Part 4

"Of course you have a commission in the Legion."

"No, sir. I didn't ask for one. I was afraid the Legion might not get to Cuba." The General smiled.

"Well, come to see me"--he smiled again--"we'll see--we'll see!" and he rode on with his hands still folded on the pommel of his saddle and his eyes still lifted, dreamily, upward.

It was guard-mount and sunset when Crittenden, with a leaping heart, reached Rivers's camp. The band was just marching out with a corps of trumpeters, when a crash of martial music came across the hollow from the camp on the next low hill, followed by cheers, which ran along the road and were swollen into a mighty shouting when taken up by the camp at the foot of the hill. Through the smoke and faint haze of the early evening, moved a column of infantry into sight, headed by a band.

"Tramp, tramp, tramp, The boys are marching!"

Along the brow of the hill, and but faintly seen through the smoky haze, came the pendulum-like swing of rank after rank of sturdy legs, with guidons fluttering along the columns and big, ghostly army wagons rumbling behind. Up started the band at the foot of the hill with a rousing march, and up started every band along the line, and through madly cheering soldiers swung the regiment on its way to Tampa--magic word, hope of every chafing soldier left behind--Tampa, the point of embarkation for the little island where waited death or glory.

Rivers was deeply dejected.

"Don't you join any regiment yet," he said to Crittenden; "you may get hung up here all summer till the war is over. If you want to get into the fun for sure--wait. Go to Tampa and wait. You might come here, or go there, and drill and watch for your chance." Which was the conclusion Crittenden had already reached for himself.

The sun sank rapidly now. Dusk fell swiftly, and the pines began their nightly dirge for the many dead who died under them five and thirty years ago. They had a new and ominous chant now to Crittenden--a chant of premonition for the strong men about him who were soon to follow them. Camp-fires began to glow out of the darkness far and near over the old battlefield.

Around a little fire on top of the hill, and in front of the Colonel's tent, sat the Colonel, with kind Irish face, Irish eye, and Irish wit of tongue. Near him the old Indian-fighter, Chaffee, with strong brow, deep eyes, long jaw, firm mouth, strong chin--the long, lean face of a thirteenth century monk who was quick to doff cowl for helmet. While they told war-stories, Crittenden sat in silence with the majors three, and Willings, the surgeon (whom he was to know better in Cuba), and listened. Every now and then a horse would loom from the darkness, and a visiting officer would swing into the light, and everybody would say:

"How!"

There is no humour in that monosyllable of good cheer throughout the United States Army, and with Indian-like solemnity they said it, tin cup in hand:

"How!"

Once it was Lawton, tall, bronzed, commanding, taciturn--but fluent when he did speak--or Kent, or Sumner, or little Jerry Carter himself. And once, a soldier stepped into the circle of firelight, his heels clicking sharply together; and Crittenden thought an uneasy movement ran around the group, and that the younger men looked furtively up as though to take their cue from the Colonel. It was the soldier who had been an officer once. The Colonel showed not a hint of consciousness, nor did the impassive soldier to anybody but Crittenden, and with him it may have been imagination that made him think that once, when the soldier let his eye flash quite around the group, he flushed slightly when he met Crittenden's gaze. Rivers shrugged his shoulders when Crittenden asked about him later.

"Black sheep, ... well-educated, brave, well-born most likely, came up from the ranks, ... won a commission as sergeant fighting Indians, but always in trouble--gambling, fighting, and so forth. Somebody in Washington got him a lieutenancy, and while the commission was on its way to him out West he got into a bar-room brawl. He resigned then, and left the army. He was gentleman enough to do that. Now he's back. The type is common in the army, and they often come back. I expect he has decency enough to want to get killed. If he has, maybe he'll come out a captain yet."

By and by came "tattoo," and finally far away a trumpet sounded "taps"; then another and another and another still. At last, when all were through, "taps" rose once more out of the darkness to the left. This last trumpeter had waited--he knew his theme and knew his power. The rest had simply given the command:

"Lights out!"

Lights out of the soldier's camp, they said. Lights out of the soldier's life, said this one, sadly; and out of Crittenden's life just now something that once was dearer than life itself.

"Love, good-night."

Such the trumpet meant to one poet, and such it meant to many another than Crittenden, doubtless, when he stretched himself on his cot--thinking of Judith there that afternoon, and seeing her hand lift to pull away the veil from the statues again. So it had always been with him. One touch of her hand and the veil that hid his better self parted, and that self stepped forth victorious. It had been thickening, fold on fold, a long while now; and now, he thought sternly, the rending must be done, and should be done with his own hands. And then he would go back to thinking of her as he saw her last in the Bluegrass. And he wondered what that last look and smile of hers could mean. Later, he moved in his sleep--dreaming of that brave column marching for Tampa--with his mind's eye on the flag at the head of the regiment, and a thrill about his heart that waked him. And he remembered that it was the first time he had ever had any sensation about the flag of his own land. But it had come to him--awake and asleep--and it was genuine.

VI

It was mid-May now, and the leaves were full and their points were drooping toward the earth. The woods were musical with the cries of blackbirds as Crittenden drove toward the pike-gate, and the meadow was sweet with the love-calls of larks. The sun was fast nearing the zenith, and air and earth were lusty with life. Already the lane, lined with locust-trees, brambles, wild rose-bushes, and young elders, was fragrant with the promise of unborn flowers, and the turnpike, when he neared town, was soft with the dust of many a hoof and wheel that had passed over it toward the haze of smoke which rose over the first recruiting camp in the State for the Spanish war. There was a big crowd in the lovely woodland over which hung the haze, and the music of horn and drum came forth to Crittenden's ears even that far away, and Raincrow raised head and tail and quickened his pace proudly.

For a week he had drilled at Chickamauga. He had done the work of a plain soldier, and he liked it--liked his temporary comrades, who were frankly men to men with him, in spite of his friendship with their superiors on top of the hill. To the big soldier, Abe Long, the wag of the regiment, he had been drawn with genuine affection. He liked Abe's bunkie, the boy Sanders, who was from Maine, while Abe was a Westerner--the lineal descendant in frame, cast of mind, and character of the border backwoodsman of the Revolution. Reynolds was a bully, and Crittenden all but had trouble with him; for he bullied the boy Sanders when Abe was not around, and bullied the "rookies." Abe seemed to have little use for him, but as he had saved the big soldier's life once in an Indian fight, Abe stuck to him, in consequence, loyally. But Blackford, the man who had been an officer once, had interested him most; perhaps, because Blackford showed peculiar friendliness for him at once. From Washington, Crittenden had heard not a word; nor from General Carter, who had left Chickamauga before he could see him again. If, within two days more, no word came, Crittenden had made up his mind to go to Tampa, where the little General was, and where Rivers's regiment had been ordered, and drill again and, as Rivers advised, await his chance.

The camp was like some great picnic or political barbecue, with the smoking trenches, the burgoo, and the central feast of beef and mutton left out. Everywhere country folks were gathering up fragments of lunch on the thick grass, or strolling past the tents of the soldiers, or stopping before the Colonel's pavilion to look upon the martial young gentlemen who composed his staff, their beautiful horses, and the Colonel's beautiful guests from the river city--the big town of the State. Everywhere were young soldiers in twos and threes keeping step, to be sure, but with eyes anywhere but to the front; groups lying on the ground, chewing blades of bluegrass, watching pretty girls pass, and lounging lazily; groups to one side, but by no means out of sight, throwing dice or playing "craps"--the game dear to the darkey's heart. On the outskirts were guards to gently challenge the visitor, but not very stern sentinels were they. As Crittenden drove in, he saw one pacing a shady beat with a girl on his arm. And later, as he stood by his buggy, looking around with an amused sense of the playful contrast it all was to what he had seen at Chickamauga, he saw another sentinel brought to a sudden halt by a surprised exclamation from a girl, who was being shown through the camp by a strutting lieutenant. The sentinel was Basil and Phyllis was the girl.

"Why, isn't that Basil?" she asked in an amazed tone--amazed because Basil did not speak to her, but grinned silently.

"Why, it is Basil; why--why," and she turned helplessly from private to officer and back again. "Can't you speak to me, Basil?"

Basil grinned again sheepishly.

"Yes," he said, answering her, but looking straight at his superior, "I can if the Lieutenant there will let me." Phyllis was indignant.

"Let you!" she said, witheringly; and she turned on the hapless tyrant at her side.

"Now, don't you go putting on airs, just because you happen to have been in the Legion a little longer than _some_ people. Of course, I'm going to speak to my friends. I don't care where they are or what they happen to be at the time, or who happens to think himself over them."

And she walked up to the helpless sentinel with her hand outstretched, while the equally helpless Lieutenant got very red indeed, and Basil shifted his gun to a very unmilitary position and held out his hand.

"Let me see your gun, Basil," she added, and the boy obediently handed it over to her, while the little Lieutenant turned redder still.

"You go to the guard-house for that, Crittenden," he said, quietly. "Don't you know you oughtn't to give up your gun to anybody except your commanding officer?"

"Does he, indeed?" said the girl, just as quietly. "Well, I'll see the Colonel." And Basil saluted soberly, knowing there was no guard-house for him that night.

"Anyhow," she added, "I'm the commanding officer here." And then the gallant lieutenant saluted too.

"You are, indeed," he said; and Phyllis turned to give Basil a parting smile.

Crittenden followed them to the Colonel's tent, which had a raised floor and the good cheer of cigar-boxes, and of something under his cot that looked like a champagne-basket; and he smiled to think of Chaffee's Spartan-like outfit at Chickamauga. Every now and then a soldier would come up with a complaint, and the Colonel would attend to him personally.

It was plain that the old ex-Confederate was the father of the regiment, and was beloved as such; and Crittenden was again struck with the contrast it all was to what he had just seen, knowing well, however, that the chief difference was in the spirit in which regular and volunteer approached the matter in hand. With one, it was a business pure and simple, to which he was trained. With the other, it was a lark at first, but business it soon would be, and a dashing business at that. There was the same crowd before the tent--Judith, who greeted him with gracious frankness, but with a humorous light in her eye that set him again to wondering; and Phyllis and Phyllis's mother, Mrs. Stanton, who no sooner saw Crittenden than she furtively looked at Judith with a solicitude that was maternal and significant.

There can be no better hot-bed of sentiment than the mood of man and woman when the man is going to war; and if Mrs. Stanton had not shaken that nugget of wisdom from her memories of the old war, she would have known it anyhow, for she was blessed with a perennial sympathy for the heart-troubles of the young, and she was as quick to apply a remedy to the children of other people as she was to her own, whom, by the way, she cured, one by one, as they grew old enough to love and suffer, and learn through suffering what it was to be happy. And how other mothers wondered how it was all done! In truth, her method--if she had a conscious method--was as mysterious and as sure as is the way of nature; and one could no more catch her nursing a budding passion here and there than one could catch nature making the bluegrass grow. Everybody saw the result; nobody saw just how it was done. That afternoon an instance was at hand. Judith wanted to go home, and Mrs. Stanton, who had brought her to camp, wanted to go to town. Phyllis, too, wanted to go home, and her wicked little brother, Walter, who had brought her, climbed into Basil's brake before her eyes, and, making a face at her, disappeared in a cloud of dust. Of course, neither of the brothers nor the two girls knew what was going on, but, a few minutes later, there was Basil pleading with Mrs. Stanton to let him take Phyllis home, and there was Crittenden politely asking the privilege of taking Judith into his buggy. The girl looked embarrassed, but when Mrs. Stanton made a gracious feint of giving up her trip to town, Judith even more graciously declined to allow her, and, with a smile to Crittenden, as though he were a conscious partner in her effort to save Mrs. Stanton trouble, gave him her hand and was helped into the smart trap, with its top pressed flat, its narrow seat and a high-headed, high-reined, half-thoroughbred restive between the slender shafts; and a moment later, smiled a good-by to the placid lady, who, with a sigh that was half an envious memory, half the throb of a big, kind heart, turned to her own carriage, assuring herself that it really was imperative for her to drive to town, if for no other reason than to see that her mischievous boy got out of town with the younger Crittenden's brake.

Judith and Crittenden were out of the push of cart, carriage, wagon, and street-car now, and out of the smoke and dust of the town, and Crittenden pulled his horse down to a slow trot. The air was clear and fragrant and restful. So far, the two had spoken scarcely a dozen words. Crittenden was embarrassed--he hardly knew why--and Judith saw it, and there was a suppressed smile at the corners of her mouth which Crittenden did not see.

"It's too bad."

Crittenden turned suddenly.

"It's a great pleasure."

"For which you have Mrs. Stanton to thank. You would have got it for yourself five--dear me; is it possible?--five years ago."

"Seven years ago," corrected Crittenden, grimly. "I was more self-indulgent seven years ago than I am now."

"And the temptation was greater then."

The smile at her mouth twitched her lips faintly, and still Crittenden did not see; he was too serious, and he kept silent.

The clock-like stroke of the horse's high-lifted feet came sharply out on the hard road. The cushioned springs under them creaked softly now and then, and the hum of the slender, glittering spokes was noiseless and drowsy.

"You haven't changed much," said Judith, "except for the better."

"You haven't changed at all. You couldn't--for better or worse."

Judith smiled dreamily and her eyes were looking backward--very far backward. Suddenly they were shot with mischief.

"Why, you really don't seem to--" she hesitated--"to like me any more."

"I really don't--" Crittenden, too, hesitated--"don't like you any more--not as I did."

"You wrote me that."

"Yes."

The girl gave a low laugh. How often he had played this harmless little part. But there was a cool self-possession about him that she had never seen before. She had come home, prepared to be very nice to him, and she was finding it easy.

"And you never answered," said Crittenden.

"No; and I don't know why."

The birds were coming from shade and picket--for midday had been warm--into the fields and along the hedges, and were fluttering from one fence-rail to another ahead of them and piping from the bushes by the wayside and the top of young weeds.

"You wrote that you were--'getting over it.' In the usual way?"

Crittenden glanced covertly at Judith's face. A mood in her like this always made him uneasy.

"Not in the usual way; I don't think it's usual. I hope not."

"How, then?"

"Oh, pride, absence--deterioration and other things."

"Why, then?"

Judith's head was leaning backward, her eyes were closed, but her face seemed perfectly serious.

"You told me to get over it."

"Did I?"

Crittenden did not deign to answer this, and Judith was silent a long while. Then her eyes opened; but they were looking backward again, and she might have been talking to herself.

"I'm wondering," she said, "whether any woman ever really meant that when she said it to a man whom she--" Crittenden turned quickly--"whom she liked," added Judith as though she had not seen his movement. "She may think it her duty to say it; she may say it because it is her duty; but in her heart, I suppose, she wants him to keep on loving her just the same--if she likes him--" Judith paused--"even more than a very little. That's very selfish, but I'm afraid it's true."

And Judith sighed helplessly.

"I think you made it little enough that time," laughed Crittenden. "Are you still afraid of giving me too much hope?"

"I am afraid of nothing--now."

"Thank you. You were ever too much concerned about me."

"I was. Other men may have found the fires of my conscience smouldering sometimes, but they were always ablaze whenever you came near. I liked you better than the rest--better than all----"

Crittenden's heart gave a faint throb and he finished the sentence for her.

"But one."

"But one."

And that one had been unworthy, and Judith had sent him adrift. She had always been frank with Crittenden. That much he knew and no more--not even the man's name; but how he had wondered who and where and what manner of man he was! And how he had longed to see him!

They were passing over a little bridge in a hollow where a cool current of air struck them and the freshened odour of moistening green things in the creek-bed--the first breath of the night that was still below the cloudy horizon.

"Deterioration," said Judith, almost sharply. "What did you mean by that?"

Crittenden hesitated, and she added:

"Go on; we are no longer children."

"Oh, it was nothing, or everything, just as you look at it. I made a discovery soon after you went away. I found that when I fell short of the standard you"--Crittenden spoke slowly--"had set for me, I got at least mental relief. I _couldn't_ think of you until--until I had recovered myself again."

"So you----"

"I used the discovery."

"That was weak."

"It was deliberate."

"Then it was criminal."

"Both, if you wish; but credit me with at least the strength to confess and the grace to be ashamed. But I'm beginning all over again now--by myself."

He was flipping at one shaft with the cracker of his whip and not looking at her, and Judith kept silent; but she was watching his face.

"It's time," he went on, with slow humour. "So far, I've just missed being what I should have been; doing what I should have done--by a hair's breadth. I did pretty well in college, but thereafter, when things begin to count! Law? I never got over the humiliation of my first ridiculous failure. Business? I made a fortune in six weeks, lost it in a month, and was lucky to get out without having to mortgage a farm. Politics? Wharton won by a dozen votes. I just missed being what my brother is now--I missed winning you--everything! Think of it! I am five feet eleven and three-quarters, when I should have been full six feet. I am the first Crittenden to fall under the line in a century. I have been told"--he smiled--"that I have missed being handsome. There again I believe I overthrow family tradition. My youth is going--to no purpose, so far--and it looks as though I were going to miss life hereafter as well as here, since, along with everything else, I have just about missed faith."

He was quite sincere and unsparing, but had Judith been ten years older, she would have laughed outright. As it was, she grew sober and sympathetic and, like a woman, began to wonder, for the millionth time, perhaps, how far she had been to blame.

"The comfort I have is that I have been, and still am, honest with myself. I haven't done what I ought not and then tried to persuade myself that it was right. I always knew it was wrong, and I did it anyhow. And the hope I have is that, like the man in Browning's poem, I believe I always try to get up again, no matter how often I stumble. I sha'n't give up hope until I am willing to lie still. And I guess, after all--" he lifted his head suddenly--"I haven't missed being a man."

"And a gentleman," added Judith gently.

"According to the old standard--no." Crittenden paused.

The sound of buggy wheels and a fast-trotting horse rose behind them. Raincrow lifted his head and quickened his pace, but Crittenden pulled him in as Basil and Phyllis swept by. The two youngsters were in high spirits, and the boy shook his whip back and the girl her handkerchief--both crying something which neither Judith nor Crittenden could understand. Far behind was the sound of another horse's hoofs, and Crittenden, glancing back, saw his political enemy--Wharton--a girl by his side, and coming at full speed. At once he instinctively gave half the road, and Raincrow, knowing what that meant, shot out his feet and Crittenden tightened the reins, not to check, but to steady him. The head of the horse behind he could just see, but he went on talking quietly.

"I love that boy," pointing with his whip ahead. "Do you remember that passage I once read you in Stevenson about his 'little brother'?"

Judith nodded.