Battle Ground, Page 4

  IV.

  A HOUSE WITH AN OPEN DOOR

  The master of Uplands was standing upon his portico behind the Doriccolumns, looking complacently over the fat lands upon which his fathers hadsown and harvested for generations. Beyond the lane of lilacs and the twosilver poplars at the gate, his eyes wandered leisurely across the bluegreen strip of grass-land to the tawny wheat field, where the slaves weresinging as they swung their cradles. The day was fine, and the outlyingmeadows seemed to reflect his gaze with a smile as beneficent as his own.He had cast his bread upon the soil, and it had returned to him threefold.

  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 thegenial aspect of the country--as if the light that touched the pleasanthills 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 hadabout it a certain plump kindliness which would best become a carelessgesture of concession. And, after all, he looked but what he was--a blandand generous gentleman, whose heart was as open as his wine cellar.

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

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

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

  "I think everything is that way," returned his wife, looking up from one ofthe elaborately tucked and hemstitched shirt fronts which served to gratifythe Governor's single vanity. "I'm sure Aunt Pussy says she can't trustJudy for three days in the dairy without finding that the cream has stoodtoo long for butter--and Judy has been churning for twenty years." She cutoff her thread and held the linen out for the Governor's inspection. "Ireally believe that is the prettiest one I've made. How do you like thisnew 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 suchneedlework; but it should go upon a younger and handsomer man, Julia."

  His wife blushed and looked up at him, the colour rising to her beautifulbrow and giving a youthful radiance to her nunlike face. "It couldcertainly go upon a younger man, Mr. Ambler," she rejoined, with a touch ofthe coquetry for which she had once been noted; "but I should like to knowwhere I'd find a handsomer one."

  A pleased smile broadened the Governor's face, and he settled his waistcoatwith 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 boughtseveral of Mr. Willis's servants, my love."

  "Why, Mr. Ambler!" remonstrated his wife, reproach softening her voiceuntil it fell like a caress. "Why, Mr. Ambler, you bought six of ColonelBlake's last year, you know and one of the house servants has been nursingthem 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 goingsouth, 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--youalways do right." She put out her delicate blue-veined hand and touched hisarm. "I shall see them to-day," she added, "and Mandy may as well be makingher wedding dress."

  "What an eye to things you have," said the Governor, proudly. "You mighthave 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 quitecontent with the mission of my sex, sir," she returned, half in jest, halfin wifely humility. "I'm sure I'd much rather make shirt fronts for youthan wear them myself." Then she nodded to him and went, with her statelystep, up the broad staircase, her white hand flitting over the mahoganybalustrade.

  As he looked after her, the Governor's face clouded, and he sighed beneathhis breath. The cares she met with such serenity had been too heavy for herstrength; they had driven the bloom from her cheeks and the lustre from hereyes; and, though she had not faltered at her task, she had drooped dailyand grown older than her years. The master might live with a lavishdisregard of the morrow, not the master's wife. For him were the openhouse, the shining table, the well-stocked wine cellar and the morningrides over the dewy fields; for her the cares of her home and children, andof the souls and bodies of the black people that had been given into herhands. In her gentle heart it seemed to her that she had a charge to keepbefore her God; and she went her way humbly, her thoughts filled withthings so vital as the uses of her medicine chest and the unexpoundedmysteries of salvation.

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

  "O, mamma, may I go to fish with Champe and the new boy and Big Abel? AndVirginia wants to go, too, she says."

  "Wait a moment, child," said Mrs. Ambler. "You have torn the trimming onyour frock. Stand still and I'll mend it for you," and she got out herneedle and sewed up the rent, while Betty hopped impatiently from foot tofoot.

  "I think the new boy's a heap nicer than Champe, mamma," she remarked asshe waited.

  "Do you, dear?"

  "An' he says I'm nicer than Champe, too. He fought Champe 'cause he said Ididn'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'llfight about 'most anything, he says, if he jest gets roused--an' thatcert'n'y did rouse him. His nose bled a long time, too, and Champe whippedhim, you know. But, when it was over, I asked him if I had as much sense ashe 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 awicked boy, and you mustn't get such foolish thoughts into your head. Ifthe 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 thegarden, 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 whitewashedfence of the garden. "They've sent a bonnet from New York for you to lookat, Aunt Lydia," she cried. "It came all wrapped up in tissue paper, withmamma's gray silk, and it's got flowers on it--a lot of them!" with whichparting shot, she turned her back upon the startled old lady and dashed offto join the boys and Big Abel, who, with their fishing-poles, had gatheredin the cattle pasture.

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

  Amid them all
, Miss Lydia wandered in her full black gown, putting asideher filmy ruffles as she tied back a hanging spray or pruned a brokenstalk, sometimes even lowering her thread lace cap as she weeded the tangleof sweet Williams and touch-me-not. Since her gentle girlhood she hadtended bountiful gardens, and dreamed her virgin dreams in the purity oftheir box-trimmed walks. In a kind of worldly piety she had bound herprayer book in satin and offered to her Maker the incense of flowers. Sheregarded heaven with something of the respectful fervour with which sheregarded the world--that great world she had never seen; for "the properplace for a spinster is her father's house," she would say with herconventional primness, and send, despite herself, a mild imagination inpursuit of the follies from which she so earnestly prayed to bedelivered--she, to whom New York was as the terror of a modern Babylon, anda Jezebel but a woman with paint upon her cheeks. "They tell me that otherwomen have painted since," she had once said, with a wistful curiosity."Your grandmamma, my dear Julia, had even seen one with an artificialcolour. She would not have mentioned it to me, of course,--an unmarriedlady,--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, andthe 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 theteaching of the catechism to small black slaves the chief end of existence.But the blood of the "most finished dancer of her day" still circulatedbeneath the old lady's gown and the religious life, and in her attenuatedromances she forever held the sinner above the saint, unless, indeed, thesinner chanced to be of her own sex, when, probably, the book would neverhave reached her hands. For the purely masculine improprieties, her charitywas as boundless as her innocence. She had even dipped into Shakespeare andbrought away the memory of Mercutio; she had read Scott, and enshrined inher pious heart the bold Rob Roy. "Men are very wicked, I fear," she wouldgently offer, "but they are very a--a--engaging, too."

  To-day, when Betty came with the message, she lingered a moment to convinceherself that the bonnet was not in her thoughts, and then swept hertrailing bombazine into the house. "I have come to tell you that you may aswell send the bonnet back, Julia," she began at once. "Flowers are much toofine 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 noidea 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. "Itdoes 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 foryou. Why, it suits you perfectly. It makes you look at least ten yearsyounger."

  "A plain black poke, my dear," insisted Aunt Lydia, as she carefullyswathed 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 tothink of it, but it may as well go back." She pensively gazed at the mirrorfor a moment, and then went to her chamber and took out her Bible to readSaint Paul on Woman.

  When she came down a few hours later, her face wore an angelic meekness. "Ihave been thinking of that poor Mrs. Brown who was here last week," shesaid softly, "and I remember her telling me that she had no bonnet to wearto 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, itwould be really a charity to give her your old one!" she exclaimed. "Itdoes seem a shame that she should be kept away from church because of abonnet. And, then, you might as well keep the new one, you know, since itis in the house; I hate the trouble of sending it back."

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

  "Betty!" exclaimed Mrs. Ambler. She took the child by her shoulders anddrew her toward her. "Betty, did you set fire to the Major's woodpile?" shequestioned 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 thewoodpile and pretended it was a fort, an' Big Abel, he was an Injun withthe axe for a tomahawk; but the woodpile blazed right up, an' the Majorcame runnin' out. He asked Dan who did it, an' Dan wouldn't say 'twasme,--an' I wouldn't say, either,--so he took Dan in to whip him. Oh, I wishI'd told! I wish I'd told!"

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

  "Set fire to the woodpile!" whistled the Governor. "Why, bless my soul, wearen'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, Ihope this will be a lesson to you. You shan't have any preserves for supperfor 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 bestarting at once, and don't forget to tell the Major that Betty is in greatdistress--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 remarkedgloomily as he mounted his horse and rode away from his supper.