Part 6

"That's where I belong," he said, with a wave of his hand after the retreating column. "I don't know one of them, and I know them all. I've gone to college with some; I've hunted, fished, camped, drank, and gambled with the others. I belong with them; and I'm going with them if I can; I'm trying to get an exchange now."

"Well, luck to you, and good-by," said Crittenden, holding out his hand. "I'm going home to-night."

"But you're coming back?"

"Yes."

Blackford hesitated.

"Are you going to join this outfit?"--meaning his own regiment.

"I don't know; this or the Rough Riders."

"Well," Blackford seemed embarrassed, and his manner was almost respectful, "if we go together, what do you say to our going as 'bunkies'?"

"Sure!"

"Thank you."

The two men grasped hands.

"I hope you will come back."

"I'm sure to come back. Good-by."

"Good-by, sir."

The unconscious "sir" startled Crittenden. It was merely habit, of course, and the fact that Crittenden was not yet enlisted, but there was an unintended significance in the soldier's tone that made him wince. Blackford turned sharply away, flushing.

VIII

Back in the Bluegrass, the earth was flashing with dew, and the air was brilliant with a steady light that on its way from the sun was broken by hardly a cloud. The woodland was alive with bird-wing and bird-song and, under them, with the flash of metal and the joy of breaking camp. The town was a mighty pedestal for flag-staffs. Everywhere flags were shaken out. Main Street, at a distance, looked like a long lane of flowers in a great garden--all blowing in a wind. Under them, crowds were gathered--country people, negroes, and townfolk--while the town band stood waiting at the gate of the park. The Legion was making ready to leave for Chickamauga, and the town had made ready to speed its going.

Out of the shady woodland, and into the bright sunlight, the young soldiers came--to the music of stirring horn and drum--legs swinging rhythmically, chins well set in, eyes to the front--wheeling into the main street in perfect form--their guns a moving forest of glinting steel--colonel and staff superbly mounted--every heart beating proudly against every blue blouse, and sworn to give up its blood for the flag waving over them--the flag the fathers of many had so bitterly fought five and thirty years before. Down the street went the flash and glitter and steady tramp of the solid columns, through waving flags and handkerchiefs and mad cheers--cheers that arose before them, swelled away on either side and sank out of hearing behind them as they marched--through faces bravely smiling, when the eyes were full of tears; faces tense with love, anxiety, fear; faces sad with bitter memories of the old war. On the end of the first rank was the boy Basil, file-leader of his squad, swinging proudly, his handsome face serious and fixed, his eyes turning to right nor left--seeing not his mother, proud, white, tearless; nor Crittenden, with a lump of love in his throat; nor even little Phyllis--her pride in her boy-soldier swept suddenly out of her aching heart, her eyes brimming, and her handkerchief at her mouth to keep bravely back the sob that surged at her lips. The station at last, and then cheers and kisses and sobs, and tears and cheers again, and a waving of hands and flags and handkerchiefs--a column of smoke puffing on and on toward the horizon--the vanishing perspective of a rear platform filled with jolly, reckless, waving, yelling soldiers, and the tragedy of the parting was over.

How every detail of earth and sky was seared deep into the memory of the women left behind that afternoon--as each drove slowly homeward: for God help the women in days of war! The very peace of heaven lay upon the earth. It sank from the low, moveless clouds in the windless sky to the sunlit trees in the windless woods, as still as the long shadows under them. It lay over the still seas of bluegrass--dappled in woodland, sunlit in open pasture--resting on low hills like a soft cloud of bluish-gray, clinging closely to every line of every peaceful slope. Stillness everywhere. Still cattle browsing in the distance; sheep asleep in the far shade of a cliff, shadowing the still stream; even the song of birds distant, faint, restful. Peace everywhere, but little peace in the heart of the mother to whose lips was raised once more the self-same cup that she had drained so long ago. Peace everywhere but for Phyllis climbing the stairs to her own room and flinging herself upon her bed in a racking passion of tears. God help the women in the days of war! Peace from the dome of heaven to the heart of the earth, but a gnawing unrest for Judith, who walked very slowly down the gravelled walk and to the stiles, and sat looking over the quiet fields. Only in her eyes was the light not wholly of sadness, but a proud light of sacrifice and high resolve. Crittenden was coming that night. He was going for good now; he was coming to tell her good-by; and he must not go--to his death, maybe--without knowing what she had to tell him. It was not much--it was very little, in return for his life-long devotion--that she should at least tell him how she had wholly outgrown her girlish infatuation--she knew now that it was nothing else--for the one man who had stood in her life before him, and that now there was no other--lover or friend--for whom she had the genuine affection that she would always have for him. She would tell him frankly--she was a grown woman now--because she thought she owed that much to him--because, under the circumstances, she thought it was her duty; and he would not misunderstand her, even if he really did not have quite the old feeling for her. Then, recalling what he had said on the drive, she laughed softly. It was preposterous. She understood all that. He had acted that little part so many times in by-gone years! And she had always pretended to take him seriously, for she would have given him mortal offence had she not; and she was pretending to take him seriously now. And, anyhow, what could he misunderstand? There was nothing to misunderstand.

And so, during her drive home, she had thought all the way of him and of herself since both were children--of his love and his long faithfulness, and of her--her--what? Yes--she had been something of a coquette--she had--she _had_; but men had bothered and worried her, and, usually, she couldn't help acting as she had. She was so sorry for them all that she had really tried to like them all. She had succeeded but once--and even that was a mistake. But she remembered one thing: through it all--far back as it all was--she had never trifled with Crittenden. Before him she had dropped foil and mask and stood frankly face to face always. There was something in him that had always forced that. And he had loved her through it all, and he had suffered--how much, it had really never occurred to her until she thought of a sudden that he must have been hurt as had she--hurt more; for what had been only infatuation with her had been genuine passion in him; and the months of her unhappiness scarcely matched the years of his. There was none other in her life now but him, and, somehow, she was beginning to feel there never would be. If there were only any way that she could make amends.

Never had she thought with such tenderness of him. How strong and brave he was; how high-minded and faithful. And he was good, in spite of all that foolish talk about himself. And all her life he had loved her, and he had suffered. She could see that he was still unhappy. If, then, there was no other, and was to be no other, and if, when he came back from the war--why not?

Why not?

She felt a sudden warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted, and as she turned from the sunset her eyes had all its deep tender light.

Dusk was falling, and already Raincrow and Crittenden were jogging along toward her at that hour--the last trip for either for many a day--the last for either in life, maybe--for Raincrow, too, like his master, was going to war--while Bob, at home, forbidden by his young captain to follow him to Chickamauga, trailed after Crittenden about the place with the appealing look of a dog--enraged now and then by the taunts of the sharp-tongued Molly, who had the little confidence in the courage of her fellows that marks her race.

Judith was waiting for him on the porch, and Crittenden saw her from afar.

She was dressed for the evening in pure white--delicate, filmy--showing her round white throat and round white wrists. Her eyes were soft and welcoming and full of light; her manner was playful to the point of coquetry; and in sharp contrast, now and then, her face was intense with thought. A faint, pink light was still diffused from the afterglow, and she took him down into her mother's garden, which was old-fashioned and had grass-walks running down through it--bordered with pink beds and hedges of rose-bushes. And they passed under a shadowed grape-arbour and past a dead locust-tree, which a vine had made into a green tower of waving tendrils, and from which came the fragrant breath of wild grape, and back again to the gate, where Judith reached down for an old-fashioned pink and pinned it in his button-hole, talking with low, friendly affection meanwhile, and turning backward the leaves of the past rapidly.

Did he remember this--and that--and that? Memories--memories--memories. Was there anything she had let go unforgotten? And then, as they approached the porch in answer to a summons to supper, brought out by a little negro girl, she said:

"You haven't told me what regiment you are going with."

"I don't know."

Judith's eyes brightened. "I'm so glad you have a commission."

"I have no commission."

Judith looked puzzled. "Why, your mother----"

"Yes, but I gave it to Basil." And he explained in detail. He had asked General Carter to give the commission to Basil, and the General had said he would gladly. And that morning the Colonel of the Legion had promised to recommend Basil for the exchange. This was one reason why he had come back to the Bluegrass. Judith's face was growing more thoughtful while he spoke, and a proud light was rising in her eyes.

"And you are going as----"

"As a private."

"With the Rough Riders?"

"As a regular--a plain, common soldier, with plain, common soldiers. I am trying to be an American now--not a Southerner. I've been drilling at Tampa and Chickamauga with the regulars."

"You are much interested?"

"More than in anything for years."

She had seen this, and she resented it, foolishly, she knew, and without reason--but, still, she resented it.

"Think of it," Crittenden went on. "It is the first time in my life, almost, I have known what it was to wish to do something--to have a purpose--that was not inspired by you." It was an unconscious and rather ungracious declaration of independence--it was unnecessary--and Judith was surprised, chilled--hurt.

"When do you go?"

Crittenden pulled a telegram from his pocket.

"To-morrow morning. I got this just as I was leaving town."

"To-morrow!"

"It means life or death to me--this telegram. And if it doesn't mean life, I don't care for the other. I shall come out with a commission or--not at all. If dead, I shall be a hero--if alive," he smiled, "I don't know what I'll be, but think of me as a hero, dead or alive, with my past and my present. I can feel a change already, a sort of growing pain, at the very thought."

"When do you go to Cuba?"

"Within four days."

"Four days! And you can talk as you do, when you are going to war to live the life of a common soldier--to die of fever, to be killed, maybe," her lip shook and she stopped, but she went on thickly, "and be thrown into an unknown grave or lie unburied in a jungle." She spoke with such sudden passion that Crittenden was startled.

"Listen!"

Judge Page appeared in the doorway, welcoming Crittenden with old-time grace and courtesy. Through supper, Judith was silent and thoughtful and, when she did talk, it was with a perceptible effort. There was a light in her eyes that he would have understood once--that would have put his heart on fire. And once he met a look that he was wholly at loss to understand. After supper, she disappeared while the two men smoked on the porch. The moon was rising when she came out again. The breath of honeysuckles was heavy on the air, and from garden and fields floated innumerable odours of flower and clover blossom and moist grasses. Crittenden lived often through that scene afterward--Judith on the highest step of the porch, the light from the hallway on her dress and her tightly folded hands; her face back in shadow, from which her eyes glowed with a fire in them that he had never seen before.

Judge Page rose soon to go indoors. He did not believe there was going to be much of a war, and his manner was almost cheery when he bade the young man good-by.

"Good luck to you," he said. "If the chance comes, you will give a good account of yourself. I never knew a man of your name who didn't."

"Thank you, sir."

There was a long silence.

"Basil will hardly have time to get his commission, and get to Tampa."

"No. But he can come after us."

She turned suddenly upon him.

"Yes--something has happened to you. I didn't know what you meant that day we drove home, but I do now. I feel it, but I don't understand."

Crittenden flushed, but made no answer.

"You could not have spoken to me in the old days as you do now. Your instinct would have held you back. And something has happened to me." Then she began talking to him as frankly and simply as a child to a child. It was foolish and selfish, but it had hurt her when he told her that he no longer had his old feeling for her. It was selfish and cruel, but it was true, however selfish and cruel it seemed, and was--but she had felt hurt. Perhaps that was vanity, which was not to her credit--but that, too, she could not help. It had hurt her every time he had said anything from which she could infer that her influence over him was less than it once was--although, as a rule, she did not like to have influence over people. Maybe he wounded her as his friend in this way, and perhaps there was a little vanity in this, too--but a curious change was taking place in their relations. Once he was always trying to please her, and in those days she would have made him suffer if he had spoken to her then as he had lately--but he would not have spoken that way then. And now she wondered why she was not angry instead of being hurt. And she wondered why she did not like him less. Somehow, it seemed quite fair that she should be the one to suffer now, and she was glad to take her share--she had caused him and others so much pain.

"_He_"--not even now did she mention his name--"wrote to me again, not long ago, asking to see me again. It was impossible. And it was the thought of you that made me know how impossible it was--_you_." The girl laughed, almost hardly, but she was thinking of herself when she did--not of him.

The time and circumstance that make woman the thing apart in a man's life must come sooner or later to all women, and women must yield; she knew that, but she had never thought they could come to her--but they had come, and she, too, must give way.

"It is all very strange," she said, as though she were talking to herself, and she rose and walked into the warm, fragrant night, and down the path to the stiles, Crittenden silently following. The night was breathless and the moonlit woods had the still beauty of a dream; and Judith went on speaking of herself as she had never done--of the man whose name she had never mentioned, and whose name Crittenden had never asked. Until that night, he had not known even whether the man were still alive or dead. She had thought that was love--until lately she had never questioned but that when that was gone from her heart, all was gone that would ever be possible for her to know. That was why she had told Crittenden to conquer his love for her. And now she was beginning to doubt and to wonder--ever since she came back and heard him at the old auditorium--and why and whence the change now? That puzzled her. One thing was curious--through it all, as far back as she could remember, her feeling for him had never changed, except lately. Perhaps it was an unconscious response in her to the nobler change that in spite of his new hardness her instinct told her was at work in him.

She was leaning on the fence now, her elbow on the top plank, her hand under her chin, and her face uplifted--the moon lighting her hair, her face, and eyes, and her voice the voice of one slowly threading the mazes of a half-forgotten dream. Crittenden's own face grew tense as he watched her. There was a tone in her voice that he had hungered for all his life; that he had never heard but in his imaginings and in his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on him like a flame now.

"Until lately," she was saying, and she was not saying at all what she meant to say; but here lately a change was taking place; something had come into her feeling for him that was new and strange--she could not understand--perhaps it had always been there; perhaps she was merely becoming conscious of it. And when she thought, as she had been thinking all day, of his long years of devotion--how badly she had requited them--it seemed that the least she could do was to tell him that he was now first in her life of all men--that much she could say; and perhaps he had always been, she did not know; perhaps, now that the half-gods were gone, it was at last the coming of the--the--She was deeply agitated now; her voice was trembling; she faltered, and she turned suddenly, sharply, and with a little catch in her breath, her lips and eyes opening slowly--her first consciousness, perhaps, a wonder at his strange silence--and dazed by her own feeling and flushing painfully, she looked at him for the first time since she began to talk, and she saw him staring fixedly at her with a half-agonized look, as though he were speechlessly trying to stop her, his face white, bitter, shamed, helpless, Not a word more dropped from her lips--not a sound. She moved; it seemed that she was about to fall, and Crittenden started toward her, but she drew herself erect, and, as she turned--lifting her head proudly--the moonlight showed that her throat was drawn--nothing more. Motionless and speechless, Crittenden watched her white shape move slowly and quietly up the walk and grow dim; heard her light, even step on the gravel, up the steps, across the porch, and through the doorway. Not once did she look around.

* * * * *

He was in his room now and at his window, his face hard as stone when his heart was parching for tears. It was true, then. He was the brute he feared he was. He had killed his life, and he had killed his love--beyond even her power to recall. His soul, too, must be dead, and it were just as well that his body die. And, still bitter, still shamed and hopeless, he stretched out his arms to the South with a fierce longing for the quick fate--no matter what--that was waiting for him there.

IX

By and by bulletins began to come in to the mother at Canewood from her boy at Tampa. There was little psychology in Basil's bulletin:

"I got here all right. My commission hasn't come, and I've joined the Rough Riders, for fear it won't get here in time. The Colonel was very kind to me--called me Mister.

"I've got a lieutenant's uniform of khaki, but I'm keeping it out of sight. I may have no use for it. I've got two left spurs, and I'm writing in the Waldorf-Astoria. I like these Northern fellows; they are gentlemen and plucky--I can see that. Very few of them swear. I wish I knew where brother is. The Colonel calls everybody Mister--even the Indians.

"Word comes to-night that we are to be off to the front. Please send me a piece of cotton to clean my gun. And please be easy about me--do be easy. And if you insist on giving me a title, don't call me Private--call me _Trooper_.

"Yes, we are going; the thing is serious. We are all packed up now; have rolled up camping outfit and are ready to start.

"Baggage on the transport now, and we sail this afternoon. Am sorry to leave all of you, and I have a tear in my eye now that I can't keep back. It isn't a summer picnic, and I don't feel like shouting when I think of home; but I'm always lucky, and I'll come out all right. I'm afraid I sha'n't see brother at all. I tried to look cheerful for my picture (enclosed). Good-by.

"Some delay; actually on board and steam up.

"Waiting--waiting--waiting. It's bad enough to go to Cuba in boats like these, but to lie around for days is trying. No one goes ashore, and I can hear nothing of brother. I wonder why the General didn't give him that commission instead of me. There is a curious sort of fellow here, who says he knows brother. His name is Blackford, and he is very kind to me. He used to be a regular, and he says he thinks brother took his place in the --th and is a regular now himself--a private; I don't understand. There is mighty little Rough Riding about this.

"P. S.--My bunkie is from Boston--Bob Sumner. His father _commanded a negro regiment in a fight once against my father_; think of it!

"Hurrah! we're off."