Part 4

As he stood there, a small, yet imposing figure, in his white duck suit, holding his broad slouch hat in his hand, he presented something of the genial aspect of the country--as if the light that touched the pleasant hills and valleys was aglow in his clear brown eyes and comely features. Even the smooth white hand in which he held his hat and riding-whip had about it a certain plump kindliness which would best become a careless gesture of concession. And, after all, he looked but what he was--a bland and generous gentleman, whose heart was as open as his wine cellar.

A catbird was singing in one of the silver poplars, and he waited, with upraised head, for the song to end. Then he stooped beside a column and carefully examined a newly planted coral honeysuckle before he went into the wide hall, where his wife was seated at her work-table.

From the rear door, which stood open until frost, a glow of sunshine entered, brightening the white walls with their rows of antlers and gunracks, and rippling over the well-waxed floor upon which no drop of water had ever fallen. A faint sweetness was in the air from the honeysuckle arbour outside, which led into the box-bordered walks of the garden.

As the Governor hung up his hat, he begun at once with his daily news of the farm. “I hope they'll get that wheat field done to-day,” he said: “but it doesn't look much like it--they've been dawdling over it for the last three days. I am afraid Wilson isn't much of a manager, after all; if I take my eyes off him, he seems to lose his head.”

“I think everything is that way,” returned his wife, looking up from one of the elaborately tucked and hemstitched shirt fronts which served to gratify the Governor's single vanity. “I'm sure Aunt Pussy says she can't trust Judy for three days in the dairy without finding that the cream has stood too long for butter--and Judy has been churning for twenty years.” She cut off her thread and held the linen out for the Governor's inspection. “I really believe that is the prettiest one I've made. How do you like this new stitch?”

“Exquisite!” exclaimed her husband, as he took the shirt front in his hand. “Simply exquisite, my love. There isn't a woman in Virginia who can do such needlework; but it should go upon a younger and handsomer man, Julia.”

His wife blushed and looked up at him, the colour rising to her beautiful brow and giving a youthful radiance to her nunlike face. “It could certainly go upon a younger man, Mr. Ambler,” she rejoined, with a touch of the coquetry for which she had once been noted; “but I should like to know where I'd find a handsomer one.”

A pleased smile broadened the Governor's face, and he settled his waistcoat with an approving pat. “Ah, you're a partial witness, my dear,” he said; “but I've an error to confess, so I mustn't forego your favour--I--I bought several of Mr. Willis's servants, my love.”

“Why, Mr. Ambler!” remonstrated his wife, reproach softening her voice until it fell like a caress. “Why, Mr. Ambler, you bought six of Colonel Blake's last year, you know and one of the house servants has been nursing them ever since. The quarters are filled with infirm darkies.”

“But I couldn't help it, Julia, I really couldn't,” pleaded the Governor. “You'd have done it yourself, my dear. They were sold to a dealer going south, and one of them wants to marry that Mandy of yours.”

“Oh, if it's Mandy's lover,” broke in Mrs. Ambler, with rising interest, “of course you had to buy him, and you did right about the others--you always do right.” She put out her delicate blue-veined hand and touched his arm. “I shall see them to-day,” she added, “and Mandy may as well be making her wedding dress.”

“What an eye to things you have,” said the Governor, proudly. “You might have been President, had you been a man, my dear.”

His wife rose and took up her work-box with a laugh of protest. “I am quite content with the mission of my sex, sir,” she returned, half in jest, half in wifely humility. “I'm sure I'd much rather make shirt fronts for you than wear them myself.” Then she nodded to him and went, with her stately step, up the broad staircase, her white hand flitting over the mahogany balustrade.

As he looked after her, the Governor's face clouded, and he sighed beneath his breath. The cares she met with such serenity had been too heavy for her strength; they had driven the bloom from her cheeks and the lustre from her eyes; and, though she had not faltered at her task, she had drooped daily and grown older than her years. The master might live with a lavish disregard of the morrow, not the master's wife. For him were the open house, the shining table, the well-stocked wine cellar and the morning rides over the dewy fields; for her the cares of her home and children, and of the souls and bodies of the black people that had been given into her hands. In her gentle heart it seemed to her that she had a charge to keep before her God; and she went her way humbly, her thoughts filled with things so vital as the uses of her medicine chest and the unexpounded mysteries of salvation.

Now, as she reached the upper landing, she met Betty running to look for her.

“O, mamma, may I go to fish with Champe and the new boy and Big Abel? And Virginia wants to go, too, she says.”

“Wait a moment, child,” said Mrs. Ambler. “You have torn the trimming on your frock. Stand still and I'll mend it for you,” and she got out her needle and sewed up the rent, while Betty hopped impatiently from foot to foot.

“I think the new boy's a heap nicer than Champe, mamma,” she remarked as she waited.

“Do you, dear?”

“An' he says I'm nicer than Champe, too. He fought Champe 'cause he said I didn't have as much sense as he had--an' I have, haven't I, mamma?”

“Women do not need as much sense as men, my dear,” replied Mrs. Ambler, taking a dainty stitch.

“Well, anyway, Dan fought Champe about it,” said Betty, with pride. “He'll fight about 'most anything, he says, if he jest gets roused--an' that cert'n'y did rouse him. His nose bled a long time, too, and Champe whipped him, you know. But, when it was over, I asked him if I had as much sense as he had, and he said, 'Psha! you're just a girl.' Wasn't that funny, mamma?”

“There, there, Betty,” was Mrs. Ambler's rejoinder. “I'm afraid he's a wicked boy, and you mustn't get such foolish thoughts into your head. If the Lord had wanted you to be clever, He would have made you a man. Now, run away, and don't get your feet wet; and if you see Aunt Lydia in the garden, you may tell her that the bonnet has come for her to look at.”

Betty bounded away and gave the message to Aunt Lydia over the whitewashed fence of the garden. “They've sent a bonnet from New York for you to look at, Aunt Lydia,” she cried. “It came all wrapped up in tissue paper, with mamma's gray silk, and it's got flowers on it--a lot of them!” with which

## parting shot, she turned her back upon the startled old lady and dashed off

to join the boys and Big Abel, who, with their fishing-poles, had gathered in the cattle pasture.

Miss Lydia, who was lovingly bending over a bed of thyme, raised her eyes and looked after the child, all in a gentle wonder. Then she went slowly up and down the box-bordered walks, the full skirt of her “old lady's gown” trailing stiffly over the white gravel, her delicate face rising against the blossomless shrubs of snowball and bridal-wreath, like a faintly tinted flower that had been blighted before it fully bloomed. Around her the garden was fragrant as a rose-jar with the lid left off, and the very paths beneath were red and white with fallen petals. Hardy cabbage roses, single pink and white dailies, yellow-centred damask, and the last splendours of the giant of battle, all dipped their colours to her as she passed, while the little rustic summer-house where the walks branched off was but a flowering bank of maiden's blush and microphylla.

Amid them all, Miss Lydia wandered in her full black gown, putting aside her filmy ruffles as she tied back a hanging spray or pruned a broken stalk, sometimes even lowering her thread lace cap as she weeded the tangle of sweet Williams and touch-me-not. Since her gentle girlhood she had tended bountiful gardens, and dreamed her virgin dreams in the purity of their box-trimmed walks. In a kind of worldly piety she had bound her prayer book in satin and offered to her Maker the incense of flowers. She regarded heaven with something of the respectful fervour with which she regarded the world--that great world she had never seen; for “the proper place for a spinster is her father's house,” she would say with her conventional primness, and send, despite herself, a mild imagination in pursuit of the follies from which she so earnestly prayed to be delivered--she, to whom New York was as the terror of a modern Babylon, and a Jezebel but a woman with paint upon her cheeks. “They tell me that other women have painted since,” she had once said, with a wistful curiosity. “Your grandmamma, my dear Julia, had even seen one with an artificial colour. She would not have mentioned it to me, of course,--an unmarried lady,--but I was in the next room when she spoke of it to old Mrs. Fitzhugh. She was a woman of the world, was your grandmamma, my dear, and the most finished dancer of her day.” The last was said with a timid pride, though to Miss Lydia herself the dance was the devil's own device, and the teaching of the catechism to small black slaves the chief end of existence. But the blood of the “most finished dancer of her day” still circulated beneath the old lady's gown and the religious life, and in her attenuated romances she forever held the sinner above the saint, unless, indeed, the sinner chanced to be of her own sex, when, probably, the book would never have reached her hands. For the purely masculine improprieties, her charity was as boundless as her innocence. She had even dipped into Shakespeare and brought away the memory of Mercutio; she had read Scott, and enshrined in her pious heart the bold Rob Roy. “Men are very wicked, I fear,” she would gently offer, “but they are very a--a--engaging, too.”

To-day, when Betty came with the message, she lingered a moment to convince herself that the bonnet was not in her thoughts, and then swept her trailing bombazine into the house. “I have come to tell you that you may as well send the bonnet back, Julia,” she began at once. “Flowers are much too fine for me, my dear. I need only a plain black poke.”

“Come up and try it on,” was Mrs. Ambler's cheerful response. “You have no idea how lovely it will look on you.”

Miss Lydia went up and took the bonnet out of its wrapping of tissue paper. “No, you must send it back, my love,” she said in a resigned voice. “It does not become me to dress as a married woman. It may as well go back, Julia.”

“But do look in the glass, Aunt Lydia--there, let me put it straight for you. Why, it suits you perfectly. It makes you look at least ten years younger.”

“A plain black poke, my dear,” insisted Aunt Lydia, as she carefully swathed the flowers in the tissue paper. “And, besides, I have my old one, which is quite good enough for me, my love. It was very sweet of you to think of it, but it may as well go back.” She pensively gazed at the mirror for a moment, and then went to her chamber and took out her Bible to read Saint Paul on Woman.

When she came down a few hours later, her face wore an angelic meekness. “I have been thinking of that poor Mrs. Brown who was here last week,” she said softly, “and I remember her telling me that she had no bonnet to wear to church. What a loss it must be to her not to attend divine service.”

Mrs. Ambler quickly looked up from her needlework. “Why, Aunt Lydia, it would be really a charity to give her your old one!” she exclaimed. “It does seem a shame that she should be kept away from church because of a bonnet. And, then, you might as well keep the new one, you know, since it is in the house; I hate the trouble of sending it back.”

“It would be a charity,” murmured Miss Lydia, and the bonnet was brought down and tried on again. They were still looking at it when Betty rushed in and threw herself upon her mother. “O, mamma, I can't help it!” she cried in tears, “an' I wish I hadn't done it! Oh, I wish I hadn't; but I set fire to the Major's woodpile, and he's whippin' Dan!”

“Betty!” exclaimed Mrs. Ambler. She took the child by her shoulders and drew her toward her. “Betty, did you set fire to the Major's woodpile?” she questioned sternly.

Betty was sobbing aloud, but she stopped long enough to gasp out an answer.

“We were playin' Injuns, mamma, an' we couldn't make believe 'twas real,” she said, “an' it isn't any fun unless you can make believe, so I lit the woodpile and pretended it was a fort, an' Big Abel, he was an Injun with the axe for a tomahawk; but the woodpile blazed right up, an' the Major came runnin' out. He asked Dan who did it, an' Dan wouldn't say 'twas me,--an' I wouldn't say, either,--so he took Dan in to whip him. Oh, I wish I'd told! I wish I'd told!”

“Hush, Betty,” said Mrs. Ambler, and she called to the Governor in the hall, “Mr. Ambler, Betty has set fire to the Major's woodpile!” Her voice was hopeless, and she looked up blankly at her husband as he entered.

“Set fire to the woodpile!” whistled the Governor. “Why, bless my soul, we aren't safe in our beds!”

“He whipped Dan,” wailed Betty.

“We aren't safe in our beds,” repeated the Governor, indignantly. “Julia, this is really too much.”

“Well, you will have to ride right over there,” said his wife, decisively. “Petunia, run down and tell Hosea to saddle his master's horse. Betty, I hope this will be a lesson to you. You shan't have any preserves for supper for a week.”

“I don't want any preserves,” sobbed Betty, her apron to her eyes.

“Then you mustn't go fishing for two weeks. Mr. Ambler, you'd better be starting at once, and don't forget to tell the Major that Betty is in great distress--you are, aren't you, Betty?”

“Yes, ma'am,” wept Betty.

The Governor went out into the hall and took down his hat and riding-whip.

“The sins of the children are visited upon the fathers,” he remarked gloomily as he mounted his horse and rode away from his supper.

V

THE SCHOOL FOR GENTLEMEN

The Governor rode up too late to avert the punishment. Dan had taken his whipping and was sitting on a footstool in the library, facing the Major and a couple of the Major's cronies. His face wore an expression in which there was more resentment than resignation; for, though he took blows doggedly, he bore the memory of them long after the smart had ceased--long, indeed, after light-handed justice, in the Major's person, had forgotten alike the sin and the expiation. For the Major's hand was not steady at the rod, and he had often regretted a weakness of heart which interfered with a physical interpretation of the wisdom of Solomon. “If you get your deserts, you'd get fifty lashes,” was his habitual reproof to his servants, though, as a matter of fact, he had never been known to order one. His anger was sometimes of the kind that appalls, but it usually vented itself in a heightened redness of face or a single thundering oath; and a woman's sob would melt his stoniest mood. It was only because his daughter had kept out of his sight that he had never forgiven her, people said; but there was, perhaps, something characteristic in the proof that he was most relentless where he had most loved.

As for Dan's chastisement, he had struck him twice across the shoulders, and when the boy had turned to him with the bitter smile which was Jane Lightfoot's own, the Major had choked in his wrath, and, a moment later, flung the whip aside. “I'll be damned,--I beg your pardon, sir,--I'll be ashamed of myself if I give you another lick,” he said. “You are a gentleman, and I shall trust you.”

He held out his hand, but he had not counted on the Montjoy blood. The boy looked at him and stubbornly shook his head. “I can't shake hands yet because I am hating you just now,” he answered. “Will you wait awhile, sir?” and the Major choked again, half in awe, half in amusement.

“You don't bear malice, I reckon?” he ventured cautiously.

“I am not sure,” replied the boy, “I rather think I do.”

Then he put on his coat, and they went out to meet Mr. Blake and Dr. Crump, two hale and jolly gentlemen who rode over every Thursday to spend the night.

As the visitors came panting up the steps, the Major stood in the doorway with outstretched hands.

“You are late, gentlemen, you are late,” was his weekly greeting, to which they as regularly responded, “We could never come too early for our pleasure, my dear Major; but there are professional duties, you know, professional duties.”

After this interchange of courtesies, they would enter the house and settle themselves, winter or summer, in their favourite chairs upon the hearth-rug, when it was the custom of Mrs. Lightfoot to send in a fluttering maid to ask if Mrs. Blake had done her the honour to accompany her husband. As Mrs. Blake was never known to leave her children and her pet poultry, this was merely a conventionalism by which the elder lady meant to imply a standing welcome for the younger.

On this evening, Mr. Blake--the rector of the largest church in Leicesterburg--straightened his fat legs and folded his hands as he did at the ending of his sermons, and the others sat before him with the strained and reverential faces which they put on like a veil in church and took off when the service was over. That it was not a prayer, but a pleasantry of which he was about to deliver himself, they quite understood; but he had a habit of speaking on week days in his Sunday tones, which gave, as it were, an official weight to his remarks. He was a fleshy wide-girthed gentleman, with a bald head, and a face as radiant as the full moon.

“I was just asking the doctor when I was to have the honour of making the little widow Mrs. Crump?” he threw out at last, with a laugh that shook him from head to foot. “It is not good for man to live alone, eh, Major?”

“That sentence is sufficient to prove the divine inspiration of the Scriptures,” returned the Major, warmly, while the doctor blushed and stammered, as he always did, at the rector's mild matrimonial jokes. It was twenty years since Mr. Blake began teasing Dr. Crump about his bachelorship, and to them both the subject was as fresh as in its beginning.

“I--I declare I haven't seen the lady for a week,” protested the doctor, “and then she sent for me.”

“Sent for you?” roared Mr. Blake. “Ah, doctor, doctor!”

“She sent for me because she had heart trouble,” returned the doctor, indignantly. The lady's name was never mentioned between them.

The rector laughed until the tears started.

“Ah, you're a success with the ladies,” he exclaimed, as he drew out a neatly ironed handkerchief and shook it free from its folds, “and no wonder--no wonder! We'll be having an epidemic of heart trouble next.” Then, as he saw the doctor wince beneath his jest, his kindly heart reproached him, and he gravely turned to politics and the dignity of nations.

The two friends were faithful Democrats, though the rector always began his very forcible remarks with: “A minister knows nothing of politics, and I am but a minister of the Gospel. If you care, however, for the opinion of an outsider--”

As for the Major, he had other leanings which were a source of unending interest to them all. “I am a Whig, not from principle, but from prejudice, sir,” he declared. “The Whig is the gentleman's party. I never saw a Whig that didn't wear broadcloth.”

“And some Democrats,” politely protested the doctor, with a glance at his coat.

The Major bowed.

“And many Democrats, sir; but the Whig party, if I may say so, is the broadcloth party--the cloth stamps it; and besides this, sir, I think its 'parts are solid and will wear well.'”

Now when the Major began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent, save for an occasional prompting, as, “I was reading the _Spectator_ until eleven last night, sir,” or “I have been trying to recall the lines in _The Campaign_ before. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved.”

This was the best of the day to Dan, and, as he turned on his footstool, he did not even glare at Champe, who, from the window seat, was regarding him with the triumphant eye with which the young behold the downfall of a brother. For a moment he had forgotten the whipping, but Champe had not; he was thinking of it in the window seat.

But the Major was standing on the hearth-rug, and the boy's gaze went to him. Tossing back his long white hair, and fixing his eagle glance on his friends, the old gentleman, with a free sweep of his arm, thundered his favourite lines:--

“So, when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.”

He had got so far when the door opened and the Governor entered--a little hurriedly, for he was thinking of his supper.

“I am the bearer of an apology, my dear Major,” he said, when he had heartily shaken hands all round. “It seems that Betty--I assure you she is in great distress--set fire to your woodpile this afternoon, and that your grandson was punished for her mischief. My dear boy,” he laid his hand on Dan's shoulder and looked into his face with the winning smile which had made him the most popular man in his State, “my dear boy, you are young to be such a gentleman.”