“Dear God, let him love me,” she prayed again in the cool twilight of her chamber. Before the open window she put her hands to her burning cheeks and felt the wind trickle between her quivering fingers. Her heart fluttered like a bird and her blood went in little tremours through her veins. For a single instant she seemed to feel the passage of the earth through space. “Oh, let him love me! let him love me!” she cried upon her knees.
When Virginia came in she rose and turned to her with the brightness of tears on her lashes.
“Do you want me to help you, dear?” she asked, gently.
“Oh, I'm all dressed,” answered Virginia, coming toward her. She held a lamp in her hand, and the light fell over her girlish figure in its muslin gown. “You are so late, Betty,” she added, stopping before the bureau. “Were you by yourself?”
“Not all the way,” replied Betty, slowly.
“Who was with you? Champe?”
“No, not Champe—Dan,” said Betty, stooping to unfasten her boots.
Virginia was pinning a red verbena in her hair, and she turned to catch a side view of her face.
“Do you know I really believe Dan likes you best,” she carelessly remarked. “I asked him the other afternoon what colour hair he preferred, and he snapped out, 'red' as suddenly as that. Wasn't it funny?”
For a moment Betty did not speak; then she came over and stood beside her sister.
“Would you mind if he liked me better than you, dear?” she asked, doubtfully. “Would you mind the least little bit?”
Virginia laughed merrily and stooped to kiss her.
“I shouldn't mind if every man in the world liked you better,” she answered gayly. “If they only had as much sense as I've got, they would, foolish things.”
“I never knew but one who did,” returned Betty, “and that was the Major.”
“But Champe, too.”
“Well, perhaps,—but Champe's afraid of you. He calls you Penelope, you know, because of the 'wooers.' We counted six horses at the portico yesterday, and he made a bet with me that all of them belonged to the 'wooers'—and they really did, too.”
“Oh, but wooing isn't winning,” laughed Virginia, going toward the door. “You'd better hurry, Betty, supper's ready. I wouldn't touch my hair, if I were you, it looks just lovely.” Her white skirts fluttered across the dimly lighted hall, and in a moment Betty heard her soft step on the stair.
Two days later Betty told Dan good-by with smiling lips. He rode over in the early morning, when she was in the garden gathering loose rose leaves to scatter among her clothes. There had been a sharp frost the night before, and now as it melted in the slanting sun rays, Miss Lydia's summer flowers hung blighted upon their stalks. Only the gay October roses were still in their full splendour.
“What an early Betty,” said Dan, coming up to her as she stood in the wet grass beside one of the quaint rose squares. “You are all dewy like a flower.”
“Oh, I had breakfast an hour ago,” she answered, giving him her moist hand to which a few petals were clinging.
“Ye Gods! have I missed an hour? Why, I expected to sit waiting on the door-step until you had had your sleep out.”
“Don't you know if you gather rose leaves with the dew on them, their sweetness lasts twice as long?” asked Betty.
“So you got up to gather ye rosebuds, after all, and not to wish me God speed?” he said despondently.
“Well, I should have been up anyway,” replied Betty, frankly. “This is the loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the first frost over it—only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die.”
“If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself,” remarked Dan, pointing, with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. “Don't stand in the grass like that, you make me shiver.”
“Oh, the sun will dry me,” she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare earth of the rose bed. “Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels like summer.” She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him. Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he dared.
“I am going away in an hour, Betty,” he said, at last.
“But you will be back again at Christmas.”
“At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow.”
“Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know.”
Dan shook his head impatiently. “I dare say it does with you,” he returned, irritably, “but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am.”
“Why, you ought to be used to it by now,” urged Betty, mercilessly. “You were in love last year, I remember.”
“Betty, don't punish me for what I couldn't help. You know I love you.”
“Oh, no,” said Betty, nervously plucking rose leaves. “You have been too often in love before, my good Dan.”
“But I was never in love with you before,” retorted Dan, decisively.
She shook her head, smiling. “And you are not in love with me now,” she replied, gravely. “You have found out that my hair is pretty, or that I can mix a pudding; but I do not often let down my hair, and I seldom cook, so you'll get over it, my friend, never fear.”
He flushed angrily. “And if I do not get over it?” he demanded.
“If you do not get over it?” repeated Betty, trembling. She turned away from him, strewing a handful of rose leaves upon the grass. “Then I shall think that you value neither my hair nor my housekeeping,” she added, lightly.
“If I swear that I love you, will you believe me, Betty?”
“Don't tempt my faith, Dan, it's too small.”
“Whether you believe it or not, I do love you,” he went on. “I may have been a fool now and then before I found it out, but you don't think that was falling in love, do you? I confess that I liked a pair of fine eyes or rosy cheeks, but I could laugh about it even while I thought it was love I felt. I can't laugh about being in love with you, Betty.”
“I thank you, sir,” replied Betty, saucily.
“When I saw you kneeling by the fire in free Levi's cabin, I knew that I loved you,” he said, hotly.
“But I can't always kneel to you, Dan,” she interposed.
He put her words impatiently aside, “and what's more I knew then that I had loved you all my life without knowing it,” he pursued. “You may taunt me with fickleness, but I'm not fickle—I was merely a fool. It took me a long time to find out what I wanted, but I've found out at last, and, so help me God, I'll have it yet. I never went without a thing I wanted in my life.”
“Then it will be good for you,” responded Betty. “Shall I put some rose leaves into your pocket?” She spoke indifferently, but all the while she heard her heart singing for joy.
In the rage of his boyish passion, he cut brutally at the flowers growing at his feet.
“If you keep this up, you'll send me to the devil!” he exclaimed.
She caught his hand and took the whip from his fingers. “Ah, don't hurt the poor flowers,” she begged, “they aren't to blame.”
“Who is to blame, Betty?”
She looked up wistfully into his angry face. “You are no better than a child, Dan,” she said, almost sadly, “and you haven't the least idea what you are storming so about. It's time you were a man, but you aren't, you're just—”
“Oh, I know, I'm just a pampered poodle dog,” he finished, bitterly.
“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, 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. 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 passed 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 sunshine 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 grass 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 apron. “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 Chericoke. 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 bachelorship, 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 Chericoke 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 title—and an untitled 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. Dickens'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 Marse 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.”
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 glass, 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?”
“Then you must come in to get it,” answered Betty, her eyes narrowing. “Breakfast is getting cold, and Cupid is calling down Aunt Rhody's wrath upon your head.”
“Oh, I'll come, I'll come,” returned the Major, hurrying up the steps, and adding as he entered the dining room, “My child, if you'd only take a fancy to Champe, I'd be the happiest man on earth.”
“Now I shan't allow any matchmaking on Sunday,” said Betty, warningly, as she prepared Mrs. Lightfoot's breakfast. “Sit down and carve the chicken while I run upstairs with this.”
She went out and came back in a moment, laughing merrily. “Do you know, she threatens to become bedridden now that I am here to fix her trays,” she explained, sitting down between the tall silver urns and pouring out the Major's coffee. “What an uncertain day you have for church,” she added as she gave his cup to Cupid.
With his eyes on her vivid face the old man listened rapturously to her fresh young voice—the voice, he said, that always made him think of clear water falling over stones. It was one of the things that came to her from Peyton Ambler, he knew, with her warm hazel eyes and the sweet, strong curve of her mouth. “Ah, but you're like your father,” he said as he watched her. “If you had brown hair you'd be his very image.”
“I used to wish that I had,” responded Betty, “but I don't now—I'd just as soon have red.” She was thinking that Dan did not like brown hair so much, and the thought shone in her face—only the Major, in his ignorance, mistook its meaning.
After breakfast he got into the coach and started off, and Betty, with the key basket on her arm, followed Cupid and Aunt Rhody into the storeroom. Then she gathered fresh flowers for the table, and went upstairs to read a chapter from the Bible to Mrs. Lightfoot.
The Major stayed to dinner in town, returning late in a moody humour and exhausted by his drive. As Betty brushed her hair before her bureau, she heard him talking in a loud voice to Mrs. Lightfoot, and when she went in at supper time the old, lady called her to her bedside and took her hand.
“He has had a touch of the gout, Betty,” she whispered in her ear, “and he heard some news in town which upset him a little. You must try to cheer him up at supper, child.”
“Was it bad news?” asked Betty, in alarm.
“It may not be true, my dear. I hope it isn't, but, as I told Mr. Lightfoot, it is always better to believe the worst, so if any surprise comes it may be a pleasant one. Somebody told him in church—and they had much better have been attending to the service, I'm sure,—that Dan had gotten into trouble again, and Mr. Lightfoot is very angry about it. He had a talk with the boy before he went away, and made him promise to turn over a new leaf this year—but it seems this is the most serious thing that has happened yet. I must say I always told Mr. Lightfoot it was what he had to expect.”
“In trouble again?” repeated Betty, kneeling by the bed. Her hands went cold, and she pressed them nervously together.
“Of course we know very little about it, my dear,” pursued Mrs. Lightfoot. “All we have heard is that he fought a duel and was sent away from the University. He was even put into gaol for a night, I believe—a Lightfoot in a common dirty gaol! Well, well, as I said before, all we can do now is to expect the worst.”
“Oh, is that all?” cried Betty, and the leaping of her heart told her the horror of her dim foreboding. She rose to her feet and smiled brightly down upon the astonished old lady.
“I don't know what more you want,” replied Mrs. Lightfoot, tartly. “If he ever gets clean again after a whole night in a common gaol, I must say I don't see how he'll manage it. But if you aren't satisfied I can only tell you that the affair was all about some bar-room wench, and that the papers will be full of it. Not that the boy was anything but foolish,” she added hastily. “I'll do him the justice to admit that he's more of a fool than a villain—and I hardly know whether it's a compliment that I'm paying him or not. He got some quixotic notion into his head that Harry Maupin insulted the girl in his presence, and he called him to account for it. As if the honour of a barkeeper's daughter was the concern of any gentleman!”
“Oh!” cried Betty, and caught her breath. The word went out of her in a sudden burst of joy, but the joy was so sharp that a moment afterwards she hid her wet face in the bedclothes and sobbed softly to herself.
“I don't think Mr. Lightfoot would have taken it so hard but for Virginia,” said the old lady, with her keen eyes on the girl. “You know he has always wanted to bring Dan and Virginia together, and he seems to think that the boy has been dishonourable about it.”
“But Virginia doesn't care—she doesn't care,” protested Betty.
“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” returned Mrs. Lightfoot, relieved, “and I hope the foolish boy will stay away long enough for his grandfather to cool off. Mr. Lightfoot is a high-tempered man, my child. I've spent fifty years in keeping him at peace with the world. There now, run down and cheer him up.”
She lay back among her pillows, and Betty leaned over and kissed her with cold lips before she dried her eyes and went downstairs to find the Major.
With the first glance at his face she saw that Dan's cause was hopeless for the hour, and she set herself, with a cheerful countenance, to a discussion of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden with its last sad flowers.
The Major listened gloomily, putting in a word now and then, and keeping his weak red eyes upon his plate. There was a heavy cloud on his brow, and the flush that Betty had learned to dread was in his face. Once when she spoke carelessly of Dan, he threw out an angry gesture and inquired if she “found Mrs. Lightfoot easier to-night?”
“Oh, I think so,” replied the girl, and then, as they rose from the table, she slipped her hand through his arm and went with him into the library.
“Shall I sit with you this evening?” she asked timidly. “I'd be so glad to read to you, if you would let me.”
He shook his head, patted her affectionately upon the shoulder, and smiled down into her upraised face. “No, no, my dear, I've a little work to do,” he replied kindly. “There are a few papers I want to look over, so run up to Molly and tell her I sent my sunshine to her.”
He stooped and kissed her cheek; and Betty, with a troubled heart, went slowly up to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber.
The Major sat down at his writing table, and spread his papers out before him. Then he raised the wick of his lamp, and with his pen in his hand, resolutely set himself to his task. When Cupid came in with the decanter of Burgundy, he filled a glass and held it absently against the light, but he did not drink it, and in a moment he put it down with so tremulous a hand that the wine spilled upon the floor.
“I've a touch of the gout, Cupid,” he said testily. “A touch of the gout that's been hanging over me for a month or more.”
“Huccome you ain' fit hit, Ole Marster?”
“Oh, I've been fighting it tooth and nail,” answered the old gentleman, “but there are some things that always get the better of you in the end, Cupid, and the gout's one of them.”
“En rheumaticks hit's anurr,” added Cupid, rubbing his knee.
He rolled a fresh log upon the andirons and went out, while the Major returned, frowning, to his work.
He was still at his writing table, when he heard the sound of a horse trotting in the drive, and an instant afterwards the quick fall of the old brass knocker. The flush deepened in his face, and with a look at once angry and appealing, he half rose from his chair. As he waited the outside bars were withdrawn, there followed a few short steps across the hall, and Dan came into the library.
“I suppose you know what's brought me back, grandpa?” he said quietly as he entered.
The Major started up and then sat down again.
“I do know, sir, and I wish to God I didn't,” he replied, choking in his anger.
Dan stood where he had halted upon his entrance, and looked at him with eyes in which there was still a defiant humour. His face was pale and his hair hung in black streaks across his forehead. The white dust of the turnpike had settled upon his clothes, and as he moved it floated in a little cloud about him.
“I reckon you think it's a pretty bad thing, eh?” he questioned coolly, though his hands trembled.
The Major's eyes flashed ominously from beneath his heavy brows.
“Pretty bad?” he repeated, taking a long breath. “If you want to know what I think about it, sir, I think that it's a damnable disgrace. Pretty bad!—By God, sir, do you call having a gaol-bird for a grandson pretty bad?”
“Stop, sir!” called Dan, sharply. He had steadied himself to withstand the shock of the Major's temper, but, in the dash of his youthful folly, he had forgotten to reckon with his own. “For heaven's sake, let's talk about it calmly,” he added irritably.
“I am perfectly calm, sir!” thundered the Major, rising to his feet. The terrible flush went in a wave to his forehead, and he put up one quivering hand to loosen his high stock. “I tell you calmly that you've done a damnable thing; that you've brought disgrace upon the name of Lightfoot.”
“It is not my name,” replied Dan, lifting his head. “My name is Montjoy, sir.”
“And it's a name to hang a dog for,” retorted the Major.
As they faced each other with the same flash of temper kindling in both faces, the likeness between them grew suddenly more striking. It was as if the spirit of the fiery old man had risen, in a finer and younger shape, from the air before him.
“At all events it is not yours,” said Dan, hotly. Then he came nearer, and the anger died out of his eyes. “Don't let's quarrel, grandpa,” he pleaded. “I've gotten into a mess, and I'm sorry for it—on my word I am.”
“So you've come whining to me to get you out,” returned the Major, shaking as if he had gone suddenly palsied.
Dan drew back and his hand fell to his side.
“So help me God, I'll never whine to you again,” he answered.
“Do you want to know what you have done, sir?” demanded the Major. “You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine—and made us wish that we had left you by the roadside when you came crawling to our door. And, on my oath, if I had known that the day would ever come when you would try to murder a Virginia gentleman for the sake of a bar-room hussy, I would have left you there, sir.”
“Stop!” said Dan again, looking at the old man with his mother's eyes.
“You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine,” repeated the Major, in a trembling voice, “and I pray to God that you may not break Virginia Ambler's—poor girl, poor girl!”
“Virginia Ambler!” said Dan, slowly. “Why, there was nothing between us, nothing, nothing.”
“And you dare to tell me this to my face, sir?” cried the Major.
“Dare! of course I dare,” returned Dan, defiantly. “If there was ever anything at all it was upon my side only—and a mere trifling fancy.”
The old gentleman brought his hand down upon his table with a blow that sent the papers fluttering to the floor. “Trifling!” he roared. “Would you trifle with a lady from your own state, sir?”
“I was never in love with her,” exclaimed Dan, angrily.
“Not in love with her? What business have you not to be in love with her?” retorted the Major, tossing back his long white hair. “I have given her to understand that you are in love with her, sir.”
The blood rushed to Dan's head, and he stumbled over an ottoman as he turned away.
“Then I call it unwarrantable interference,” he said brutally, and went toward the door. There the Major's flashing eyes held him back an instant.
“It was when I believed you to be worthy of her,” went on the old man, relentlessly, “when—fool that I was—I dared to hope that dirty blood could be made clean again; that Jack Montjoy's son could be a gentleman.”
For a moment only Dan stood motionless and looked at him from the threshold. Then, without speaking, he crossed the hall, took down his hat, and unbarred the outer door. It slammed after him, and he went out into the night.
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.
While he stood there motionless his thoughts were suspended, and his senses, gaining a brief mastery, became almost feverishly alert; he felt the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves, and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of youthful rhetoric, “that come what would, he was going to the devil—and going speedily.”
He had reached the gate and his hand was upon the latch, when he heard the house door open and shut behind him and his name called softly from the steps.
He turned impulsively and stood waiting, while Betty came quickly through the lamplight that fell in squares upon the drive.
“Oh, come back, Dan, come back,” she said breathlessly.
With his hand still on the gate he faced her, frowning.
“I'd die first, Betty,” he answered.
She came swiftly up to him and stood, very pale, in the faint starlight that shone between the broken clouds. A knitted shawl was over her shoulders, but her head was bare and her hair made a glow around her face. Her eyes entreated him before she spoke.
“Oh, Dan, come back,” she pleaded.
He laughed angrily and shook his head.
“I'll die first, Betty,” he repeated. “Die! I'd die a hundred times first!”
“He is so old,” she said appealingly. “It is not as if he were young and quite himself, Dan—Oh, it is not like that—but he loves you, and he is so old.”
“Don't, Betty,” he broke in quickly, and added bitterly, “Are you, too, against me?”
“I am for the best in you,” she answered quietly, and turned away from him.
“The best!” he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Are you for the shot at Maupin? the night I spent in gaol? or the beggar I am now? There's an equal choice, I reckon.”
She looked gravely up at him.
“I am for the boy I've always known,” she replied, “and for the man who was here two weeks ago—and—yes, I am for the man who stands here now. What does it matter, Dan? What does it matter?”
“O, Betty!” he cried breathlessly, and hid his face in his hands.
“And most of all, I am for the man you are going to be,” she went on slowly, “for the great man who is growing up. Dan, come back!”
His hands fell from his eyes. “I'll not do that even for you, Betty,” he answered, “and, God knows, there's little else I wouldn't do for you—there's nothing else.”
“What will you do for yourself, Dan?”
“For myself?” his anger leaped out again, and he steadied himself against the gate. “For myself I'll go as far as I can from this damned place. I wish to God I'd fallen in the road before I came here. I wish I'd gone after my father and followed in his steps. I'll live on no man's charity, so help me God. Am I a dog to be kicked out and to go whining back when the door opens? Go—I'll go to the devil, and be glad of it!” For a moment Betty did not answer. Her hands were clasped on her bosom, and her eyes were dark and bright in the pallor of her face. As he looked at her the rage died out of his voice, and it quivered with a deeper feeling.
“My dear, my dearest, are you, too, against me?” he asked.
She met his gaze without flinching, but the bright colour swept suddenly to her cheeks and dyed them crimson.
“Then if you will go, take me with you,” she said.
He fell back as if a star had dropped at his feet. For a breathless instant she saw only his eyes, and they drew her step by step. Then he opened his arms and she went straight into them.
“Betty, Betty,” he said in a whisper, and kissed her lips.
She put her hands upon his shoulders, and stood with his arms about her, looking up into his face.
“Take me with you—oh, take me with you,” she entreated. “I can't be left. Take me with you.”
“And you love me—Betty, do you love me?”
“I have loved you all my life—all my life,” she answered; “how can I begin to unlove you now—now when it is too late? Do you think I am any the less yours if you throw me away? If you break my heart can I help its still loving you?”
“Betty, Betty,” he said again, and his voice quivered.
“Take me with you,” she repeated passionately, saying it over and over again with her lips upon his arm.
He stooped and kissed her almost roughly, and then put her gently away from him.
“It is the way my mother went,” he said, “and God help me, I am my father's son. I am afraid,—afraid—do you know what that means?”
“But I am not afraid,” answered the girl steadily.
He shivered and turned away; then he came back and knelt down to kiss her skirt. “No, I can't take you with me,” he went on rapidly, “but if I live to be a man I shall come back—Iwillcome back—and you—”
“And I am waiting,” she replied.
He opened the gate and passed out into the road.
“I will come back, beloved,” he said again, and went on into the darkness.
Leaning over the gate she strained her eyes into the shadows, crying his name out into the night. Her voice broke and she hid her face in her arm; then, fearing to lose the last glimpse of him, she looked up quickly and sobbed to him to come back for a moment—but for a moment. It seemed to her, clinging there upon the gate, that when he went out into the darkness he had gone forever—that the thud of his footsteps in the dust was the last sound that would ever come from him to her ears.
Had he looked back she would have gone straight out to him, had he raised a finger she would have followed with a cheerful face; but he did not look back, and at last his footsteps died away upon the road.
When she could see or hear nothing more of him, she turned slowly and crept toward the house. Her feet dragged under her, and as she walked she cast back startled glances at the gate. The rustling of the leaves made her stand breathless a moment, her hand at her bosom; but it was only the wind, and she went step by step into the house, turning upon the threshold to throw a look behind her.
In the hall she paused and laid her hand upon the library door, but the Major had bolted her out, and she heard him pacing with restless strides up and down the room. She listened timidly awhile, then, going softly by, went up to Mrs. Lightfoot.
The old lady was asleep, but as the girl entered she awoke and sat up, very straight, in bed. “My pain is much worse, Betty,” she complained. “I don't expect to get a wink of sleep this entire night.”
“I thought you were asleep when I came in,” answered Betty, keeping away from the candlelight; “but I am so sorry you are in pain. Shall I make you a mustard plaster?”
Though she smiled, her voice was spiritless and she moved with an effort. She felt suddenly very tired, and she wanted to lie down somewhere alone in the darkness.
“I'd just dropped off when Mr. Lightfoot woke me slamming the doors,” pursued the old lady, querulously. “Men have so little consideration that nothing surprises me, but I do think he might be more careful when he knows I am suffering. No, I won't take the mustard plaster, but you may bring me a cup of hot milk, if you will. It sometimes sends me off into a doze.”
Betty went slowly downstairs again and heated the milk on the dining-room fire. When it was ready she daintily arranged it upon a tray and carried it upstairs. “I hope it will do you good,” she said gently as she gave it to the old lady. “You must try to lie quiet—the doctor told you so.”
Mrs. Lightfoot drank the milk and remarked amiably that it was “very nice though a little smoked—and now, go to bed, my dear,” she added kindly. “I mustn't keep you from your beauty sleep. I'm afraid I've worn you out as it is.”
Betty smiled and shook her head; then she placed the tray upon a chair, and went out, softly closing the door after her.
In her own room she threw herself upon her bed, and cried for Dan until the morning.