at his coat.
The Major bowed.
“And many Democrats, sir; but the Whig party, if I may say so, is the broadcloth party—the cloth stamps it; and besides this, sir, I think its 'parts are solid and will wear well.'”
Now when the Major began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent, save for an occasional prompting, as, “I was reading theSpectatoruntil eleven last night, sir,” or “I have been trying to recall the lines inThe Campaignbefore. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved.”
This was the best of the day to Dan, and, as he turned on his footstool, he did not even glare at Champe, who, from the window seat, was regarding him with the triumphant eye with which the young behold the downfall of a brother. For a moment he had forgotten the whipping, but Champe had not; he was thinking of it in the window seat.
But the Major was standing on the hearth-rug, and the boy's gaze went to him. Tossing back his long white hair, and fixing his eagle glance on his friends, the old gentleman, with a free sweep of his arm, thundered his favourite lines:—
“So, when an angel by divine commandWith rising tempests shakes a guilty land(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed),Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.”
He had got so far when the door opened and the Governor entered—a little hurriedly, for he was thinking of his supper.
“I am the bearer of an apology, my dear Major,” he said, when he had heartily shaken hands all round. “It seems that Betty—I assure you she is in great distress—set fire to your woodpile this afternoon, and that your grandson was punished for her mischief. My dear boy,” he laid his hand on Dan's shoulder and looked into his face with the winning smile which had made him the most popular man in his State, “my dear boy, you are young to be such a gentleman.”
A hot flush overspread Dan's face; he forgot the smart and the wounded pride—he forgot even Champe staring from the window seat. The Governor's voice was like salve to his hurt; the upright little man with the warm brown eyes seemed to lift him at once to the plane of his own chivalry.
“Oh, I couldn't tell on a girl, sir,” he answered, and then his smothered injury burst forth; “but she ought to be ashamed of herself,” he added bluntly.
“She is,” said the Governor with a smile; then he turned to the others. “Major, the boy is a Lightfoot!” he exclaimed.
“Ah, so I said, so I said!” cried the Major, clapping his hand on Dan's head in a racial benediction. “'I'd know you were a Lightfoot if I met you in the road' was what I said the first evening.”
“And a Virginian,” added Mr. Blake, folding his hands on his stomach and smiling upon the group. “My daughter in New York wrote to me last week for advice about the education of her son. 'Shall I send him to the school of learning at Cambridge, papa?' she asked; and I answered, 'Send him there, if you will, but, when he has finished with his books, by all means let him come to Virginia—the school for gentlemen.'”
“The school for gentlemen!” cried the doctor, delightedly. “It is a prouder title than the 'Mother of Presidents.'”
“And as honourably earned,” added the rector. “If you want polish, come to Virginia; if you want chivalry, come to Virginia. When I see these two things combined, I say to myself, 'The blood of the Mother of Presidents is here.'”
“You are right, sir, you are right!” cried the Major, shaking back his hair, as he did when he was about to begin the lines fromThe Campaign. “Nothing gives so fine a finish to a man as a few years spent with the influences that moulded Washington. Why, some foreigners are perfected by them, sir. When I met General Lafayette in Richmond upon his second visit, I remember being agreeably impressed with his dignity and ease, which, I have no doubt, sir, he acquired by his association, in early years, with the Virginia gentlemen.”
The Governor looked at them with a twinkle in his eye. He was aware of the humorous traits of his friends, but, in the peculiar sweetness of his temper, he loved them not the less because he laughed at them—perhaps the more. In the rector's fat body and the Major's lean one, he knew that there beat hearts as chivalrous as their words. He had seen the Major doff his hat to a beggar in the road, and the rector ride forty miles in a snowstorm to read a prayer at the burial of a slave. So he said with a pleasant laugh, “We are surely the best judges, my dear sirs,” and then, as Mrs. Lightfoot rustled in, they rose and fell back until she had taken her seat, and found her knitting.
“I am so sorry not to see Mrs. Blake,” she said to the rector. “I have a new recipe for yellow pickle which I must write out and send to her.” And, as the Governor rose to go, she stood up and begged him to stay to supper. “Mr. Lightfoot, can't you persuade him to sit down with us?” she asked.
“Where you have failed, Molly, it is useless for me to try,” gallantly responded the Major, picking up her ball of yarn.
“But I must bear your pardon to my little girl, I really must,” insisted the Governor. “By the way, Major,” he added, turning at the door, “what do you think of the scheme to let the Government buy the slaves and ship them back to Africa? I was talking to a Congressman about it last week.”
“Sell the servants to the Government!” cried the Major, hotly. “Nonsense! nonsense! Why, you are striking at the very foundation of our society! Without slavery, where is our aristocracy, sir?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the Governor lightly. “Well, we shall keep them a while longer, I expect. Good night, madam, good night, gentlemen,” and he went out to where his horse was standing.
The Major looked after him with a sigh. “When I hear a man talking about the abolition of slavery,” he remarked gloomily, “I always expect him to want to do away with marriage next—” he checked himself and coloured, as if an improper speech had slipped out in the presence of Mrs. Lightfoot. The old lady rose primly and, taking the rector's arm, led the way to supper.
Dan was not noticed at the table,—it was a part of his grandmother's social training to ignore children before visitors,—but when he went upstairs that night, the Major came to the boy's room and took him in his arms.
“I am proud of you, my child,” he said. “You are my grandson, every inch of you, and you shall have the finest riding horse in the stables on your birthday.”
“I'd rather have Big Abel, if you please, sir,” returned Dan. “I think Big Abel would like to belong to me, grandpa.”
“Bless my soul!” cried the Major. “Why, you shall have Big Abel and his whole family, if you like. I'll give you every darky on the place, if you want them—and the horses to boot,” for the old gentleman was as unwise in his generosity as in his wrath.
“Big Abel will do, thank you,” responded the boy; “and I'd like to shake hands now, grandpa,” he added gravely; but before the Major left that night he had won not only the child's hand, but his heart. It was the beginning of the great love between them.
For from that day Dan was as the light of his grandfather's eyes. As the boy strode manfully across the farm, his head thrown back, his hands clasped behind him, the old man followed, in wondering pride, on his footsteps. 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!” the Major had exclaimed when he found him swearing at the overseer, “but you mustn't curse, you really mustn't, you know. Why, your grandmother won't let me do it.”
“But I told him to leave that haystack for me to slide on,” complained the boy, “and he said he wouldn't, and began to pull it down. I wish you'd send him away, grandpa.”
“Send Harris away!” whistled the Major. “Why, where could I get another, Dan? He has been with me for twenty years.”
“Hi, young Marster, who gwine min' de han's?” cried Big Abel, from behind.
“Do you like him, Big Abel?” asked the child, for the opinion of Big Abel was the only one for which he ever showed respect. “It's because he's not free, grandpa,” he had once explained at the Major's jealous questioning. “I wouldn't hurt his feelings because he's not free, you know, and he couldn't answer back,” and the Major had said nothing more.
Now “Do you like him, Big Abel?” he inquired; and to the negro's “He's done use me moughty well, suh,” he said gravely, “Then he shall stay, grandpa—and I'm sorry I cursed you, Harris,” he added before he left the field. He would always own that he was wrong, if he could once be made to see it, which rarely happened.
“The boy's kind heart will save him, or he is lost,” said the Governor, sadly, as Dan tore by on his little pony, his black hair blown from his face, his gray eyes shining.
“He has a kind heart, I know,” returned Mrs. Ambler, gently; “the servants and the animals adore him—but—but do you think it well for Betty to be thrown so much with him? He is very wild, and they deny him nothing. I wish she went with Champe instead—but what do you think?”
“I don't know, I don't know,” answered the Governor, uneasily. “He told the doctor to mind his own business, yesterday—and that is not unlike Betty, herself, I am sorry to say—but this morning I saw him give his month's pocket money to that poor free negro, Levi. I can't say, I really do not know,” his eyes followed Betty as she flew out to climb behind Dan on the pony's back. “I wish it were Champe, myself,” he added doubtfully.
For Betty—independent Betty—had become Dan's slave. Ever since the afternoon of the burning woodpile, she had bent her stubborn little knees to him in hero-worship. She followed closer than a shadow on his footsteps; no tortures could wring his secrets from her lips. Once, when he hid himself in the mountains for a day and night and played Indian, she kept silence, though she knew his hiding-place, and a search party was out with lanterns until dawn.
“I didn't tell,” she said triumphantly, when he came down again.
“No, you didn't tell,” he frankly acknowledged.
“So I can keep a secret,” she declared at last.
“Oh, yes, you can keep a secret—for a girl,” he returned, and added, “I tell you what, I like you better than anybody about here, except grandpa and Big Abel.”
She shone upon him, her eyes narrowing; then her face darkened. “Not better than Big Abel?” she questioned plaintively.
“Why, I have to like Big Abel best,” he replied, “because he belongs to me, you know—you ought to love the thing that belongs to you.”
“But I might belong to you,” suggested Betty. She smiled again, and, smiling or grave, she always looked as if she were standing in a patch of sunshine, her hair made such a brightness about her.
“Oh, you couldn't, you're white,” said Dan; “and, besides, I reckon Big Abel and the pony are as much as I can manage. It's a dreadful weight, having people belong to you.”
Then he loaded his gun, and Betty ran away with her fingers in her ears, because she couldn't bear to have things killed.
A month later Dan and Champe settled down to study. The new tutor came—a serious young man from the North, who wore spectacles, and read the Bible to the slaves on the half-holidays. He was kindly and conscientious, and, though the boys found him unduly weighed down by responsibility for the souls of his fellows, they soon loved him in a light-hearted fashion. In a society where even the rector harvested alike the true grain and the tares, and left the Almighty to do His own winnowing, Mr. Bennett's free-handed fight with the flesh and the devil was looked upon with smiling tolerance, as if he were charging a windmill with a wooden sword.
On Saturdays he would ride over to Uplands, and discuss his schemes for the uplifting of the negroes with the Governor and Mrs. Ambler; and once he even went so far as to knock at Rainy-day Jones's door and hand him a pamphlet entitled “The Duties of the Slaveholder.” Old Rainy-day, who was the biggest bully in the county, set the dogs on him, and lit his pipe with the pamphlet; but the Major, when he heard the story, laughed, and called the young man “a second David.”
Mr. 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; to the Major the sons of Ham were under a curse which the Lord would lighten in His own good time.
But before many months, the young man had won the affection of the boys and the respect of their grandfather, whose candid lack of logic was overpowered by the reasons which Mr. Bennett carried at every finger tip. He not only believed things, he knew why he believed them; and to the Major, with whom feelings were convictions, this was more remarkable than the courage with which he had handed his tract to old Rainy-day Jones.
As for Mr. Bennett, he found the Major a riddle that he could not read; but the Governor's first smile had melted his reserve, and he declared Mrs. Ambler to be “a Madonna by Perugino.”
Mrs. Ambler had never heard of Perugino, and the word “Madonna” suggested to her vague Romanist snares, but her heart went out to the stranger when she found that he was in mourning for his mother. She was not a clever woman in a worldly sense, yet her sympathy, from the hourly appeals to it, had grown as fine as intellect. She was hopelessly ignorant of ancient history and the Italian Renaissance; but she had a genius for the affections, and where a greater mind would have blundered over a wound, her soft hand went by intuition to the spot. It was very pleasant to sit in a rosewood chair in her parlour, to hear her gray silk rustle as she crossed her feet, and to watch her long white fingers interlace.
So she talked to the young man of his mother, and he showed her the daguerrotype of the girl he loved; and at last she confided to him her anxieties for Betty's manners and the Governor's health, and her timid wonder that the Bible “countenanced” slavery. She was rare and elegant like a piece of fine point lace; her hands had known no harder work than the delicate hemstitching, and her mind had never wandered over the nearer hills.
As time went on, Betty was given over to the care of her governess, and she was allowed to run wild no more in the meadows. Virginia, a pretty prim little girl, already carried her prayer book in her hands when she drove to church, and wore Swiss muslin frocks in the evenings; but Betty when she was made to hem tablecloths on sunny mornings, would weep until her needle rusted.
On cloudy days she would sometimes have her ambitions to be ladylike, and once, when she had gone to a party in town and seen Virginia dancing while she sat against the wall, she had come home to throw herself upon the floor.
“It's not that I care for boys, mamma,” she wailed, “for I despise them; but they oughtn't to have let me sit against the wall. And none of them asked me to dance—not even Dan.”
“Why, you are nothing but a child, Betty,” said Mrs. Ambler, in dismay. “What on earth does it matter to you whether the boys notice you or not?”
“It doesn't,” sobbed Betty; “but you wouldn't like to sit against the wall, mamma.”
“You can make them suffer for it six years hence, daughter,” suggested the Governor, revengefully.
“But suppose they don't have anything to do with me then,” cried Betty, and wept afresh.
In the end, it was Uncle Bill who brought her to her feet, and, in doing so, he proved himself to be the philosopher that he was.
“I tell you what, Betty,” he exclaimed, “if you get up and stop crying, I'll give you fifty cents. I reckon fifty cents will make up for any boy, eh?”
Betty lay still and looked up from the floor.
“I—I reckon a dol-lar m-i-g-h-t,” she gasped, and caught a sob before it burst out.
“Well, you get up and I'll give you a dollar. There ain't many boys worth a dollar, I can tell you.”
Betty got up and held out one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other.
“I shall never speak to a boy again,” she declared, as she took the money.
That was when she was thirteen, and a year later Dan went away to college.
“My dear grandpa,” wrote Dan during his first weeks at college, “I think I am going to like it pretty well here after I get used to the professors. The professors are a great nuisance. They seem to forget that a fellow of seventeen isn't a baby any longer.
“The Arcades are very nice, and the maples on the lawn remind me of those at Uplands, only they aren't nearly so fine. My room is rather small, but Big Abel keeps everything put away, so I manage to get along. Champe sleeps next to me, and we are always shouting through the wall for Big Abel. I tell you, he has to step lively now.
“The night after we came, we went to supper at Professor Ball's. There was a Miss Ball there who had a pair of big eyes, but girls are so silly. Champe talked to her all the evening and walked out to the graveyard with her the next afternoon. I don't see why he wants to spend so much of his time with young ladies. It's because they think him good-looking, I reckon.
“We are the only men who have horses here, so I am glad you made me bring Prince Rupert, after all. When I ride him into town, everybody turns to look at him, and Batt Horsford, the stableman, says his trot is as clean as a razor. At first I wished I'd brought my hunter instead, they made such a fuss over Champe's, and I tell you he's a regular timber-topper.
“A week ago I rode to the grave of Mr. Jefferson, as I promised you, but I couldn't carry the wreath for grandma because it would have looked silly—Champe said so. However, I made Big Abel get down and pull a few flowers on the way.
“You know, I had always thought that only gentlemen came to the University, but whom do you think I met the first evening?—why, the son of old Rainy-day Jones. What do you think of that? He actually had the impudence to pass himself off as one of the real Joneses, and he was going with all the men. Of course, I refused to shake hands with him—so did Champe—and, when he wanted to fight me, I said I fought only gentlemen. I wish you could have seen his face. He looked as old Rainy-day did when he hit the free negro Levi, and I knocked him down.
“By the way, I wish you would please send me my half-year's pocket money in a lump, if you can conveniently do so. There is a man here who is working his way through Law, and his mother has just lost all her money, so, unless some one helps him, he'll have to go out and work before he takes his degree. I've promised to lend him my half-year's allowance—I said 'lend' because it might hurt his feelings; but, of course, I don't want him to pay it back. He's a great fellow, but I can't tell you his name—I shouldn't like it in his place, you know.
“The worst thing about college life is having to go to classes. If it wasn't for that I should be all right, and, anyway, I am solid on my Greek and Latin—but I can't get on with the higher mathematics. Mr. Bennett couldn't drive them into my head as he did into Champe's.
“I hope grandma has entirely recovered from her lumbago. Tell her Mrs. Ball says she was cured by using red pepper plasters.
“Do you know, by the way, that I left my half-dozen best waistcoats—the embroidered ones—in the bottom drawer of my bureau, at least Big Abel swears that's where he put them. I should be very much obliged if grandma would have them fixed up and sent to me—I can't do without them. A great many gentlemen here are wearing coloured cravats, and Charlie Morson's brother, who came up from Richmond for a week, has a pair of side whiskers. He says they are fashionable down there, but I don't like them.
“With affectionate greeting to grandma and yourself,
“Your dutiful grandson,
“P.S. I am using my full name now—it will look better if I am ever President. I wonder if Mr. Jefferson was ever called plain Tom.
“N.B. Give my love to the little girls at Uplands.
The Major read the letter aloud to his wife while she sat knitting by the fireside, with Mitty holding the ball of yarn on a footstool at her feet.
“What do you think of that, Molly?” he asked when he had finished, his voice quivering with excitement.
“Red pepper plasters!” returned the old lady, contemptuously. “As if I hadn't been making them for Cupid for the last twenty years. Red pepper plasters, indeed! Why, they're no better than mustard ones. I reckon I've made enough of them to know.”
“I don't mean that, Molly,” explained the Major, a little crestfallen. “I was speaking of the letter. That's a fine letter, now, isn't it?”
“It might be worse,” admitted Mrs. Lightfoot, coolly; “but for my part, I don't care to have my grandson upon terms of equality with any of that rascal Jones's blood. Why, the man whips his servants.”
“But he isn't upon any terms, my dear. He refused to shake hands with him, didn't you hear that? Perhaps I'd better read the letter again.”
“That is all very well, Mr. Lightfoot,” said his wife, clicking her needles, “but it can't prevent his being in classes with him, all the same. And I am sure, if I had known the University was so little select, I should have insisted upon sending him to Oxford, where his great-grandfather went before him.”
“Good gracious, Molly! You don't wish the lad was across the ocean, do you?”
“It matters very little where he is so long as he is a gentleman,” returned the old lady, so sharply that Mitty began to unwind the worsted rapidly.
“Nonsense, Molly,” protested the Major, irritably, for he could not stand opposition upon his own hearth-rug. “The boy couldn't be hurt by sitting in the same class with the devil himself—nor could Champe, for that matter. They are too good Lightfoots.”
“I am not uneasy about Champe,” rejoined his wife. “Champe has never been humoured as Dan has been, I'm glad to say.”
The Major started up as red as a beet.
“Do you mean that I humour him, madam?” he demanded in a terrible voice.
“Do pray, Mr. Lightfoot, you will frighten Mitty to death,” said his wife, reprovingly, “and it is really very dangerous for you to excite yourself so—you remember the doctor cautioned you against it.” And, by the time the Major was thoroughly depressed, she skilfully brought out her point. “Of course you spoil the child to death. You know it as well as I do.”
The Major, with the fear of apoplexy in his mind, had no answer on his tongue, though a few minutes later he showed his displeasure by ordering his horse and riding to Uplands to talk things over with the Governor.
“I am afraid Molly is breaking,” he thought gloomily, as he rode along. “She isn't what she was when I married her fifty years ago.”
But at Uplands his ill humour was dispelled. The Governor read the letter and declared that Dan was a fine lad, “and I'm glad you haven't spoiled him, Major,” he said heartily. “Yes, they're both fine lads and do you honour.”
“So they do! so they do!” exclaimed the Major, delightedly. “That's just what I said to Molly, sir. And Dan sends his love to the little girls,” he added, smiling upon Betty and Virginia, who stood by.
“Thank you, sir,” responded Virginia, prettily, looking at the old man with her dovelike eyes; but Betty tossed her head—she had an imperative little toss which she used when she was angry. “I am only three years younger than he is,” she said, “and I'm not a little girl any longer—Mammy has had to let down all my dresses. I am fourteen years old, sir.”
“And quite a young lady,” replied the Major, with a bow. “There are not two handsomer girls in the state, Governor, which means, of course, that there are not two handsomer girls in the world, sir. Why, Virginia's eyes are almost a match for my Aunt Emmeline's, and poets have immortalized hers. Do you recall the verses by the English officer she visited in prison?—
“'The stars in Rebel skies that shineAre the bright orbs of Emmeline.'”
“Yes, I remember,” said the Governor. “Emmeline Lightfoot is as famous as Diana,” then his quick eyes caught Betty's drooping head, “and what of this little lady?” he asked, patting her shoulder. “There's not a brighter smile in Virginia than hers, eh, Major?”
But the Major was not to be outdone when there were compliments to be exchanged.
“Her hair is like the sunshine,” he began, and checked himself, for at the first mention of her hair Betty had fled.
It was on this afternoon that she brewed a dye of walnut juice and carried it in secret to her room. She had loosened her braids and was about to plunge her head into the basin when Mrs. Ambler came in upon her. “Why, Betty! Betty!” she cried in horror.
Betty turned with a start, wrapped in her shining hair. “It is the only thing left to do, mamma,” she said desperately. “I am going to dye it. It isn't ladylike, I know, but red hair isn't ladylike either. I have tried conjuring, and it won't conjure, so I'm going to dye it.”
“Betty! Betty!” was all Mrs. Ambler could say, though she seized the basin and threw it from the window as if it held poison. “If you ever let that stuff touch your hair, I—I'll shave your head for you,” she declared as she left the room; but a moment afterward she looked in again to add, “Your grandmamma had red hair, and she was the beauty of her day—there, now, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
So Betty smiled again, and when Virginia came in to dress for supper, she found her parading about in Aunt Lydia's best bombazine gown.
“This is how I'll look when I'm grown up,” she said, the corner of her eye on her sister.
“You'll look just lovely,” returned Virginia, promptly, for she always said the sweetest thing at the sweetest time.
“And I'm going to look like this when Dan comes home next summer,” resumed Betty, sedately.
“Not in Aunt Lydia's dress?”
“You goose! Of course not. I'm going to get Mammy to make me a Swiss muslin down to the ground, and I'm going to wear six starched petticoats because I haven't any hoops. I'm just wild to wear hoops, aren't you, Virginia?”
“I reckon so,” responded Virginia, doubtfully; “but it will be hard to sit down, don't you think?”
“Oh, but I know how,” said Betty. “Aunt Lydia showed me how to do it gracefully. You give a little kick—ever so little and nobody sees it—and then you just sink into your seat. I can do it well.”
“You were always clever,” exclaimed Virginia, as sweetly as before. She was parting her satiny hair over her forehead, and the glass gave back a youthful likeness of Mrs. Ambler. She was the beauty of the family, and she knew it, which made her all the lovelier to Betty.
“I declare, your freckles are all gone,” she said, as her sister's head looked over her shoulder. “I wonder if it is the buttermilk that has made you so white?”
“It must be that,” admitted Betty, who had used it faithfully for the sixty nights. “Aunt Lydia says it works wonders.” Then, as she looked at herself, her eyes narrowed and she laughed aloud. “Why, Dan won't know me,” she cried merrily.
But whatever hopes she had of Dan withered in the summer. When he came home for the holidays, he brought with him an unmistakable swagger and a supply of coloured neckerchiefs. On his first visit to Uplands he called Virginia “my pretty child,” and said “Good day, little lady,” to Betty. He carried himself like an Indian, as the Governor put it, and he was very lithe and muscular, though he did not measure up to Champe by half a head. It was the Montjoy blood in him, people thought, for the Lightfoots were all of great height, and he had, too, a shock of his father's coarse black hair, which flared stiffly above the brilliant Lightfoot eyes. As he galloped along the turnpike on Prince Rupert, the travelling countrymen turned to look after him, and muttered that “dare-devil Jack Montjoy had risen from his grave—if he had a grave.”
Once he met Betty at the gate, and catching her up before him, dashed with her as far as Aunt Ailsey's cabin and back again. “You are as light as a fly,” he said with a laugh, “and not much bigger. There, take your hair out of my eyes, or I'll ride amuck.”
Betty caught her hair in one hand and drew it across her breast. “This is like—” she began gayly, and checked herself. She was thinking of “that devil Jack Montjoy and Jane Lightfoot.”
“I must take my chance now,” said Dan, in his easy, masterful way. “You will be too old for this by next year. Why, you will be in long dresses then, and Virginia—have you noticed, by the way, what a beauty Virginia is going to be?”
“She is just lovely,” heartily agreed Betty. “She's prettier than your Great-aunt Emmeline, isn't she?”
“By George, she is. And I've been in love with Great-aunt Emmeline for ten years because I couldn't find her match. I say, don't let anybody go off with Virginia while I'm at college, will you?”
“All right,” said Betty, and though she smiled at him through her hair, her smile was not so bright as it had been. It was all very well to hear Virginia praised, she told herself, but she should have liked it better had Dan been a little less emphatic. “I don't think any one is going to run off with her,” she added gravely, and let the subject of her sister's beauty pass.
But at the end of the week, when Dan went back to college, her loyal heart reproached her, and she confided to Virginia that “he thought her a great deal lovelier than Great-aunt Emmeline.”
“Really?” asked Virginia, and determined to be very nice to him when he came home for the holidays.
“But what does he say about you?” she inquired after a moment.
“About me?” returned Betty. “Oh, he doesn't say anything about me, except that I am kind.”
Virginia stooped and kissed her. “You are kind, dear,” she said in her sweetest voice.
And “kind,” after all, was the word for Betty, unless Big Abel had found one when he said, “She is des all heart.” It was Betty who had tramped three miles through the snow last Christmas to carry her gifts to the free negro Levi, who was “laid up” and could not come to claim his share; and it was Betty who had asked as a present for herself the lame boy Micah, that belonged to old Rainy-day Jones. She had met Micah in the road, and from that day the Governor's life was a burden until he sent the negro up to her door on Christmas morning. There was never a sick slave or a homeless dog that she would not fly out to welcome, bareheaded and a little breathless, with the kindness brimming over from her eyes. “She has her father's head and her mother's heart,” said the Major to his wife, when he saw the girl going by with the dogs leaping round her and a young fox in her arms. “What a wife she would make for Dan when she grows up! I wish he'd fancy her. They'd be well suited, eh, Molly?”
“If he fancies the thing that is suited to him, he is less of a man than I take him to be,” retorted Mrs. Lightfoot, with a cynicism which confounded the Major. “He will lose his head over her doll baby of a sister, I suppose—not that she isn't a good girl,” she added briskly. “Julia Ambler couldn't have had a bad child if she had tried, though I confess I am surprised that she could have helped having a silly one; but Betty, why, there hasn't been a girl since I grew up with so much sense in her head as Betty Ambler has in her little finger.”
“When I think of you fifty years ago, I must admit that you put a high standard, Molly,” interposed the Major, who was always polite when he was not angry.
“She spent a week with me while you were away,” Mrs. Lightfoot went on in an unchanged voice, though with a softened face, “and, I declare, she kept house as well as I could have done it myself, and Cupid says she washed the pink teaset every morning with her own hands, and she actually cured Rhody's lameness with a liniment she made out of Jimson weed. I tell you now, Mr. Lightfoot, that, if I get sick, Betty Ambler is the only girl I'm going to have inside the house.”
“Very well, my dear,” said the Major, meekly, “I'll try to remember; and, in that case, I reckon we'd as well drop a hint to Dan, eh, Molly?”
Mrs. Lightfoot looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said “Humph!” beneath her breath, and took up her knitting from the little table at her side.
But Dan was living fast at college, and the Major's hints were thrown away. He read of “the Ambler girls who are growing into real beauties,” and he skipped the part that said, “Your grandmother has taken a great fancy to Betty and enjoys having her about.”
“Here's something for you, Champe,” he remarked with a laugh, as he tossed the letter upon the table. “Gather your beauties while you may, for I prefer bull pups. Did Batt Horsford tell you I'd offered him twenty-five dollars for that one of his?”
Champe picked up the letter and unfolded it slowly. He was a tall, slender young fellow, with curling pale brown hair and fine straight features. His face, in the strong light of the window by which he stood, showed a tracery of blue veins across the high forehead.
“Oh, shut up about bull pups,” he said irritably. “You are as bad as a breeder, and yet you couldn't tell that thoroughbred of John Morson's from a cross with a terrier.”
“You bet I couldn't,” cried Dan, firing up; but Champe was reading the letter, and a faint flush had risen to his face. “The girl is like a spray of golden-rod in the sunshine,” wrote the Major, with his old-fashioned rhetoric.
“What is it he says, eh?” asked Dan, noting the flush and drawing his conclusions.
“He says that Aunt Molly and himself will meet us at the White Sulphur next summer.”
“Oh, I don't mean that. What is it he says about the girls; they are real beauties aren't they? By the way, Champe, why don't you marry one of them and settle down?”
“Why don't you?” retorted Champe, as Dan got up and called to Big Abel to bring his riding clothes. “Oh, I'm not a lady's man,” he said lightly. “I've too moody a face for them,” and he began to dress himself with the elaborate care which had won for him the title of “Beau” Montjoy.
By the next summer, Betty and Virginia had shot up as if in a night, but neither Champe nor Dan came home. After weeks of excited preparation, the Major and Mrs. Lightfoot started, with Congo and Mitty, for the White Sulphur, where the boys were awaiting them. As the months went on, vague rumours reached the Governor's ears—rumours which the Major did not quite disprove when he came back in the autumn. “Yes, the boy is sowing his wild oats,” he said; “but what can you expect, Governor? Why, he is not yet twenty, and young blood is hot blood, sir.”
“I am sorry to hear that he has been losing at cards,” returned the Governor; “but take my advice, and let him pick himself up when he falls to hurt. Don't back him up, Major.”
“Pooh! pooh!” exclaimed the Major, testily. “You're like Molly, Governor, and, bless my soul, one old woman is as much as I can manage. Why, she wants me to let the boy starve.”
The Governor sighed, but he did not protest. He liked Dan, with all his youthful errors, and he wanted to put out a hand to hold him back from destruction; but he feared to bring the terrible flush to the Major's face. It was better to leave things alone, he thought, and so sighed and said nothing.
That was an autumn of burning political conditions, and the excited slavery debates in the North were reechoing through the Virginia mountains. The Major, like the old war horse that he was, had already pricked up his ears, and determined to lend his tongue or his sword, as his state might require. That a fight could go on in the Union so long as Virginia or himself kept out of it, seemed to him a possibility little less than preposterous.
“Didn't we fight the Revolution, sir? and didn't we fight the War of 1812? and didn't we fight the Mexican War to boot?” he would demand. “And, bless my soul, aren't we ready to fight all the Yankees in the universe, and to whip them clean out of the Union, too? Why, it wouldn't take us ten days to have them on their knees, sir.”
The Governor did not laugh now; the times were too grave for that. His clear eyes had seen whither they were drifting, and he had thrown his influence against the tide, which, he knew, would but sweep over him in the end. “You are out of place in Virginia, Major,” he said seriously. “Virginia wants peace, and she wants the Union. Go south, my dear sir, go south.”
During the spring before he had gone south himself to a convention at Montgomery, and he had spoken there against one of the greatest of the Southern orators. His state had upheld him, but the Major had not. He came home to find his old neighbour red with resentment, and refusing for the first few days to shake the hand of “a man who would tamper with the honour of Virginia.” At the end of the week the Major's hand was held out, but his heart still bore his grievance, and he began quoting William L. Yancey, as he had once quoted Mr. Addison. In the little meetings at Uplands or at Chericoke, he would now declaim the words of the impassioned agitator as vigorously as in the old days he had recited those of the polished gentleman of letters. The rector and the doctor would sit silent and abashed, and only the Governor would break in now and then with: “You go too far, Major. There is a step from which there is no drawing back, and that step means ruin to your state, sir.”
“Ruin, sir? Nonsense! nonsense! We made the Union, and we'll unmake it when we please. We didn't make slavery; but, if Virginia wants slaves, by God, sir, she shall have slaves!”
It was after such a discussion in the Governor's library that the old gentleman rose one evening to depart in his wrath. “The man who sits up in my presence and questions my right to own my slaves is a damned black abolitionist, sir,” he thundered as he went, and by the time he reached his coach he was so blinded by his rage that Congo, the driver, was obliged to lift him bodily into his seat. “Dis yer ain' no way ter do, Ole Marster,” said the negro, reproachfully. “How I gwine teck cyar you like Ole Miss done tole me, w'en you let yo' bile git ter yo' haid like dis? 'Tain' no way ter do, suh.”
The Major was too full for silence; and, ignoring the Governor, who had hurried out to beseech him to return, he let his rage burst forth.
“I can't help it, Congo, I can't help it!” he said. “They want to take you from me, do you hear? and that black Republican party up north wants to take you, too. They say I've no right to you, Congo,—bless my soul, and you were born on my own land!”
“Go 'way, Ole Marster, who gwine min' w'at dey say?” returned Congo, soothingly. “You des better wrop dat ar neck'chif roun' yo' thoat er Ole Miss'll git atter you sho' es you live!”
The Major wiped his eyes on the end of the neckerchief as he tied it about his throat. “But, if they elect their President, he may send down an army to free you,” he went on, with something like a sob of anger, “and I'd like to know what we'd do then, Congo.”
“Lawd, Lawd, suh,” said Congo, as he wrapped the robe about his master's knees. “Did you ever heah tell er sech doin's!” then, as he mounted the box, he leaned down and called out reassuringly, “Don' you min', Ole Marster, we'll des loose de dawgs on 'em, dat's w'at we'll do,” and they rolled off indignantly, leaving the Governor half angry and half apologetic upon his portico.
It was on the way home that evening that Congo spied in the sassafras bushes beside the road a runaway slave of old Rainy-day Jones's, and descended, with a shout, to deliver his brother into bondage.
“Hi, Ole Marster, w'at I gwine tie him wid?” he demanded gleefully.
The Major looked out of the window, and his face went white.
“What's that on his cheek, Congo?” he asked in a whisper.
“Dat's des whar dey done hit 'im, Ole Marster. How I gwine tie 'im?”
But the Major had looked again, and the awful redness rose to his brow.
“Shut up, you fool!” he said with a roar, as he dived under his seat and brought out his brandy flask. “Give him a swallow of that—be quick, do you hear? Pour it into your cup, sir, and give him that corn pone in your pocket. I see it sticking out. There, now hoist him up beside you, and, if I meet that rascal Jones, I'll blow his damn brains out!”
The Major doubtless would have fulfilled his oath as surely as his twelve peers would have shaken his hand afterwards; but, by the time they came up with Rainy-day a mile ahead, his wrath had settled and he had decided that “he didn't want such dirty blood upon his hands.”
So he took a different course, and merely swore a little as he threw a roll of banknotes into the road. “Don't open your mouth to me, you hell hound,” he cried, “or I'll have you whipped clean out of this county, sir, and there's not a gentleman in Virginia that wouldn't lend a hand. Don't open your mouth to me, I tell you; here's the price of your property, and you can stoop in the dirt to pick it up. There's no man alive that shall question the divine right of slavery in my presence; but—but it is an institution for gentlemen, and you, sir, are a damned scoundrel!”
With which the Major and old Rainy-day rode on in opposite ways.