19
“It’s true,” she said; “they did fall out of heaven in a swarm, and it was like over at High Knob on the river bank, only a million times higher, because they were so long falling. ‘From morn till noon they fell, from noon till dewy eve.’” Betty looked off into space with half-closed eyes. She was seeing them fall. “It was a long time to be in suspense, wasn’t it, father?” Then every one laughed. Even mother joined in. She was putting the last touches to the tea table.
“Mary, my dear, I think we’d better take a little supervision of the child’s reading––I do, really.”
The gate at the end of the long path to the house clicked, and another lad came swinging up the walk, slightly taller than Peter Junior, but otherwise enough like him in appearance to be his own brother. He was not as grave as Peter, but smiled as he hailed them, waving his cap above his head. He also wore the blue uniform, and it was new.
“Hallo, Peter! You here?”
“Of course I’m here. I thought you were never coming.”
“You did?”
Betty sprang from her father’s lap and ran to meet him. She slipped her hand in his and hopped along at his side. “Oh, Rich! Are you going, too? I wish I were you.”
He lifted the child to a level with his face and kissed her, then set her on her feet again. “Never wish that, Betty. It would spoil a nice little girl.”
“I’m not such a nice little girl. I––I––love Satan––and they’re going to––to––supervise my reading.” She clung to his hand and nodded her head with finality. He swung her along, making her take long leaps as they walked.
“You love Satan? I thought you loved me!”
20
“It’s the same thing, Rich,” said Peter Junior, with a grin.
Bertrand had gone to the kitchen door. “Mary, my love, here’s Richard Kildene.” She entered the living room, carrying a plate of light, hot biscuit, and hurried out to Richard, greeting him warmly––even lovingly.
“Bertrand, won’t you and the boys carry the table out to the garden?” she suggested. “Open both doors and take it carefully. It will be pleasanter here in the shade.”
The young men sprang to do her bidding, and the small table was borne out under the trees, the lads enumerating with joy the articles of Mary Ballard’s simple menu.
“Hot biscuits and honey! My golly! Won’t we wish for this in about two months from now?” said Richard.
“Cream and caraway cookies!” shouted Peter Junior, turning back to the porch to help Bertrand carry the chairs. “Of course we’ll be wishing for this before long, but that’s part of soldiering.”
“We’re not looking forward to a well-fed, easy time of it, so we’ll just make the best of this to-night, and eat everything in sight,” said Richard.
Bertrand preferred to change the subject. “This is some of our new white clover honey,” he said. “I took it from that hive over there last evening, and they’ve been working all day as if they had had new life given them. All bees want is a lot of empty space for storing honey.”
Richard followed Mrs. Ballard into the kitchen for the tea. “Where are the other children?” he asked.
“Martha and Jamie are spending a week with my mother and father. They love to go there, and mother––and father, also, seem never to have enough of them.21Baby is still asleep, and I must waken him, too, or he won’t sleep to-night. I hung a pail of milk over the spring to keep it cool, and the butter is there also––and the Dutch cheese in a tin box. Can you––wait, I’d better go with you. We’ll leave the tea to steep a minute.”
They passed through the house and down toward the spring house under the maple and basswood trees at the back, walking between rows of currant bushes where the fruit hung red.
“I hate to leave all this––maybe forever,” said the boy. The corners of his mouth drooped a little, and he looked down at Mary Ballard with a tender glint in his deep blue eyes. His eyes were as blue as the lake on a summer’s evening, and they were shaded by heavy dark brown lashes, almost black. His brows and hair were the same deep brown. Peter Junior’s were a shade lighter, and his hair more curling. It was often a matter of discussion in the village as to which of the boys was the handsomer. That they were both fine-looking lads was always conceded.
Mary Ballard turned toward him impulsively. “Why did you do this, Richard? Why? I can’t feel that this fever for war is right. It is terrible. We are losing the best blood in the land in a wicked war.” She took his two hands in hers, and her eyes filled. “When we first came here, your mother was my dearest friend. You never knew her, but I loved her––and her loss was much to me. Richard, why didn’t you consult us?”
“I hadn’t any one but you and your husband to care. Oh, Aunt Hester loves me, of course, and is awfully good to me––but the Elder––I always feel somehow as if he expects me to go to the bad. He never had any use for my22father, I guess. Was my father––was––he no good? Don’t mind telling me the truth: I ought to know.”
“Your father was not so well known here, but he was, in Bertrand’s estimation, a royal Irish gentleman. We both liked him; no one could help it. Never think hardly of him.”
“Why has he never cared for me? Why have I never known him?”
“There was a quarrel––or––some unpleasantness between your uncle and him; it’s an old thing.”
Richard’s lip quivered an instant, then he drew himself up and smiled on her, then he stooped and kissed her. “Some of us must go; we can’t let this nation be broken up. Some men must give their lives for it; and I’m one of those who ought to go, for I have no one to mourn for me. Half the class has enlisted.”
“I venture to say you suggested it, too?”
“Well––yes.”
“And Peter Junior was the first to follow you?”
“Well, yes! I’m sorry––because of Aunt Hester––but we always do pull together, you know. See here, let’s not think of it in this way. There are other ways. Perhaps I’ll come back with straps on my shoulders and marry Betty some day.”
“God grant you may; that is, if you come back as you left us. You understand me? The same boy?”
“I do and I will,” he said gravely.
That was a happy hour they spent at the evening meal, and many an evening afterwards, when hardship and weariness had made the lads seem more rugged and years older, they spoke of it and lived it over.
23CHAPTER IIIA MOTHER’S STRUGGLE
“Come, Lady, come. You’re slow this morning.” Mary Ballard drove a steady, well-bred, chestnut mare with whom she was on most friendly terms. Usually her carryall was filled with children, for she kept no help, and when she went abroad, she must perforce take the children with her or spend an unquiet hour or two while leaving them behind. This morning she had left the children at home, and carried in their stead a basket of fruit and flowers on the seat beside her. “Come, Lady, come; just hurry a little.” She touched the mare with the whip, a delicate reminder to haste, which Lady assumed to be a fly and treated as such with a switch of her tail.
The way seemed long to Mary Ballard this morning, and the sun beating down on the parched fields made the air quiver with heat. The unpaved road was heavy with dust, and the mare seemed to drag her feet through it unnecessarily as she jogged along. Mary was anxious and dreaded the visit she must make. She would be glad when it was over. What could she say to the stricken woman who spent her time behind closed blinds? Presently she left the dust behind and drove along under the maple trees that lined the village street, over cool roads that were kept well sprinkled.
The Craigmiles lived on the main street of the town in24the most dignified of the well-built homes of cream-colored brick, with a wide front stoop and white columns at the entrance. Mary was shown into the parlor by a neat serving maid, who stepped softly as if she were afraid of waking some one. The room was dark and cool, but the air seemed heavy with a lingering musky odor. The dark furniture was set stiffly back against the walls, the floor was covered with a velvet carpet of rich, dark colors, and oil portraits were hung about in heavy gold frames.
Mary looked up at two of these portraits with pride, and rebelled that the light was so shut out that they must always be seen in the obscurity, for Bertrand had painted them, and she considered them her husband’s best work. In the painting of them and the long sittings required the intimacy between the two families had begun. Really it had begun before that, for there were other paintings in that home––portraits, old and fine, which Elder Craigmile’s father had brought over from Scotland when he came to the new world to establish a new home. These paintings were the pride of Elder Craigmile’s heart, and the delight of Bertrand Ballard’s artist soul.
To Bertrand they were a discovery––an oasis in a desert. One day the banker had called him in to look at a canvas that was falling to pieces with age, in the hope that the artist might have the skill to restore it. From that day the intimacy began, and a warm friendship sprang up between the two families, founded on Bertrand’s love for the old works of art, wherein the ancestors of Peter Craigmile, Senior, looked out from their frames with a dignity and warmth and grace rarely to be met with in this new western land.
Bertrand’s heart leaped with joy as he gazed on one of25them, the one he had been called on to save if possible. “This must be a genuine Reynolds. Ah! They could paint, those old fellows!” he cried.
“Genuine Reynolds? Why, man, it is! it is! You are a true artist. You knew it in a moment.” Peter Senior’s heart was immediately filled with admiration for the younger man. “Yes, they were a good family––the Craigmiles of Aberdeen. My father brought all the old portraits coming to him to this country to keep the family traditions alive. It’s a good thing––a good thing!”
“She was a beautiful woman, the original of that portrait.”
“She was a great beauty, indeed. Her husband took her to London to have it done by the great painter. Ah, the Scotch lasses were fine! Look at that color! You don’t see that here, no?”
“Our American women are too pale, for the most part; but then again, your men are too red.”
“Ah! Beef and red wine! Beef and red wine! With us in Scotland it was good oatcakes and home-brew––and the air. The air of the Scotch hills and the sea. You don’t have such air here, I’ve often heard my father say. I’ve spent the greater part of my life here, so it’s mostly the traditions I have––they and the portraits.”
Thus it came about that owing to his desire to keep up the line of family portraits, Peter Craigmile engaged the artist to paint the picture of his gentle, sweet-faced wife. She was painted seated, a little son on either side of her; and now in the dimness she looked out from the heavy gold frame, a half smile playing about her lips, on her lap an open book, and about the low-cut crimson velvet bodice26rare old lace pinned at the bosom with a large brooch of wrought gold, framing a delicately cut cameo.
As Mary Ballard sat in the parlor waiting, she looked up in the dusky light at this picture. Ah, yes! Her Bertrand also was a great painter. If only he could be where he might become known and appreciated! She sighed for another reason, also, as she regarded it: because the two little sons clasped by the mother’s arms were both gone. Sunny-haired Scotch laddies they were, with fair, wide brows, each in kilt and plaid, with bare knees and ruddy cheeks. What delight her husband had taken in painting it! And now the mother mourned unceasingly the loss of those little sons, and of one other whom Mary had never seen, and of whom they had no likeness. It was indeed hard that the one son left them,––their firstborn,––their hope and pride, should now be going away to leave them, going perhaps to his death.
The door opened and a shadow swept slowly across the room. Always pale and in black––wrapped in her mourning the shadow of sorrow never left this mother; and now it seemed to envelop even Mary Ballard, bright and warm of nature as she was.
Hester Craigmile barely smiled as she held out her slender, blue-veined hand.
“It is very good of you to come to me, Mary Ballard, but you can’t make me think I should be reconciled to this. No! It is hard enough to be reconciled to the blows God has dealt me, without accepting what my husband and son see fit to give me in this.” Her hand was cold and passive, and her voice was restrained and low.
Mary Ballard’s hands were warm, and her tones were27rich and full. She took the proffered hand in both her own and drew the shadow down to sit at her side.
“No, no. I’m not going to try to make you reconciled, or anything. I’ve just come to tell you that I understand, and that I think you are justified in withholding your consent to Peter Junior’s going off in this way.”
“If he were killed, I should feel as if I had consented to his death.”
“Of course you would. I should feel just the same. Naturally you can’t forbid his going,––now,––for it’s too late, and he would have to go with the feeling of disobedience in his heart, and that would be cruel to him, and worse for you.”
“I know. His father has consented; they think I am wrong. My son thinks I am wrong. But I can’t! I can’t!” In her suppressed tones sounded the ancient wail of women––mothers crying for their sons sacrificed in war. For a few moments neither of them spoke. It was hard for Mary to break the silence. Her friend sat at her side withdrawn and still; then she lifted her eyes to the picture of herself and the children and spoke again, only breathing the words: “Peter Junior––my beautiful oldest boy––he is the last––the others are all gone––three of them.”
“Peter Junior is splendid. I thought so last evening as I saw him coming up the path. I took it home to myself––what I should feel, and what I would think if he were my son. Somehow we women are so inconsistent and foolish. I knew if he were my son, I never could give my consent to his going, never in the world,––but there! I would be so proud of him for doing just what your boy28has done; I would look up to him in admiration, and be so glad that he was just that kind of a man!”
Hester Craigmile turned and looked steadily in her friend’s eyes, but did not open her lips, and after a moment Mary continued:––
“To have one’s sons taken like these––is––is different. We know they are safe with the One who loved little children; we know they are safe and waiting for us. But to have a boy grow into a young man like Peter Junior––so straight and fine and beautiful––and then to have him come and say: ‘I’m going to help save our country and will die for it if I must!’ Why, my heart would grow big with thanksgiving that I had brought such an one into the world and reared him. I––What would I do! I couldn’t tell him he might go,––no,––but I’d just take him in my arms and bless him and love him a thousand times more for it, so he could go away with that warm feeling all about his heart; and then––I’d just pray and hope the war might end soon and that he might come back to me rewarded, and––and––still good.”
“That’s it. If he would,––I don’t distrust my son,––but there are always things to tempt, and if––if he were changed in that way, or if he never came back,––I would die.”
“I know. We can’t help thinking about ourselves and how we are left––or how we feel––” Mary hesitated and was loath to go on with that train of thought, but her friend caught her meaning and rose in silence and paced the room a moment, then returned.
“It is easy to talk in that way when one has not lost,” she said.
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“I know it seems so, but it is not easy, Hester Craigmile. It is hard––so hard that I came near staying at home this morning. It seemed as if I could not––could not––”
“Yes, what I said was bitter, and it wasn’t honest. You were good to come to me––and what you have said is true. It has helped me; I think it will help me.”
“Then good-by. I’ll go now, but I’ll come again soon.” She left the shadow sitting there with the basket of fruit and flowers at her side unnoticed and forgotten, and stepped quietly out of the darkened room into the sunlight and fresh air.
“I do wish I could induce her to go out a little––or open up her house. I wish––” Mary Ballard said no more, but shut her lips tightly on her thoughts, untied the mare, and drove slowly away.
Hester Craigmile stood for a moment gazing on the picture of her little sons, then for an hour or more wandered up and down over her spacious home, going from room to room, mechanically arranging and rearranging the chairs and small articles on the mantels and tables. Nothing was out of place. No dust or disorder anywhere, and there was the pity of it. If only a boy’s cap could be found lying about, or books left carelessly where they ought not to be! One closed door she passed again and again. Once she laid her hand on the knob, but passed on, leaving it still unopened. At last she turned, and, walking swiftly down the long hall, entered the room.
There the blinds were closed and the curtains drawn, and everything set in as perfect order as in the parlor below. She sat down in a chair placed back against the wall and folded her hands in her lap. No, it was not so hard for30Mary Ballard. It would not be, even if she had a son old enough to go. Mary had work to do.
On the wall above Hester’s head was one of the portraits which helped to establish the family dignity of the Craigmiles. If the blinds had been open, one could have seen it in sharp contrast to the pale moth of a woman who sat beneath it. The painting, warm and rich in tone, was of a dame in a long-bodiced dress. She held a fan in her hand and wore feathers in her powdered hair. Her eyes gazed straight across the room into those of a red-coated soldier who wore a sword at his side and gold on his shoulders. Yes, there had been soldiers in the family before Peter Junior’s time.
This was Peter Junior’s room, but the boy was there no longer. He had come home from college one day and had entered it a boy, and then he came out of it and down to his mother, dressed in his new uniform––a man. Now he entered it no more, for he stayed at the camp over on the high bluff of the Wisconsin River. He was wholly taken up with his new duties there, and his room had been set in order and closed as if he were dead.
Sitting there, Hester heard the church clock peal out the hour of twelve, and started. Soon she would hear the front door open and shut, and a heavy tread along the lower hall, and she would go down and sit silently at the table opposite her husband, they two alone. There would be silence, because there would be nothing to say. He loved her and was tender of her, but his word was law, and in all matters he was dictator, lawmaker, and judge, and from his decisions there was no appeal. It never occurred to him that there ever need be. So Hester Craigmile,31reserved and intense, closed her lips on her own thoughts, which it seemed to her to be useless to utter, and let them eat her heart out in silence.
At the moment expected she heard the step on the floor of the vestibule, and the door opened, but it was not her husband’s step alone that she heard. Surely it was Peter Junior’s and his cousin’s. Were they coming to dinner? But no word had been sent. Hester stepped out of the room and stood at the head of the stairs waiting. She did not wish to go down and meet her son before the others, and if he did not find her below, he would know where to look for her.
Peter Senior was an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, and he was always addressed as Elder, even by his wife and son. On the street he was always Elder Craigmile. She heard the men enter the dining room and the door close after them, but still she waited. The maid would have to be told to put two more places at the table, but Hester did not move. The Elder might attend to that. Presently she heard quick steps returning and knew her son was coming. She went to meet him and was clasped in his arms, close and hard.
“You were waiting for me here? Come, mother, come.” He stroked her smooth, dark hair, and put his cheek to hers. It was what she needed, what her heart was breaking for. She could even let him go easier after this. Sometimes her husband kissed her, but only when he went a journey or when he returned, a grave kiss of farewell or greeting; but in her son’s clasp there was something of her own soul’s pent-up longing.
“You’ll come down, mother? Rich came home with me.”
32
“Yes, I heard his voice. I am glad he came.”
“See here, mother! I know what you are doing. This won’t do. Every one who goes to war doesn’t get killed or go to the bad. Look at that old redcoat up in my room. He wasn’t killed, or where would I be now? I’m coming back, just as he did. We are born to fight, we Craigmiles, and father feels it or he never would have given his consent.”
Slowly they went down the long winding flight of stairs––a flight with a smooth banister down which it had once been Peter Junior’s delight to slide when there was no one nigh to reprove. Now he went down with his arm around his slender mother’s waist, and now and then he kissed her cheek like a lover.
The Elder looked up as they entered, with a slight wince of disapproval, the only demonstration of reproof he ever gave his wife, which changed instantly to as slight a smile, as he noticed the faint color in her cheek, and a brighter light in her eyes than there was at breakfast. He and Richard were both seated as they entered, but they rose instantly, and the Elder placed her chair with all the manner of his forefathers, a courtesy he never neglected.
Hester Craigmile forced herself to converse, and tried to smile as if there were no impending gloom. It was here Mary Ballard’s influence was felt by them all. She had helped her friend more than she knew.
“I’m glad to see you, Richard; I was afraid I might not.”
“Oh, no, Aunt Hester. I’d never leave without seeing you. I went into the bank and the Elder asked me to dinner and I jumped at the chance.”
“This is your home always, you know.”
33
“And it’s good to think of, too, Aunt Hester.”
She looked at her son and then her nephew. “You are so like in your uniforms I would not know you apart on the street in the dark,” she said. Richard shot a merry glance in his uncle’s eyes, then only smiled decorously with him and Peter Junior.
“I wish you’d visit the camp and see us drill. We go like clockwork, Peter and I. They call us the twins.”
“There is a very good reason for that, for your mother and I were twins, and you resemble her, while Peter Junior resembles me,” said the Elder.
“Yes,” said Hester, “Peter Junior looks like his father;” but as she glanced at her son she knew his soul was hers.
Thus the meal passed in quiet, decorous talk, touching on nothing vital, but holding a smoldering fire underneath. The young men said nothing about the fact that the regiment had been called to duty, and soon the camp on the bluff would be breaking up. They dared not touch on the past, and they as little dared touch on the future––indeed there might be no future. So they talked of indifferent things, and Hester parted with her nephew as if they were to meet again soon, except that she called him back when he was halfway down the steps and kissed him again. As for her son, she took him up to his room and there they stayed for an hour, and then he came out and she was left in the house alone.
34CHAPTER IVLEAVE-TAKING
Early in the morning, while the earth was still a mass of gray shadow and mist, and the sky had only begun to show faint signs of the flush of dawn, Betty, awake and alert, crept softly out of bed, not to awaken Martha, who slept the sleep of utter weariness at her side. Martha had returned only the day before from her visit to her grandfather’s, a long carriage ride away from Leauvite.
Betty bathed hurriedly, giving a perfunctory brushing to the tangled mass of curls, and getting into her clothing swiftly and silently. She had been cautioned the night before by her mother not to awaken her sister by getting up at too early an hour, for she would be called in plenty of time to drive over with the rest to see the soldiers off. But what if her mother should forget! So she put on her new white dress and gathered a few small parcels which she had carefully tied up the night before, and her hat and little white linen cape, and taking her shoes in her hand, softly descended the stairs.
“Betty, Betty,” her mother spoke in a sleepy voice from her own room as the child crept past her door; “why, my dear, it isn’t time to get up yet. We shan’t start for hours.”
“I heard Peter Junior say they were going to strike camp at daybreak, and I want to see them strike it. You don’t need to get up. I can go over there alone.”
35
“Why, no, child! Mother couldn’t let you do that. They don’t want little girls there. Go back to bed, dear. Did you wake Martha?”
“Oh, mother. Can’t I go downstairs? I don’t want to go to bed again. I’ll be very still.”
“Will you lie on the lounge and try to go to sleep again?”
“Yes, mother.”
Mary Ballard turned with a sigh and presently fell asleep, and Betty softly continued her way and obediently lay down in the darkened room below; but sleep she could not. At last, having satisfied her conscience by lying quietly for a while, she stole to the open door, for in that peaceful spot the Ballards slept with doors and windows wide open all through the warm nights. Oh, but the world was cool and mysterious, and the air was sweet! Little rustling noises made her feel as if strange beings were stirring; above her head were soft chirpings, and somewhere a bird was calling an undulating, long-drawn note, low and sweet, like a tone drawn from her father’s violin.
Betty sat on the edge of the porch and put on her shoes, and then walked down the path to the gate. The white peonies and the iris flowers were long since gone, and on the Harvest apple trees and the Sweet Boughs the fruit hung ripening. All Betty’s life long she never forgot this wonderful moment of the breaking of day. She listened for sounds to come to her from the camp far away on the river bluff, but none were heard, only the restless moving of her grandfather’s team taking their early feed in the small pasture lot near by.
How fresh everything smelled! And the sky! Surely36it must be like this in heaven! It must be heaven showing through, while the world slept. She was glad she had awakened early so she might see it,––she and God and the angels, and all the wild things of earth.
Slowly everything around her grew plainer, and long rays of color, faintly pink, streamed up into the sky from the eastern horizon; then suddenly some pale gray, floating clouds above her head blossomed into a wonderful rose laid upon a sea of gold, then gradually turned shell-pink, then faded through changing shades to daytime clouds of white. She wondered if the soldiers saw it, too. They were breaking camp now, surely, for it was day. Still she swung on the gate and dreamed, until a voice roused her.
“So Betty sleeps all night on the gate like a chicken on the fence.” A pair of long arms seized her and lifted her high in the air to a pair of strong shoulders. Then she was tossed about and her cheeks rubbed red against grandfather Clide’s stubby beard, until she laughed aloud. “What are you doing here on the gate?”
“I was watching the sky. I think God looked through and smiled, for all at once it blossomed. Now the colors are gone.”
Grandfather Clide set her gently on her feet and stood looking gravely down on her for a moment. “So?” he said.
“The soldiers are striking camp over there, and then they are going to march to the square, and then every one is to see them form and salute––and then they are to march to the station, and––and––then––and then I don’t know what will be––I think glory.”
Her grandfather shook his head, his thoughtful face half37smiling and half grave. He took her hand. “Come, we’ll see what Jack and Jill are up to.” He led her to the pasture lot and the horses came and thrust their heads over the fence and whinnied. “See? They want their oats.” Then Betty was lifted to old Jack’s bare back and grandfather led him by the forelock to the barn, while Jill followed after.
“Did Jack ever ‘fall down and break his crown,’ grandfather?”
“No, but he ran away once on a time.”
“Oh, did Jill come running after?”
“That she did.”
The sun had but just cast his first glance at High Knob, where the camp was, and Mary Ballard was hastily whipping up batter for pancakes, the simplest thing she could get for breakfast, as they were to go early enough to see the “boys” at the camp before they formed for their march to the town square. The children were to ride over in the great carriage with grandfather and grandmother Clide, while father and mother would take Bobby with them in the carryall. It was an arrangement liked equally by the three small children and the well-content grandparents.
Betty came to the house, clinging to her grandfather’s hand. He drew the large rocking-chair from the kitchen––where winter and summer it occupied a place by the window, that Bertrand in his moments of rest and leisure might sit and read the war news aloud to his wife as she worked––out to a cool grass plot by the door, so that he might still be near enough to chat with his daughter, while enjoying the morning air.
Betty found tidy little Martha, fresh and clean as a rosebud,38stepping busily about, setting the table with extra places and putting the chairs around. Filled with self-condemnation at the sight of her sister’s helpfulness, she dashed upstairs to do her part in getting all neat for the day. First she coaxed naughty little Jamie, who, in his nightshirt, was out on the porch roof fishing, dangling his shoe over the edge by its strings tied to his father’s cane, to return and be hustled into his trousers––funny little garments that came almost to his shoe tops––and to stand still while “sister” washed his face and brushed his curly red hair into a state of semi-orderliness.
Then there was Bobby to be kissed and coaxed, and washed and dressed, and told marvelous tales to beguile him into listening submission. “Mother, mayn’t I put Bobby’s Sunday dress on him?” called Betty, from the head of the stairs.
“Yes, dear, anything you like, but hurry. Breakfast is almost ready;” then to Martha, “Leave the sweeping, deary, and run down to the spring for the cream.” To her father, Mary explained: “The little girls are a great help. Betty manages to do for the boys without irritating them. Now we’ll eat while the cakes are hot. Come, Bertrand.”
It was a grave mission and a sorrowful one, that early morning ride to say good-by to those youthful volunteers. The breakfast conversation turned on the subject with subdued intensity. Mary Ballard did not explain herself,––she was too busy serving,––but denounced the war in broad terms as “unnecessary and iniquitous,” thus eliciting from her husband his usual exclamation, when an aphorism of more than ordinary daring burst from her lips: “Mary! why, Mary! I’m astonished!”
39
“Every one regards it from a different point of view,” said his wife, “and this is my point.” It was conclusive.
Grandfather Clide turned sideways, leaned one elbow on the table in a meditative way he had, and spoke slowly. Betty gazed up at him in wide-eyed attention, while Mary poured the coffee and Martha helped her mother by passing the cakes. Bobby sat close to his comfortable grandmother, who seemed to be giving him all her attention, but who heard everything, and was ready to drop a quiet word of significance when applicable.
“If we bring the question down to its primal cause,” said grandfather, “if we bring it down to its primal cause, Mary is right; for the cause being iniquitous, of course, the war is the same.”
“What is ‘primal cause,’ grandfather?” asked Betty.
“The thing that began it all,” said grandfather, regarding her quizzically.
“I don’t agree with your conclusion,” said Bertrand, pausing to put sirup on Jamie’s cakes, after repeated demands therefor. “If the cause be evil, it follows that to annihilate the cause––wipe it out of existence––must be righteous.”
“In God’s good time,” said grandmother Clide, quietly.
“God’s good time, in my opinion, seems to be when we are forced to a thing.” Grandfather lifted one shaggy eyebrow in her direction.
“At any rate, and whatever happens,” said Bertrand, “the Union must be preserved, a nation, whole and undivided. My father left England for love of its magnificent ideals of government by the people. Here is to be the vast open ground where all nations may come and realize their highest possibilities, and consequently this nation40must be held together and developed as a whole in all its resources, and not cut up into small, ineffective, quarrelsome factions. To allow that would mean the ruin of a colossal scheme for universal progress.”
Mary brought her husband’s coffee and put it beside his plate, as he was too absorbed to take it, and as she did so placed her hand on his shoulder with gentle pressure and their eyes met for an instant. Then grandfather Clide took up the thread.
“Speaking of your father makes me think of my father, your old grandfather Clide, Mary. He fought with his father in the Revolutionary War when he was a lad no more than Peter Junior’s age––or less. He lived through it and came to be a judge of the supreme court of New York, and helped to frame the constitution of that State, too. I used to hear him say, when I was a mere boy,––and he would bring his fist down on the table with an emphasis that made the dishes rattle, for all he averred that he never used gesticulation to aid his oratory,––he used to say,––I remember his words, as if it were but yesterday,––‘Slavery is a crime which we, the whole nation, are accountable for, and for which we will be held accountable. If we as a nation will not do away with it by legislation or mutual compact justly, then the Lord will take it into his own hands and wipe it out with blood. He may be patient for a long while, and give us a good chance, but if we wait too long,––it may not be in my day––it may not be in yours,––he will wipe it out with blood!’ and here was where he used to make the dishes rattle.”
“Maybe, then, this is the Lord’s good time,” said grandmother.
41
“I believe in preserving the Union at any cost, slavery or no slavery,” said Bertrand.
“The bigger and grander the nation, the more rottenness, if it’s rotten at heart. I believe it better––even at the cost of war––to wipe out a national crime,––or let those who want slavery take themselves out of it.”
Betty began to quiver through all her little system of high-strung nerves and sympathies. The talk was growing heated, and she hated to listen to excited arguments; yet she gazed and listened with fascinated attention.
Bertrand looked up at his father-in-law. “Why, father! why, father! I’m astonished! I fail to see how permitting one tremendous evil can possibly further any good purpose. To my mind the most tremendous evil that could be perpetrated on this globe––the thing that would do more to set all progress back for hundreds of years, maybe––would be to break up this Union. Here in this country now we are advancing at a pace that covers the centuries of the past in leaps of a hundred years in one. Now cut this land up into little, caviling factions, and where are we? Why, the very motto of the republic would be done away with––‘In Union there is strength.’ I tell you slavery is a sort of Delilah, and the nation––if it is divided––will be like Sampson with his locks shorn.”
“Well, war is here,” said Mary, “and we must send off our young men to the shambles, and later on fill up our country with the refuse of Europe in their stead. It will be a terrible blood-letting for both North and South, and it will be the best blood on both sides. I’m as sorry for the mothers down there as I am for ourselves. Did you get the apples, Bertrand? We’d better start, to be there at eight.”
42
“I put them in the carryall, my dear, Sweet Boughs and Harvest apples. The boys will have one more taste before they leave.”
“Father, we want to carry some. Put some in the carriage too,” said Martha.
“Yes, father. We want to eat some while we are on the way.”
“Why, Jamie, they are for the soldiers; they’re not for us,” cried Betty, in horror. To eat even one, it seemed to her, would be greed and robbery.
In spite of the gravity of the hour to the older ones, the occasion took on an air of festivity to the children. In grandfather’s dignified old family carriage Martha sat with demure elation on the back seat at her grandmother’s side, wearing her white linen cape, and a wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat of Neapolitan straw, with a blue ribbon around the crown, and a narrow one attached to the front, the end of which she held in her hand to pull the brim down to shade her eyes as was the fashion for little girls of the day. She felt well pleased with the hat, and held the ribbon daintily in her shapely little hand.
At her feet was the basket of apples, and with her other hand she guarded three small packages. Grandmother wore a gray, changeable silk. The round waist fitted her plump figure smoothly, and the skirt was full and flowing. Her bonnet was made of the same silk shirred on rattan, and was not perched on the top of her head, but covered it well and framed her sweet face with a full, white tulle ruching set close under the brim.
Grandfather, up in front, drove Jack and Jill, who, he said, were “feeling their oats.” Betty did not wonder, for43oats are sharp and must prick their stomachs. She sat with grandfather,––he had promised she should the night before,––and Jamie was tucked in between them. He ought to have been in behind with grandmother, but his scream of rebellion as he was lifted in brought instant yielding from Betty, when grandfather interfered and took them both. But when Jamie insisted on holding the reins, grandfather grew firm, and when screams again began, his young majesty was lifted down and placed in the road to remain until instant obedience was promised, after which he was restored to the coveted place and away they went.
Betty’s white linen cape blew out behind and her ribbons flew like blue butterflies all about her hat. She forgot to hold down the brim, as polite little girls did who knew how to wear their Sunday clothes. She, too, held three small packages in her lap. For days, ever since Peter Junior and Richard Kildene had taken tea with them in their new uniforms, the little girls had patiently sewed to make the articles which filled these packages.
Mary Ballard had planned them. In each was a needle-book filled with needles large enough to be used by clumsy fingers, a pin ball, a good-sized iron thimble, and a case of thread and yarn for mending, buttons of various sizes, and a bit of beeswax, molded in Mary Ballard’s thimble, to wax their linen thread. All were neatly packed in a case of bronzed leather bound about with firm braid, and tucked under the strap of the leather on the inside was a small pair of scissors. It was all very compact and tied about with the braid. Mother had done some of the hardest of the sewing, but for the most part the stitches had been painstakingly put in by the children’s own fingers.
44
The morning was cool, and the dust had been laid by a heavy shower in the night. The horses held up their heads and went swiftly, in spite of their long journey the day before. Soon they heard in the distance the sound of the drum, and the merry note of a fife. Again a pang shot through Betty’s heart that she had not been a boy of Peter Junior’s age that she might go to war. She heaved a deep sigh and looked up in her grandfather’s face. It was a grizzled face, with blue eyes that shot a kindly glance sideways at her as if he understood.
When they drew near, the horses danced to the merry tune, as if they would like to go, too. All the camp seemed alive. How splendid the soldiers looked in their blue uniforms, their guns flashing in the sun! Betty watched how their legs with the stripes on them seemed to twinkle as they moved all together, marching in companies. Back and forth, back and forth, they went, and the orders came to the children short and abrupt, as the men went through their maneuvers. They saw the sentinel pacing up and down, and wondered why he did it instead of marching with the other men. All these questions were saved up to ask of grandfather when they got home. They were too interested to do anything but watch now.
At last, very suddenly it seemed, the soldiers broke ranks and scattered over the greensward, running hither and thither like ants. Betty again drew a long breath. Now they were coming, the soldiers in whom they were particularly interested.
“Can they do what they please now?” she asked her grandfather.
45
“Yes, for a while.”
All along the sentry line carriages were drawn up, for this hour from eight till nine was given to the “boys” to see their friends for the last time in many months, maybe years, maybe forever. As they had come from all over the State, some had no friends to meet them, but guests were there in crowds, and every man might receive a handshake whether he was known or not. All were friends to these young volunteers.
Bertrand Ballard was known and loved by all the youths. Some from the village, and others from the country around, had been in the way of coming to the Ballard home simply because the place was made an enjoyable center for them. Some came to practice the violin and others to sing. Some came to try their hand at sketching and painting and some just to hear Bertrand talk. All was done for them quite gratuitously on his part, and no laugh was merrier than his. Even the chore boy came in for a share of the Ballards’ kindly help, sitting at Mary Ballard’s side in the long winter evenings, and conning lessons to patch up an education snatched haphazard and hardly come by.
Here comes one of them now, head up, smiling, and happy-go-lucky. “Bertrand, here comes Johnnie. Give him the apples and let him distribute them. Poor boy! I’m sorry he’s going; he’s too easily led,” said Mary.
“Oh! Johnnie, Johnnie Cooper! I’ve got something for you. We made them. Mother helped us,” cried Martha. Now the children were out of the carriage and running about among their friends.
Johnnie Cooper snatched Jamie from the ground and threw him up over his head, then set him down again and46took the parcel. Then he caught Martha up and set her on his shoulder while he peeped into the package.
“Stop, Johnnie. Set me down. I’m too big now for you to toss me up.” Her arms were clasped tightly under his chin as he held her by the feet. Slowly he let her slide to the ground and thrust the little case in his pocket, and stooping, kissed the child.
“I’ll think of you and your mother when I use this,” he said.
“And you’ll write to us, won’t you, Johnnie?” said Mary. “If you don’t, I shall think something is gone wrong with you.” He knew what she meant, and she knew he knew. “There are worse things than bullets, Johnnie.”
“Never you worry for me, Mrs. Ballard. We’re going down for business, and you won’t see me again until we’ve licked the ‘rebs.’” He held her hand awkwardly for a minute, then relieved the tension by carrying off the two baskets of apples. “I know the trees these came from,” he said, and soon a hundred boys in blue were eating Bertrand’s choicest apples.
“Here come the twins!” said some one, as Peter Junior and Richard Kildene came toward them across the sward. Betty ran to meet them and caught Richard by the hand. She loved to have him swing her in long leaps from the ground as he walked.
“See, Richard, I made this for you all myself––almost. I put C in the corner so it wouldn’t get mixed with the others, because this I made especially for you.”
“Did you? Why didn’t you put R in the corner if you meant it for me? I think you meant this for Charley Crabbe.”