________________________________________________
_ "Dear God, let him love me," she prayed again in the cool twilight of her
chamber. Before the open window she put her hands to her burning cheeks and
felt the wind trickle between her quivering fingers. Her heart fluttered
like a bird and her blood went in little tremours through her veins. For a
single instant she seemed to feel the passage of the earth through space.
"Oh, let him love me! let him love me!" she cried upon her knees.
When Virginia came in she rose and turned to her with the brightness of
tears on her lashes.
"Do you want me to help you, dear?" she asked, gently.
"Oh, I'm all dressed," answered Virginia, coming toward her. She held a
lamp in her hand, and the light fell over her girlish figure in its muslin
gown. "You are so late, Betty," she added, stopping before the bureau.
"Were you by yourself?"
"Not all the way," replied Betty, slowly.
"Who was with you? Champe?"
"No, not Champe--Dan," said Betty, stooping to unfasten her boots.
Virginia was pinning a red verbena in her hair, and she turned to catch a
side view of her face.
"Do you know I really believe Dan likes you best," she carelessly remarked.
"I asked him the other afternoon what colour hair he preferred, and he
snapped out, 'red' as suddenly as that. Wasn't it funny?"
For a moment Betty did not speak; then she came over and stood beside her
sister.
"Would you mind if he liked me better than you, dear?" she asked,
doubtfully. "Would you mind the least little bit?"
Virginia laughed merrily and stooped to kiss her.
"I shouldn't mind if every man in the world liked you better," she answered
gayly. "If they only had as much sense as I've got, they would, foolish
things."
"I never knew but one who did," returned Betty, "and that was the Major."
"But Champe, too."
"Well, perhaps,--but Champe's afraid of you. He calls you Penelope, you
know, because of the 'wooers.' We counted six horses at the portico
yesterday, and he made a bet with me that all of them belonged to the
'wooers'--and they really did, too."
"Oh, but wooing isn't winning," laughed Virginia, going toward the door.
"You'd better hurry, Betty, supper's ready. I wouldn't touch my hair, if I
were you, it looks just lovely." Her white skirts fluttered across the
dimly lighted hall, and in a moment Betty heard her soft step on the stair.
Two days later Betty told Dan good-by with smiling lips. He rode over in
the early morning, when she was in the garden gathering loose rose leaves
to scatter among her clothes. There had been a sharp frost the night
before, and now as it melted in the slanting sun rays, Miss Lydia's summer
flowers hung blighted upon their stalks. Only the gay October roses were
still in their full splendour.
"What an early Betty," said Dan, coming up to her as she stood in the wet
grass beside one of the quaint rose squares. "You are all dewy like a
flower."
"Oh, I had breakfast an hour ago," she answered, giving him her moist hand
to which a few petals were clinging.
"Ye Gods! have I missed an hour? Why, I expected to sit waiting on the
door-step until you had had your sleep out."
"Don't you know if you gather rose leaves with the dew on them, their
sweetness lasts twice as long?" asked Betty.
"So you got up to gather ye rosebuds, after all, and not to wish me God
speed?" he said despondently.
"Well, I should have been up anyway," replied Betty, frankly. "This is the
loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the
first frost over it--only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die."
"If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself," remarked Dan, pointing,
with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. "Don't stand in the
grass like that, you make me shiver."
"Oh, the sun will dry me," she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare
earth of the rose bed. "Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels
like summer." She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she
said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright
presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him.
Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he
dared.
"I am going away in an hour, Betty," he said, at last.
"But you will be back again at Christmas."
"At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow."
"Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know."
Dan shook his head impatiently. "I dare say it does with you," he returned,
irritably, "but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am."
"Why, you ought to be used to it by now," urged Betty, mercilessly. "You
were in love last year, I remember."
"Betty, don't punish me for what I couldn't help. You know I love you."
"Oh, no," said Betty, nervously plucking rose leaves. "You have been too
often in love before, my good Dan."
"But I was never in love with you before," retorted Dan, decisively.
She shook her head, smiling. "And you are not in love with me now," she
replied, gravely. "You have found out that my hair is pretty, or that I can
mix a pudding; but I do not often let down my hair, and I seldom cook, so
you'll get over it, my friend, never fear."
He flushed angrily. "And if I do not get over it?" he demanded.
"If you do not get over it?" repeated Betty, trembling. She turned away
from him, strewing a handful of rose leaves upon the grass. "Then I shall
think that you value neither my hair nor my housekeeping," she added,
lightly.
"If I swear that I love you, will you believe me, Betty?"
"Don't tempt my faith, Dan, it's too small."
"Whether you believe it or not, I do love you," he went on. "I may have
been a fool now and then before I found it out, but you don't think that
was falling in love, do you? I confess that I liked a pair of fine eyes or
rosy cheeks, but I could laugh about it even while I thought it was love I
felt. I can't laugh about being in love with you, Betty."
"I thank you, sir," replied Betty, saucily.
"When I saw you kneeling by the fire in free Levi's cabin, I knew that I
loved you," he said, hotly.
"But I can't always kneel to you, Dan," she interposed.
He put her words impatiently aside, "and what's more I knew then that I had
loved you all my life without knowing it," he pursued. "You may taunt me
with fickleness, but I'm not fickle--I was merely a fool. It took me a long
time to find out what I wanted, but I've found out at last, and, so help me
God, I'll have it yet. I never went without a thing I wanted in my life."
"Then it will be good for you," responded Betty. "Shall I put some rose
leaves into your pocket?" She spoke indifferently, but all the while she
heard her heart singing for joy.
In the rage of his boyish passion, he cut brutally at the flowers growing
at his feet.
"If you keep this up, you'll send me to the devil!" he exclaimed.
She caught his hand and took the whip from his fingers. "Ah, don't hurt the
poor flowers," she begged, "they aren't to blame."
"Who is to blame, Betty?"
She looked up wistfully into his angry face. "You are no better than a
child, Dan," she said, almost sadly, "and you haven't the least idea what
you are storming so about. It's time you were a man, but you aren't, you're
just--"
"Oh, I know, I'm just a pampered poodle dog," he finished, bitterly.
"Well, you ought to be something better, and you must be."
"I'll be anything you please, Betty; I'll be President, if you wish it."
"No, thank you, I don't care in the least for Presidents."
"Then I'll be a beggar, you like beggars."
"You'll be just yourself, if you want to please me, Dan," she said
earnestly. "You will be your best self--neither the flattering Lightfoot,
nor the rude Montjoy. You will learn to work, to wait patiently, and to
love one woman. Whoever she may be, I shall say, God bless her."
"God bless her, Betty," he echoed fervently, and added, "Since it's a man
you want, I'll be a man, but I almost wish you had said a President. I
could have been one for you, Betty."
Then he held out his hand. "I don't suppose you will kiss me good-by?" he
pleaded.
"No, I shan't kiss you good-by," she answered.
"Never, Betty?"
Smiling brightly, she gave him her hand. "When you have loved me two years,
perhaps,--or when you marry another woman. Good-by, dear, good-by."
He turned quickly away and went up the little path to the gate. There he
paused for an instant, looked back, and waved his hand. "Good-by, my
darling!" he called, boldly, and passed under the honeysuckle arbour. As he
mounted his horse in the drive he saw her still standing as he had left
her, the roses falling about her, and the sunshine full upon her bended
head.
Until he was hidden by the trees she watched him breathlessly, then,
kneeling in the path, she laid her cheek upon the long grass he had trodden
underfoot. "O my love, my love," she whispered to the ground.
Miss Lydia called her from the house, and she went to her with some loose
roses in her muslin apron. "Did you call me, Aunt Lydia?" she asked,
lifting her radiant eyes to the old lady's face. "I haven't gathered very
many leaves."
"I wanted you to pot some white violets for me, dear," answered Miss Lydia,
from the back steps. "My winter garden is almost full, but there's a spot
where I can put a few violets. Poor Mr. Bill asked for a geranium for his
window, so I let him take one."
"Oh, let me pot them for you," begged Betty, eager to be of service. "Send
Petunia for the trowel, and I'll choose you a lovely plant. It's too bad to
see all the dear verbenas bitten by the frost." She tossed a rose into Miss
Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden.
A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with
him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said
sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. "We need
your hands to put it straight again," he added, "and Molly told me on no
account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear."
"Why, I should love to go," replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her
heart. "I'll be ready in a minute," and she ran upstairs to find her
mother, and to pack her things.
The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by
Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the
old coach before the portico.
"It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty," he said, as he stepped in
after her and slammed the door. "It isn't often that I carry off a pretty
girl so easily."
"Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily," returned
Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. "She has told me the whole
story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that
made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost
broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelorship, sir, so
you needn't boast."
The Major chuckled in his corner. "I don't doubt that Molly told you so,"
he replied, "but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to
her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly
romances she reads in bed--and, take my word for it, you'll find it
somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a
sensible woman, my child,--I'm the last man to deny it--but she always did
read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to
faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding--and, bless my
soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape."
"Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world," said Betty, "and I'm
quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you
can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot."
"My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina," dissented the Major, warmly,
"but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said
that it ruined poor Jane, with all her pride. She got into her head all
kind of notions about that scamp Montjoy, with his pale face and his long
black hair. Poor girl, poor girl! I tried to bring her up on Homer and
Milton, but she took to her mother's bookshelf as a duck to water." He
wiped his eyes, and Betty patted his hand, and wondered if "the scamp
Montjoy" looked the least bit like his son.
When they reached Chericoke she shook hands with the servants and ran
upstairs to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber. The old lady, in her ruffled
nightcap, which she always put on when she took to bed, was sitting upright
under her dimity curtains, weeping over "Thaddeus of Warsaw." There was a
little bookstand at her bedside filled with her favourite romances, and at
the beginning of the year she would start systematically to read from the
first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the
door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest,
snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to
give their hero a title--and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have
a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their
Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the
nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr.
Dickens's stories the other day and it was actually about a chimney
sweep--a common chimney sweep from a workhouse! Why, I really felt as if I
had been keeping low society."
Now, as she caught sight of Betty, she laid aside her book, wiped her eyes
on a stiffly folded handkerchief, and became cheerful at once. "I warned
Mr. Lightfoot not to dare to show his face without you," she began; "so I
suppose he brought you off by force."
"I was only too glad to come," replied Betty, kissing her; "but what must I
do for you first? Shall I rub your head with bay rum?"
"There's nothing on earth the matter with my head, child," retorted Mrs.
Lightfoot, promptly, "but you may go downstairs, as soon as you take off
your things, and make me some decent tea and toast. Cupid brought me up two
waiters at dinner, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a ten-foot
pole."
Betty took off her bonnet and shawl and hung them on a chair. "I'll go down
at once and see about it," she answered, "and I'll make Car'line put away
my things. It's my old room I'm to have, I suppose."
"It's the whole house, if you want it, only don't let any of the darkies
have a hand at my tea. It's their nature to slop."
"But it isn't mine," Betty answered her, and ran, laughing, down into the
dining room.
"Dar ain' been no sich chunes sense young Miss rid away in de dead er de
night time," muttered Cupid, in the pantry. "Lawd, Lawd, I des wish you'd
teck up wid Marse Champe, en move 'long over hyer fer good en all. I reckon
dar 'ud be times, den, I reckon, dar 'ould."
"There are going to be times now, Uncle Cupid," responded Betty,
cheerfully, as she arranged the tray for Mrs. Lightfoot. "I'm going to make
some tea and toast right on this fire for your old Miss. You bring the
kettle, and I'll slice the bread."
Cupid brought the kettle, grumbling. "I ain' never hyern tell er sich a
mouf es ole Miss es got," he muttered. "I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin er
stomick, case she ain' never let de stuff git down dat fur--en de stomick
hit ain' never tase it yit."
"Oh, stop grumbling, Uncle Cupid," returned Betty, moving briskly about the
room. She brought the daintiest tea cup from the old sideboard, and leaned
out of the window to pluck a late microphylla rosebud from the creeper upon
the porch. Then, with the bread on the end of a long fork, she sat before
the fire and asked Cupid about the health and fortunes of the house
servants and the field hands.
"I ain' mix wid no fiel' han's," grunted Cupid, with a social pride
befitting the Major. "Dar ain' no use er my mixin' en I ain' mix. Dey stay
in dere place en I stay in my place--en dere place hit's de quarters, en my
place hit's de dinin' 'oom."
"But Aunt Rhody--how's she?" inquired Betty, pleasantly, "and Big Abel? He
didn't go back to college, did he?"
"Zeke, he went," replied Cupid, "en Big Abel he wuz bleeged ter stay behint
'case his wife Saphiry she des put 'er foot right down. Ef'n he 'uz gwine
off again, sez she, she 'uz des gwine tu'n right in en git mah'ed agin. She
ain' so sho', nohow, dat two husban's ain' better'n one, is Saphiry, en she
got 'mos' a min' ter try hit. So Big Abel he des stayed behint."
"That was wise of Big Abel," remarked Betty. "Now open the door, Uncle
Cupid, and I'll carry this upstairs," and as Cupid threw open the door, she
went out, holding the tray before her.
The old lady received her graciously, ate the toast and drank the tea, and
even admitted that it couldn't have been better if she had made it with her
own hands. "I think that you will have to come and live with me, Betty,"
she said good-humouredly. "What a pity you can't fancy one of those useless
boys of mine. Not that I'd have you marry Dan, child, the Major has spoiled
him to death, and now he's beginning to repent it; but Champe, Champe is a
good and clever lad and would make a mild and amiable husband, I am sure.
Don't marry a man with too much spirit, my dear; if a man has any extra
spirit, he usually expends it in breaking his wife's."
"Oh, I shan't marry yet awhile," replied Betty, looking out upon the
falling autumn leaves.
"So I said the day before I married Mr. Lightfoot," rejoined the old lady,
settling her pillows, "and now, if you have nothing better to do, you might
read me a chapter of 'Thaddeus of Warsaw'; you will find it to be a book of
very pretty sentiment." _
Read next: BOOK SECOND - YOUNG BLOOD: Chapter IX - The Montjoy Blood
Read previous: BOOK SECOND - YOUNG BLOOD: Chapter VII - If this be Love
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