That night they slept on the blood-stained floor of an old field hospital, and the next morning Pinetop parted from them and joined an engineer who had promised him a “lift” toward his mountains.
As Dan stood in the sunny road holding his friend's rough hand, it seemed to him that such a parting was the sharpest wrench the end had brought.
“Whenever you need me, old fellow, remember that I am always ready,” he said in a husky voice.
Pinetop looked past him to the distant woods, and his calm blue eyes were dim.
“I reckon you'll go yo' way an' I'll go mine,” he replied, “for thar's one thing sartain an' that is our ways don't run together. It'll never be the same agin—that's natur—but if you ever want a good stout hand for any uphill ploughing or shoot yo' man an' the police git on yo' track, jest remember that I'm up thar in my little cabin. Why, if every officer in the county was at yo' heels, I'd stand guard with my old squirrel gun and maw would with her kettle.”
Then he shook hands with Big Abel and strode on across a field to a little railway station, while Dan went slowly down the road with the negro at his side.
In the afternoon when they had trudged all the morning through the heavy mud, they reached a small frame house set back from the road, with some straggling ailanthus shoots at the front and a pile of newly cut hickory logs near the kitchen steps. A woman, with a bucket of soapsuds at her feet, was wringing out a homespun shirt in the yard, and as they entered the little gate, she looked at them with a defiance which was evidently the result of a late domestic wrangle.
“I've got one man on my hands,” she began in a shrill voice, “an' he's as much as I can 'tend to, an' a long sight mo' than I care to 'tend to. He never had the spunk to fight anythin' except his wife, but I reckon he's better off now than them that had; it's the coward that gets the best of things in these days.”
“Shut up thar, you hussy!” growled a voice from the kitchen, and a fat man with bleared eyes slouched to the doorway. “I reckon if you want a supper you can work for it,” he remarked, taking a wad of tobacco from his mouth and aiming it deliberately at one of the ailanthus shoots. “You split up that thar pile of logs back thar an' Sally'll cook yo' supper. Thar ain't another house inside of a good ten miles, so you'd better take your chance, I reckon.”
“That's jest like you, Tom Bates,” retorted the woman passionately. “Befo' you'd do a lick of honest work you'd let the roof topple plum down upon our heads.”
For an instant Dan's glance cut the man like a whip, then crossing to the woodpile, he lifted the axe and sent it with a clean stroke into a hickory log.
“We can't starve, Big Abel,” he said coolly, “but we are not beggars yet by a long way.”
“Go 'way, Marse Dan,” protested the negro in disgust. “Gimme dat ar axe en set right down and wait twel supper. You're des es white es a sheet dis minute.”
“I've got to begin some day,” returned Dan, as the axe swung back across his shoulder. “I'll pay for my supper and you'll pay for yours, that's fair, isn't it?—for you're a free man now.”
Then he went feverishly to work, while Big Abel sat grumbling on the doorstep, and the farmer, leaning against the lintel behind him, watched the lessening pile with sluggish eyes.
“You be real careful of this wood, Sally, an' it ought to last twel summer,” he observed, as he glanced to where his wife stood wringing out the clothes. “If you warn't so wasteful that last pile would ha' held out twice as long.”
Dan chopped steadily for an hour, and then giving the axe to Big Abel, went into the little kitchen to eat his supper. The woman served him sullenly, placing some sobby biscuits and a piece of cold bacon on his plate, and pouring out a glass of buttermilk with a vicious thrust of the pitcher. When he asked if there was a shelter close at hand where he might sleep, she replied sourly that she reckoned the barn was good enough if he chose to spend the night there. Then as Big Abel finished his job and took his supper in his hand, they left the house and went across the darkening cattle pen, to a rotting structure which they took to be the barn. Inside the straw was warm and dry, and as Dan flung himself down upon it, he gasped out something like a prayer of thanks. His first day's labour with his hands had left him trembling like a nervous woman. An hour longer, he told himself, and he should have gone down upon the roadside.
For a time he slept profoundly, and then awaking in the night, he lay until dawn listening to Big Abel's snores, and staring straight above where a solitary star shone through a crack in the shingled roof. From the other side of a thin partition came the soft breathing and the fresh smell of cows, and, now and then, he heard the low bleating of a new-born calf.
He had been dreaming of a battle, and the impression was so vivid that, as he opened his eyes, he half imagined he still heard the sound of shots. In his sleep he had saved the flag and won promotion after victory, and for a moment the trampled straw seemed to him to be the battle-field, and the thin boards against which he beat the enemy's resisting line. 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.
Sharp pains racked him from head to foot, and his pulses burned as if from fever. It was like the weariness of old age, he thought, this utter hopelessness, these strained and quivering muscles. As a boy he had been hardy as an Indian and as fearless of fatigue. Now the long midnight gallops on Prince Rupert over frozen roads returned to him like the dim memories from some old romance. They belonged to the place of half-forgotten stories, with the gay waistcoats and the Christmas gatherings in the hall at Chericoke. For a country that was not he had given himself as surely as the men who were buried where they fought, and his future would be but one long struggle to adjust himself to conditions in which he had no part. His proper nature was compacted of the old life which was gone forever—of its ease, of its gayety, of its lavish pleasures. For the sake of this life he had fought for four years in the ranks, and now that it was swept away, he found himself like a man who stumbles on over the graves of his familiar friends. He remembered the words of the soldier in the long blue coat, and spoke them half aloud in the darkness: “There'll come a time when you'll find out that the army wasn't the worst you had to face.” The army was not the worst, he knew this now—the grapple with a courageous foe had served to quicken his pulses and nerve his hand—the worst was what came afterward, this sense of utter failure and the attempt to shape one's self to brutal necessity. In the future that opened before him he saw only a terrible patience which would perhaps grow into a second nature as the years went on. In place of the old generous existence, he must from this day forth wring the daily bread of those he loved, with maimed hands, from a wasted soil.
The thought of Betty came to him, but it brought no consolation. For himself he could meet the shipwreck standing, but Betty must be saved from it if there was salvation to be found. She had loved him in the days of his youth—in his strong days, as the Governor said—now that he was worn out, suffering, gray before his time, there was mere madness in his thought of her buoyant strength. “You may take ten—you may take twenty years to rebuild yourself,” a surgeon had said to him at parting; and he asked himself bitterly, by what right of love dared he make her strong youth a prop for his feeble life? She loved him he knew—in his blackest hour he never doubted this—but because she loved him, did it follow that she must be sacrificed?
Then gradually the dark mood passed, and with his eyes on the star, his mouth settled into the lines of smiling patience which suffering brings to the brave. He had never been a coward and he was not one now. The years had taught him nothing if they had not taught him the wisdom most needed by his impulsive youth—that so long as there comes good to the meanest creature from fate's hardest blow, it is the part of a man to stand up and take it between the eyes. In the midst of his own despair, of the haunting memories of that bland period which was over for his race, there arose suddenly the figure of the slave the Major had rescued, in Dan's boyhood, from the power of old Rainy-day Jones. He saw again the poor black wretch shivering in the warmth, with the dirty rag about his jaw, and with the sight he drew a breath that was almost of relief. That one memory had troubled his own jovial ease; now in his approaching poverty he might put it away from him forever.
In the first light of a misty April sunrise they went out on the road again, and when they had walked a mile or so, Big Abel found some young pokeberry shoots, which he boiled in his old quart cup with a slice of bacon he had saved from supper. At noon they came upon a little farm and ploughed a strip of land in payment for a dinner that was lavishly pressed upon them. The people were plain, poor, and kindly, and the farmer followed Dan into the field with entreaties that he should leave the furrows and come in to meet his family. “Let yo' darky do a bit of work if he wants to,” he urged, “but it makes me downright sick to see one of General Lee's soldiers driving my plough. The gals are afraid it'll bring bad luck.”
With a laugh, Dan tossed the ropes to Big Abel, who had been breaking clods of earth, and returned to the house, where he was placed in the seat of honour and waited on by a troop of enthusiastic red-cheeked maidens, each of whom cut one of the remaining buttons from his coat. Here he was asked to stay the night, but with the memory of the blue valley before his eyes, he shook his head and pushed on again in the early afternoon. The vision of Chericoke hung like a star above his road, and he struggled a little nearer day by day.
Sometimes ploughing, sometimes chopping a pile of logs, and again lying for hours in the warm grass by the way, they travelled slowly toward the valley that held Dan's desire. The chill April dawns broke over them, and the genial April sunshine warmed them through after a drenching in a pearly shower. They watched the buds swell and the leaves open in the wood, the wild violets bloom in sheltered places, and the dandelions troop in ranks among the grasses by the road. 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. “I was resting,” he explained, as they walked on. “It is good to rest like that in mind and body; to keep out thoughts and let the dreams come as they will.”
“De bes' place ter res' is on yo' own do' step,” Big Abel responded, and quickening their pace, they went more rapidly over the rough clay roads.
It was at the end of this day that they came, in the purple twilight, to a big brick house and found there a woman who lived alone with the memories of a son she had lost at Gettysburg. At their knock she came herself, with a few old servants, prompt, tearful, and very sad; and when she saw Dan's coat by the light of the lamp behind her, she put out her hands with a cry of welcome and drew him in, weeping softly as her white head touched his sleeve.
“My mother is dead, thank God,” he murmured, and at his words she looked up at him a little startled.
“Others have come,” she said, “but they were not like you; they did not have your voice. Have you been always poor like this?”
He met her eyes smiling.
“I have not always been a soldier,” was his answer.
For a moment she looked at him as if bewildered; then taking a lamp from an old servant, she led the way upstairs to her son's room, and laid out the dead man's clothes upon his bed.
“We keep house for the soldiers now,” she said, and went out to make things ready.
As he plunged into the warm water and dried himself upon the fresh linen she had left, he heard the sound of passing feet in the broad hall, and from the outside kitchen there floated a savoury smell that reminded him of Chericoke at the supper hour. With the bath and the clean clothes his old instincts revived within him, and as he looked into the glass he caught something of the likeness of his college days. Beau Montjoy was not starved out after all, he thought with a laugh, he was only plastered over with malaria and dirt.
For three days he remained in the big brick house lying at ease upon a sofa in the library, or listening to the tragic voice of the mother who talked of her only son. When she questioned him about Pickett's charge, he raised himself on his pillows and talked excitedly, his face flushing as if from fever.
“Your son was with Armistead,” he said, “and they all went down like heroes. I can see old Armistead now with his hat on his sword's point as he waved to us through the smoke. 'Who will follow me, boys?' he cried, and the next instant dashed straight on the defences. When he got to the second line there were only six men with him, beside Colonel Martin, and your son was one of them. My God! it was worth living to die like that.”
“And it is worth living to have a son die like that,” she added, and wept softly in the stillness.
The next morning he went on again despite her prayers. The rest was all too pleasant, but the memory of his valley was before him, and he thirsted for the pure winds that blew down the long white turnpike.
“There is no peace for me until I see it again,” he said at parting, and with a lighter step went out upon the April roads once more.
The way was easier now for his limbs were stronger, and he wore the dead man's shoes upon his feet. For a time it almost seemed that the strength of that other soldier, who lay in a strange soil, had entered into his veins and made him hardier to endure. And so through the clear days they travelled with few pauses, munching as they walked from the food Big Abel carried in a basket on his arm.
“We've been coming for three weeks, and we are getting nearer,” said Dan one evening, as he climbed the spur of a mountain range at the hour of sunset. Then his glance swept the wide horizon, and the stick in his hand fell suddenly to the ground; for faint and blue and bathed in the sunset light he saw his own hills crowding against the sky. As he looked his heart swelled with tears, and turning away he covered his quivering face.
As they passed from the shadow of the tavern road, the afternoon sunlight was slanting across the turnpike from the friendly hills, which alone of all the landscape remained unchanged. Loyal, smiling, guarding the ruined valley like peaceful sentinels, they had suffered not so much as an added wrinkle upon their brows. As Dan had left them five long years ago, so he found them now, and his heart leaped as he stood at last face to face. He was like a man who, having hungered for many days, finds himself suddenly satisfied again.
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. He saw her in the freshly swept walks, in the small negroes weeding the blue-grass lawn, in the distant ploughs that made blots upon the meadows. For a moment he hesitated, and laid his hand upon the iron gate; then, stifling the temptation, he turned back into the white sand of the road. Before he met Betty's eyes, he meant that his peace should be made with the old man at Chericoke.
Big Abel, tramping at his side, opened his mouth from time to time to let out a rapturous exclamation.
“Dar 'tis! des look at it!” he chuckled, when Uplands had been left far behind them. “Dat's de ve'y same clump er cedars, en dat's de wil' cher'y lyin' right flat on hit's back—dey's done cut it down ter git de cher'ies.”
“And the locust! Look, the big locust tree is still there, and in full bloom!”
“Lawd, de 'simmons! Dar's de 'simmon tree way down yonder in the meadow, whar we all use ter set ouah ole hyar traps. You ain' furgot dose ole hyar traps, Marse Dan?”
“Forgotten them! good Lord!” said Dan; “why I remember we caught five one Christmas morning, and Betty fed them and set them free again.”
“Dat she did, suh, dat she did! Hit's de gospel trufe!”
“We never could hide our traps from Betty,” pursued Dan, in delight. “She was a regular fox for scenting them out—I never saw such a nose for traps as hers, and she always set the things loose and smashed the doors.”
“We hid 'em one time way way in de thicket by de ice pond,” returned Big Abel, “but she spied 'em out. Yes, Lawd, she spied 'em out fo' ouah backs wuz turnt.”
He talked on rapidly while Dan listened with a faint smile about his mouth. Since they had left the tavern road, Big Abel's onward march had been accompanied by ceaseless ejaculations. His joy was childlike, unrestrained, full of whimsical surprises—the flight of a bluebird or the recognition of a shrub beside the way sent him with shining eyes and quickened steps along the turnpike.
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. Then he had dreamed of coming back again, but not like this. He had meant to ride proudly up the turnpike, with his easily won honours on his head, and in his hands his magnanimous forgiveness for all who had done him wrong. On that day he had pictured the Governor hurrying to the turnpike as he passed, and he had seen his grandfather, shy of apologies, eager to make amends.
That was his dream, and to-day he came back footsore, penniless, and in a dead man's clothes—a beggar as he had been at his first home-coming, when he had stood panting on the threshold and clutched his little bundle in his arms.
Yet his pulses stirred, and he turned cheerfully to the negro at his side.
“Do you see it, Big Abel? Tell me when you see it.”
“Dar's de cattle pastur',” cried Big Abel, “en dey's been a-fittin' dar—des look.”
“It must have been a skirmish,” replied Dan, glancing down the slope. “The wall is all down, and see here,” his foot struck on something hard and he stooped and picked up a horse's skull. “I dare say a squad of cavalry met Mosby's rangers,” he added. “It looks as if they'd had a little frolic.”
He threw the skull into the pasture, and followed Big Abel, who was hurrying along the road.
“We're moughty near dar,” cried the negro, breaking into a run. “Des wait twel we pass de aspens, Marse Dan, des wait twel we pass de aspens, den we'll be right dar, suh.”
Then, as Dan reached him, the aspens were passed, and where Chericoke had stood they found a heap of ashes.
At their feet lay the relics of a hot skirmish, and the old elms were perforated with rifle balls, but for these things Dan had neither eyes nor thoughts. He was standing before the place that he called home, and where the hospitable doors had opened he found only a cold mound of charred and crumbled bricks.
For an instant the scene went black before his eyes, and as he staggered forward, Big Abel caught his arm.
“I'se hyer, Marse Dan, I'se hyer,” groaned the negro in his ear.
“But the others? Where are the others?” asked Dan, coming to himself. “Hold me, Big Abel, I'm an utter fool. O Congo! Is that Congo?”
A negro, coming with his hoe from the corn field, ran over the desolated lawn, and began shouting hoarsely to the hands behind him:—
“Hi! Hit's Marse Dan, hit's Marse Dan come back agin!” he yelled, and at the cry there flocked round him a little troop of faithful servants, weeping, shouting, holding out eager arms.
“Hi! hit's Marse Dan!” they shrieked in chorus. “Hit's Marse Dan en Brer Abel! Brer Abel en Marse Dan is done come agin!”
Dan wept with them—tears of weakness, of anguish, of faint hope amid the dark. As their hands closed over his, he grasped them as if his eyes had gone suddenly blind.
“Where are the others? Congo, for God's sake, tell me where are the others?”
“We all's hyer, Marse Dan. We all's hyer,” they protested, sobbing. “En Ole Marster en Ole Miss dey's in de house er de overseer—dey's right over dar behine de orchard whar you use ter projick wid de ploughs, en Brer Cupid and Sis Rhody dey's a-gittin' dem dey supper.”
“Then let me go,” cried Dan. “Let me go!” and he started at a run past the gray ruins and the standing kitchen, past the flower garden and the big woodpile, to the orchard and the small frame house of Harris the overseer.
Big Abel kept at his heels, panting, grunting, calling upon his master to halt and upon Congo to hurry after.
“You'll skeer dem ter deaf—you'll skeer Ole Miss ter deaf,” cried Congo from the rear, and drawing a trembling breath, Dan slackened his pace and went on at a walk. At last, when he reached the small frame house and put his foot upon the step, he hesitated so long that Congo slipped ahead of him and softly opened the door. Then his young master followed and stood looking with blurred eyes into the room.
Before a light blaze which burned on the hearth, the Major was sitting in an arm chair of oak splits, his eyes on the blossoming apple trees outside, and above his head, the radiant image of Aunt Emmeline, painted as Venus in a gown of amber brocade. All else was plain and clean—the well-swept floor, the burnished andirons, the cupboard filled with rows of blue and white china—but that one glowing figure lent a festive air to the poorly furnished room, and enriched with a certain pomp the tired old man, dozing, with bowed white head, in the rude arm chair. It was the one thing saved from the ashes—the one vestige of a former greatness that still remained.
As Dan stood there, a clock on the mantel struck the hour, and the Major turned slowly toward him.
“Bring the lamps, Cupid,” he said, though the daylight was still shining. “I don't like the long shadows—bring the lamps.”
Choking back a sob, Dan crossed the floor and knelt down by the chair.
“We have come back, grandpa,” he said. “We beg your pardon, and we have come back—Big Abel and I.”
For a moment the Major stared at him in silence; then he reached out and felt him with shaking hands as if he mistrusted the vision of his eyes.
“So you're back, Champe, my boy,” he muttered. “My eyes are bad—I thought at first that it was Dan—that it was Dan.”
“It is I, grandpa,” said Dan, slowly. “It is I—and Big Abel, too. We are sorry for it all—for everything, and we have come back poorer than we went away.”
A light broke over the old man's face, and he stretched out his arms with a great cry that filled the room as his head fell forward on his grandson's breast. Then, when Mrs. Lightfoot appeared in the doorway, he controlled himself with a gasp and struggled to his feet.
“Welcome home, my son,” he said ceremoniously, as he put out his quivering hands, “and welcome home, Big Abel.”
The old lady went into Dan's arms as he turned, and looking over her head, he saw Betty coming toward him with a lamp shining in her hand.
“My child, here is one of our soldiers,” cried the Major, in joyful tones, and as the girl placed the lamp upon the table, she turned and met Dan's eyes.
“It is the second time I've come home like this, Betty,” he said, “only I'm a worse beggar now than I was at first.”
Betty shook his hand warmly and smiled into his serious face.
“I dare say you're hungrier,” she responded cheerfully, “but we'll soon mend that, Mrs. Lightfoot and I. We are of one mind with Uncle Bill, who, when Mr. Blake asked him the other day what we ought to do for our returned soldiers, replied as quick as that, 'Feed 'em, sir.'”
The Major laughed with misty eyes.
“You can't get Betty to look on the dark side, my boy,” he declared, though Dan, watching the girl, saw that her face in repose had grown very sad. Only the old beaming smile brought the brightness now.
“Well, I hope she will turn up the cheerful part of this outlook,” he said, surrendering himself to the noisy welcome of Cupid and Aunt Rhody.
“We may trust her—we may trust her,” replied the old man as he settled himself back into his chair. “If there isn't any sunshine, Betty will make it for us herself.”
Dan met the girl's glance for an instant, and then looked at the old negroes hanging upon his hands.
“Yes, the prodigal is back,” he admitted, laughing, “and I hope the fatted calf is on the crane.”
“Dar's a roas' pig fur ter-morrow, sho's you bo'n,” returned Aunt Rhody. “En I'se gwine to stuff 'im full.” Then she hurried away to her fire, and Dan threw himself down upon the rug at the Major's feet.
“Yes, we may trust Betty for the sunshine,” repeated the Major, as if striving to recall his wandering thoughts. “She's my overseer now, you know, and she actually looks after both places in less time than poor Harris took to worry along with one. Why, there's not a better farmer in the county.”
“Oh, Major, don't,” begged the girl, laughing and blushing beneath Dan's eyes. “You mustn't believe him, Dan, he wears rose-coloured glasses when he looks at me.”
“Well, my sight is dim enough for everything else, my dear,” confessed the old man sadly. “That's why I have the lamps lighted before the sun goes down—eh, Molly?”
Mrs. Lightfoot unwrapped her knitting and the ivory kneedles clicked in the firelight.
“I like to keep the shadows away myself,” she responded. “The twilight used to be my favourite hour, but I dread it now, and so does Mr. Lightfoot.”
“Well, the war's given us that in common,” chuckled the Major, stretching out his feet. “If I remember rightly you once complained that our tastes were never alike, Molly.” Then he glanced round with hospitable eyes. “Draw up, my boy, draw up to the fire and tell your story,” he added invitingly. “By the time Champe comes home we'll have rich treats in store for the summer evenings.”
Betty was looking at him as he bent over the thin flames, and Dan saw her warm gaze cloud suddenly with tears. He put out his hand and touched hers as it lay on the Major's chair, and when she turned to him she was smiling brightly.
“Here's Cupid with our supper,” she said, going to the table, “and dear Aunt Rhody has actually gotten out her brandied peaches that she kept behind her 'jists.' If you ever doubted your welcome, Dan, this must banish it forever.” Then as they gathered about the fruits of Aunt Rhody's labours, she talked on rapidly in her cheerful voice. “The silver has just been drawn up from the bottom of the well,” she laughed, “so you mustn't wonder if it looks a little tarnished. There wasn't a piece missing, which is something to be thankful for already, and the port—how many bottles of port did you dig up from the asparagus bed, Uncle Cupid?”
“I'se done hoed up 'mos' a dozen,” answered Cupid, as he plied Dan with waffles, “en dey ain' all un um up yit.”
“Well, well, we'll have a bottle after supper,” remarked the Major, heartily.
“If there's anything that's been improved by this war it should be that port, I reckon,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, her muslin cap nodding over the high old urns.
“And Dan's appetite,” finished Betty, merrily.
When they rose from the table, the girl tied on her bonnet of plaited straw and kissed Mrs. Lightfoot and the Major.
“It is almost mamma's supper time,” she said, “and I must hurry back. Why, I've been away from her at least two hours.” Then she looked at Dan and shook her head. “Don't come,” she added, “it is too far for you, and Congo will see me safely home.”
“Well, I'm sorry for Congo, but his day is over,” Dan returned, as he took up his hat and followed her out into the orchard. With a last wave to the Major, who watched them from the window, they passed under the blossoming fruit trees and went slowly down the little path, while Betty talked pleasantly of trivial things, cheerful, friendly, and composed. When she had exhausted the spring ploughing, the crops still to be planted and the bright May weather, Dan stopped beside the ashes of Chericoke, and looked at her with sombre eyes.
“Betty, we must have it out,” he said abruptly. “I have thought over it until I'm almost mad, and I see but one sensible thing for you to do—you must give me up—my dearest.”
A smile flickered about Betty's mouth. “It has taken you a long time to come to that conclusion,” she responded.
“I hoped until the end—even after I knew that hope was folly and that I was a fool to cling to it. I always meant to come back to you when I got the chance, but not like this—not like this.”
At the pain in his eyes the girl caught her breath with a sob that shook her from head to foot. Pity moved her with a passion stronger than mere love, and she put out her protecting arms with a gesture that would have saved him from the world—or from himself.
“No, like this, Dan,” she answered, with her lips upon his coat.
He kissed her once and drew back.
“I never meant to come home this way, Betty,” he said, in a voice that trembled from its new humility.
“My dear, my dear, I have grown to think that any way is a good way,” she murmured, her eyes on the blackened pile that had once been Chericoke.
“It is not right,” he went on; “it is not fair. You cannot marry me—you must not.”
Again the humour quivered on the girl's lips.
“I don't like to seem too urgent,” she returned, “but will you tell me why?”
“Why?” he repeated bitterly. “There are a hundred why's if you want them, and each one sufficient in itself. I am a beggar, a failure, a wreck, a broken-down soldier from the ranks. Do you think if it were anything less than pure madness on your part that I should stand here a moment and talk like this?—but because I am in love with you, Betty, it doesn't follow that I'm an utter ass.”
“That's flattering,” responded Betty, “but it doesn't explain just what I want to know. Look me straight in the eyes—no evading now—and answer what I ask. Do you mean that we are to be neighbours and nothing more? Do you mean that we are to shake hands when we meet and drop them afterward? Do you mean that we are to stand alone together as we are standing now—that you are never to take me in your arms again? Do you mean this, my dear?”
“I mean—just that,” he answered between his teeth.
For a moment Betty looked at him with a laugh of disbelief. Then, biting the smile upon her lips, she held out her hand with a friendly gesture.
“I am quite content that it should be so,” she said in a cordial voice. “We shall be very good neighbours, I fancy, and if you have any trouble with your crops, don't hesitate to ask for my advice. I've become an excellent farmer, the Major says, you know.” She caught up her long black skirt and walked on, but when he would have followed, she motioned him back with a decisive little wave. “You really mustn't—I can't think of allowing it,” she insisted. “It is putting my neighbours to unheard-of trouble to make them see me home. Why, if I once begin the custom, I shall soon have old Rainy-day Jones walking back with me when I go to buy his cows.” Still smiling she passed under the battle-scarred elms and stepped over the ruined gate into the road.
Leaning against a twisted tree in the old drive, Dan watched her until her black dress fluttered beyond the crumbled wall. Then he gave a cry that checked her hastening feet.
“Betty!” he called, and at his voice she turned.
“What is it, dear friend?” she asked, and, standing amid the scattered stones, looked back at him with pleading eyes.
“Betty!” he cried again, stretching out his arms; and as she ran toward him, he went down beside the ashes of Chericoke, and lay with his face half hidden against a broken urn.
“I am coming,” called Betty, softly, running over the fallen gate and along the drive. Then, as she reached him, she knelt down and drew him to her bosom, soothing him as a mother soothes a tired child.
“It shall be as you wish—I shall be as you wish,” she promised as she held him close.
But his strength had come back to him at her touch, and springing to his feet, he caught her from the ground as he had done that day beside the cabin in the woods, kissing her eyelids and her faithful hands.
“I can't do it, Betty, it's no use. There's still some fight left in me—I am not utterly beaten so long as I have you on my side.”
With a smile she lifted her face and he caught the strong courage of her look.
“We will begin again,” she said, “and this time, my dear, we will begin together.”