In the morning Betty was awakened by the tapping of the elm boughs on the roof above her. An autumn wind was blowing straight from the west, and when she looked out through the small greenish panes of glass, she saw eddies of yellowed leaves beating gently against the old brick walls. Overhead light gray clouds were flying across the sky, and beyond the waving tree-tops a white mist hung above the dim blue chain of mountains.
When she went downstairs she found the Major, in his best black broadcloth, pacing up and down before the house. It was Sunday, and he intended to drive into town where the rector held his services.
“You won't go in with me, I reckon?” he ventured hopefully, when Betty smiled out upon him from the library window. “Ah, my dear, you're as fresh as the morning, and only an old man to look at you. Well, well, age has its consolations; you'll spare me a kiss, I suppose?”
“Then you must come in to get it,” answered Betty, her eyes narrowing. “Breakfast is getting cold, and Cupid is calling down Aunt Rhody's wrath upon your head.”
“Oh, I'll come, I'll come,” returned the Major, hurrying up the steps, and adding as he entered the dining room, “My child, if you'd only take a fancy to Champe, I'd be the happiest man on earth.”
“Now I shan't allow any matchmaking on Sunday,” said Betty, warningly, as she prepared Mrs. Lightfoot's breakfast. “Sit down and carve the chicken while I run upstairs with this.”
She went out and came back in a moment, laughing merrily. “Do you know, she threatens to become bedridden now that I am here to fix her trays,” she explained, sitting down between the tall silver urns and pouring out the Major's coffee. “What an uncertain day you have for church,” she added as she gave his cup to Cupid.
With his eyes on her vivid face the old man listened rapturously to her fresh young voice—the voice, he said, that always made him think of clear water falling over stones. It was one of the things that came to her from Peyton Ambler, he knew, with her warm hazel eyes and the sweet, strong curve of her mouth. “Ah, but you're like your father,” he said as he watched her. “If you had brown hair you'd be his very image.”
“I used to wish that I had,” responded Betty, “but I don't now—I'd just as soon have red.” She was thinking that Dan did not like brown hair so much, and the thought shone in her face—only the Major, in his ignorance, mistook its meaning.
After breakfast he got into the coach and started off, and Betty, with the key basket on her arm, followed Cupid and Aunt Rhody into the storeroom. Then she gathered fresh flowers for the table, and went upstairs to read a chapter from the Bible to Mrs. Lightfoot.
The Major stayed to dinner in town, returning late in a moody humour and exhausted by his drive. As Betty brushed her hair before her bureau, she heard him talking in a loud voice to Mrs. Lightfoot, and when she went in at supper time the old, lady called her to her bedside and took her hand.
“He has had a touch of the gout, Betty,” she whispered in her ear, “and he heard some news in town which upset him a little. You must try to cheer him up at supper, child.”
“Was it bad news?” asked Betty, in alarm.
“It may not be true, my dear. I hope it isn't, but, as I told Mr. Lightfoot, it is always better to believe the worst, so if any surprise comes it may be a pleasant one. Somebody told him in church—and they had much better have been attending to the service, I'm sure,—that Dan had gotten into trouble again, and Mr. Lightfoot is very angry about it. He had a talk with the boy before he went away, and made him promise to turn over a new leaf this year—but it seems this is the most serious thing that has happened yet. I must say I always told Mr. Lightfoot it was what he had to expect.”
“In trouble again?” repeated Betty, kneeling by the bed. Her hands went cold, and she pressed them nervously together.
“Of course we know very little about it, my dear,” pursued Mrs. Lightfoot. “All we have heard is that he fought a duel and was sent away from the University. He was even put into gaol for a night, I believe—a Lightfoot in a common dirty gaol! Well, well, as I said before, all we can do now is to expect the worst.”
“Oh, is that all?” cried Betty, and the leaping of her heart told her the horror of her dim foreboding. She rose to her feet and smiled brightly down upon the astonished old lady.
“I don't know what more you want,” replied Mrs. Lightfoot, tartly. “If he ever gets clean again after a whole night in a common gaol, I must say I don't see how he'll manage it. But if you aren't satisfied I can only tell you that the affair was all about some bar-room wench, and that the papers will be full of it. Not that the boy was anything but foolish,” she added hastily. “I'll do him the justice to admit that he's more of a fool than a villain—and I hardly know whether it's a compliment that I'm paying him or not. He got some quixotic notion into his head that Harry Maupin insulted the girl in his presence, and he called him to account for it. As if the honour of a barkeeper's daughter was the concern of any gentleman!”
“Oh!” cried Betty, and caught her breath. The word went out of her in a sudden burst of joy, but the joy was so sharp that a moment afterwards she hid her wet face in the bedclothes and sobbed softly to herself.
“I don't think Mr. Lightfoot would have taken it so hard but for Virginia,” said the old lady, with her keen eyes on the girl. “You know he has always wanted to bring Dan and Virginia together, and he seems to think that the boy has been dishonourable about it.”
“But Virginia doesn't care—she doesn't care,” protested Betty.
“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” returned Mrs. Lightfoot, relieved, “and I hope the foolish boy will stay away long enough for his grandfather to cool off. Mr. Lightfoot is a high-tempered man, my child. I've spent fifty years in keeping him at peace with the world. There now, run down and cheer him up.”
She lay back among her pillows, and Betty leaned over and kissed her with cold lips before she dried her eyes and went downstairs to find the Major.
With the first glance at his face she saw that Dan's cause was hopeless for the hour, and she set herself, with a cheerful countenance, to a discussion of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden with its last sad flowers.
The Major listened gloomily, putting in a word now and then, and keeping his weak red eyes upon his plate. There was a heavy cloud on his brow, and the flush that Betty had learned to dread was in his face. Once when she spoke carelessly of Dan, he threw out an angry gesture and inquired if she “found Mrs. Lightfoot easier to-night?”
“Oh, I think so,” replied the girl, and then, as they rose from the table, she slipped her hand through his arm and went with him into the library.
“Shall I sit with you this evening?” she asked timidly. “I'd be so glad to read to you, if you would let me.”
He shook his head, patted her affectionately upon the shoulder, and smiled down into her upraised face. “No, no, my dear, I've a little work to do,” he replied kindly. “There are a few papers I want to look over, so run up to Molly and tell her I sent my sunshine to her.”
He stooped and kissed her cheek; and Betty, with a troubled heart, went slowly up to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber.
The Major sat down at his writing table, and spread his papers out before him. Then he raised the wick of his lamp, and with his pen in his hand, resolutely set himself to his task. When Cupid came in with the decanter of Burgundy, he filled a glass and held it absently against the light, but he did not drink it, and in a moment he put it down with so tremulous a hand that the wine spilled upon the floor.
“I've a touch of the gout, Cupid,” he said testily. “A touch of the gout that's been hanging over me for a month or more.”
“Huccome you ain' fit hit, Ole Marster?”
“Oh, I've been fighting it tooth and nail,” answered the old gentleman, “but there are some things that always get the better of you in the end, Cupid, and the gout's one of them.”
“En rheumaticks hit's anurr,” added Cupid, rubbing his knee.
He rolled a fresh log upon the andirons and went out, while the Major returned, frowning, to his work.
He was still at his writing table, when he heard the sound of a horse trotting in the drive, and an instant afterwards the quick fall of the old brass knocker. The flush deepened in his face, and with a look at once angry and appealing, he half rose from his chair. As he waited the outside bars were withdrawn, there followed a few short steps across the hall, and Dan came into the library.
“I suppose you know what's brought me back, grandpa?” he said quietly as he entered.
The Major started up and then sat down again.
“I do know, sir, and I wish to God I didn't,” he replied, choking in his anger.
Dan stood where he had halted upon his entrance, and looked at him with eyes in which there was still a defiant humour. His face was pale and his hair hung in black streaks across his forehead. The white dust of the turnpike had settled upon his clothes, and as he moved it floated in a little cloud about him.
“I reckon you think it's a pretty bad thing, eh?” he questioned coolly, though his hands trembled.
The Major's eyes flashed ominously from beneath his heavy brows.
“Pretty bad?” he repeated, taking a long breath. “If you want to know what I think about it, sir, I think that it's a damnable disgrace. Pretty bad!—By God, sir, do you call having a gaol-bird for a grandson pretty bad?”
“Stop, sir!” called Dan, sharply. He had steadied himself to withstand the shock of the Major's temper, but, in the dash of his youthful folly, he had forgotten to reckon with his own. “For heaven's sake, let's talk about it calmly,” he added irritably.
“I am perfectly calm, sir!” thundered the Major, rising to his feet. The terrible flush went in a wave to his forehead, and he put up one quivering hand to loosen his high stock. “I tell you calmly that you've done a damnable thing; that you've brought disgrace upon the name of Lightfoot.”
“It is not my name,” replied Dan, lifting his head. “My name is Montjoy, sir.”
“And it's a name to hang a dog for,” retorted the Major.
As they faced each other with the same flash of temper kindling in both faces, the likeness between them grew suddenly more striking. It was as if the spirit of the fiery old man had risen, in a finer and younger shape, from the air before him.
“At all events it is not yours,” said Dan, hotly. Then he came nearer, and the anger died out of his eyes. “Don't let's quarrel, grandpa,” he pleaded. “I've gotten into a mess, and I'm sorry for it—on my word I am.”
“So you've come whining to me to get you out,” returned the Major, shaking as if he had gone suddenly palsied.
Dan drew back and his hand fell to his side.
“So help me God, I'll never whine to you again,” he answered.
“Do you want to know what you have done, sir?” demanded the Major. “You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine—and made us wish that we had left you by the roadside when you came crawling to our door. And, on my oath, if I had known that the day would ever come when you would try to murder a Virginia gentleman for the sake of a bar-room hussy, I would have left you there, sir.”
“Stop!” said Dan again, looking at the old man with his mother's eyes.
“You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine,” repeated the Major, in a trembling voice, “and I pray to God that you may not break Virginia Ambler's—poor girl, poor girl!”
“Virginia Ambler!” said Dan, slowly. “Why, there was nothing between us, nothing, nothing.”
“And you dare to tell me this to my face, sir?” cried the Major.
“Dare! of course I dare,” returned Dan, defiantly. “If there was ever anything at all it was upon my side only—and a mere trifling fancy.”
The old gentleman brought his hand down upon his table with a blow that sent the papers fluttering to the floor. “Trifling!” he roared. “Would you trifle with a lady from your own state, sir?”
“I was never in love with her,” exclaimed Dan, angrily.
“Not in love with her? What business have you not to be in love with her?” retorted the Major, tossing back his long white hair. “I have given her to understand that you are in love with her, sir.”
The blood rushed to Dan's head, and he stumbled over an ottoman as he turned away.
“Then I call it unwarrantable interference,” he said brutally, and went toward the door. There the Major's flashing eyes held him back an instant.
“It was when I believed you to be worthy of her,” went on the old man, relentlessly, “when—fool that I was—I dared to hope that dirty blood could be made clean again; that Jack Montjoy's son could be a gentleman.”
For a moment only Dan stood motionless and looked at him from the threshold. Then, without speaking, he crossed the hall, took down his hat, and unbarred the outer door. It slammed after him, and he went out into the night.
A keen wind was still blowing, and as he descended the steps he felt it lifting the dampened hair from his forehead. With a breath of relief he stood bareheaded in the drive and raised his face to the cool elm leaves that drifted slowly down. After the heated atmosphere of the library there was something pleasant in the mere absence of light, and in the soft rustling of the branches overhead. The humour of his blood went suddenly quiet as if he had plunged headlong into cold water.
While he stood there motionless his thoughts were suspended, and his senses, gaining a brief mastery, became almost feverishly alert; he felt the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves, and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of youthful rhetoric, “that come what would, he was going to the devil—and going speedily.”
He had reached the gate and his hand was upon the latch, when he heard the house door open and shut behind him and his name called softly from the steps.
He turned impulsively and stood waiting, while Betty came quickly through the lamplight that fell in squares upon the drive.
“Oh, come back, Dan, come back,” she said breathlessly.
With his hand still on the gate he faced her, frowning.
“I'd die first, Betty,” he answered.
She came swiftly up to him and stood, very pale, in the faint starlight that shone between the broken clouds. A knitted shawl was over her shoulders, but her head was bare and her hair made a glow around her face. Her eyes entreated him before she spoke.
“Oh, Dan, come back,” she pleaded.
He laughed angrily and shook his head.
“I'll die first, Betty,” he repeated. “Die! I'd die a hundred times first!”
“He is so old,” she said appealingly. “It is not as if he were young and quite himself, Dan—Oh, it is not like that—but he loves you, and he is so old.”
“Don't, Betty,” he broke in quickly, and added bitterly, “Are you, too, against me?”
“I am for the best in you,” she answered quietly, and turned away from him.
“The best!” he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Are you for the shot at Maupin? the night I spent in gaol? or the beggar I am now? There's an equal choice, I reckon.”
She looked gravely up at him.
“I am for the boy I've always known,” she replied, “and for the man who was here two weeks ago—and—yes, I am for the man who stands here now. What does it matter, Dan? What does it matter?”
“O, Betty!” he cried breathlessly, and hid his face in his hands.
“And most of all, I am for the man you are going to be,” she went on slowly, “for the great man who is growing up. Dan, come back!”
His hands fell from his eyes. “I'll not do that even for you, Betty,” he answered, “and, God knows, there's little else I wouldn't do for you—there's nothing else.”
“What will you do for yourself, Dan?”
“For myself?” his anger leaped out again, and he steadied himself against the gate. “For myself I'll go as far as I can from this damned place. I wish to God I'd fallen in the road before I came here. I wish I'd gone after my father and followed in his steps. I'll live on no man's charity, so help me God. Am I a dog to be kicked out and to go whining back when the door opens? Go—I'll go to the devil, and be glad of it!” For a moment Betty did not answer. Her hands were clasped on her bosom, and her eyes were dark and bright in the pallor of her face. As he looked at her the rage died out of his voice, and it quivered with a deeper feeling.
“My dear, my dearest, are you, too, against me?” he asked.
She met his gaze without flinching, but the bright colour swept suddenly to her cheeks and dyed them crimson.
“Then if you will go, take me with you,” she said.
He fell back as if a star had dropped at his feet. For a breathless instant she saw only his eyes, and they drew her step by step. Then he opened his arms and she went straight into them.
“Betty, Betty,” he said in a whisper, and kissed her lips.
She put her hands upon his shoulders, and stood with his arms about her, looking up into his face.
“Take me with you—oh, take me with you,” she entreated. “I can't be left. Take me with you.”
“And you love me—Betty, do you love me?”
“I have loved you all my life—all my life,” she answered; “how can I begin to unlove you now—now when it is too late? Do you think I am any the less yours if you throw me away? If you break my heart can I help its still loving you?”
“Betty, Betty,” he said again, and his voice quivered.
“Take me with you,” she repeated passionately, saying it over and over again with her lips upon his arm.
He stooped and kissed her almost roughly, and then put her gently away from him.
“It is the way my mother went,” he said, “and God help me, I am my father's son. I am afraid,—afraid—do you know what that means?”
“But I am not afraid,” answered the girl steadily.
He shivered and turned away; then he came back and knelt down to kiss her skirt. “No, I can't take you with me,” he went on rapidly, “but if I live to be a man I shall come back—I will come back—and you—”
“And I am waiting,” she replied.
He opened the gate and passed out into the road.
“I will come back, beloved,” he said again, and went on into the darkness.
Leaning over the gate she strained her eyes into the shadows, crying his name out into the night. Her voice broke and she hid her face in her arm; then, fearing to lose the last glimpse of him, she looked up quickly and sobbed to him to come back for a moment—but for a moment. It seemed to her, clinging there upon the gate, that when he went out into the darkness he had gone forever—that the thud of his footsteps in the dust was the last sound that would ever come from him to her ears.
Had he looked back she would have gone straight out to him, had he raised a finger she would have followed with a cheerful face; but he did not look back, and at last his footsteps died away upon the road.
When she could see or hear nothing more of him, she turned slowly and crept toward the house. Her feet dragged under her, and as she walked she cast back startled glances at the gate. The rustling of the leaves made her stand breathless a moment, her hand at her bosom; but it was only the wind, and she went step by step into the house, turning upon the threshold to throw a look behind her.
In the hall she paused and laid her hand upon the library door, but the Major had bolted her out, and she heard him pacing with restless strides up and down the room. She listened timidly awhile, then, going softly by, went up to Mrs. Lightfoot.
The old lady was asleep, but as the girl entered she awoke and sat up, very straight, in bed. “My pain is much worse, Betty,” she complained. “I don't expect to get a wink of sleep this entire night.”
“I thought you were asleep when I came in,” answered Betty, keeping away from the candlelight; “but I am so sorry you are in pain. Shall I make you a mustard plaster?”
Though she smiled, her voice was spiritless and she moved with an effort. She felt suddenly very tired, and she wanted to lie down somewhere alone in the darkness.
“I'd just dropped off when Mr. Lightfoot woke me slamming the doors,” pursued the old lady, querulously. “Men have so little consideration that nothing surprises me, but I do think he might be more careful when he knows I am suffering. No, I won't take the mustard plaster, but you may bring me a cup of hot milk, if you will. It sometimes sends me off into a doze.”
Betty went slowly downstairs again and heated the milk on the dining-room fire. When it was ready she daintily arranged it upon a tray and carried it upstairs. “I hope it will do you good,” she said gently as she gave it to the old lady. “You must try to lie quiet—the doctor told you so.”
Mrs. Lightfoot drank the milk and remarked amiably that it was “very nice though a little smoked—and now, go to bed, my dear,” she added kindly. “I mustn't keep you from your beauty sleep. I'm afraid I've worn you out as it is.”
Betty smiled and shook her head; then she placed the tray upon a chair, and went out, softly closing the door after her.
the morning.
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