Part 3 (1/2)

Cleave drew before the fire the chair that had been his father's, sank into it, and taking the ash stick from the corner, stirred the glowing logs. ”Judge Allen's Resolutions were read and carried. Fauquier Cary spoke--many others.”

”Did not you?”

”No. They asked me to, but with so many there was no need. People were much moved--”

He broke off, sitting stirring the fire. His mother watched the deep hollows with him. Closely resembling as he did his long dead father, the inner tie, strong and fine, was rather between him and the woman who had given him birth. Wedded ere she was seventeen, a mother at eighteen, she sat now beside her first-born, still beautiful, and crowned by a lovely life. She had kept her youth, and he had come early to a man's responsibilities. For years now they had walked together, caring for the farm, which was not large, for the handful of servants, for the two younger children, Will and Miriam. The eighteen years between them was cancelled by their common interests, his maturity of thought, her quality of the summer time. She broke the silence. ”What did Fauquier Cary say?”

”He spoke strongly for patience, moderation, peace--I am going to Lauderdale after supper.”

”To see Judith?”

”No. To talk to Fauquier.... Maury Stafford is at Silver Hill.” He straightened himself, put down the ash stick, and rose to his feet. ”The bell will ring directly. I'll go upstairs for a moment.”

Margaret Cleave put out a detaining hand. ”One moment--Richard, are you quite, quite sure that she likes Maury Stafford so well?”

”Why should she not like him? He's a likable fellow.”

”So are many people. So are you.”

Cleave gave a short and wintry laugh. ”I? I am only her cousin--rather a dull cousin, too, who does nothing much in the law, and is not even a very good farmer! Am I sure? Yes, I am sure enough!” His hand closed on the back of her chair; the wood shook under the sombre energy of his grasp. ”Did I not see how it was last summer that week I spent at Greenwood? Was he not always with her?--supple and keen, easy and strong, with his face like a picture, with all the advantages I did not have--education, travel, wealth!--Why, Edward told me--and could I not see for myself? It was in the air of the place--not a servant but knew he had come a-wooing!”

”But there was no engagement then. Had there been we should have known it.”

”No engagement then, perhaps, but certainly no discouragement! He was there again in the autumn. He was with her to-day.” The chair shook again. ”And this morning Fauquier Cary, talking to me, laughed and said that Albemarle had set their wedding day!”

His mother sighed. ”Oh, I am sorry--sorry!”

”I should never have gone to Greenwood last summer--never have spent there that unhappy week! Before that it was just a fancy--and then I must go and let it bite into heart and brain and life--” He dropped his hand abruptly and turned to the door. ”Well, I've got to try now to think only of the country! G.o.d knows, things have come to that pa.s.s that her sons should think only of her! It is winter time, Mother; the birds aren't mating now--save those two--save those two!”

Upstairs, in his bare, high-ceiled room, his hasty toilet made, he stood upon the hearth, beside the leaping fire, and looked about him. Of late--since the summer--everything was clarifying. There was at work some great solvent making into naught the dross of custom and habitude.

The gla.s.s had turned; outlines were clearer than they had been, the light was strong, and striking from a changed angle. To-day both the sight of a face and the thought of an endangered State had worked to make the light intenser. His old, familiar room looked strange to him to-night. A tall bookcase faced him. He went across and stood before it, staring through the diamond panes at the backs of the books. Here were his c.o.ke and Blackstone, Vattel, Henning, Kent, and Tucker, and here were other books of which he was fonder than of those, and here were a few volumes of the poets. Of them all, only the poets managed to keep to-night a familiar look. He took out a volume, old, tawny-backed, gold-lettered, and opened it at random--

Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not, But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels hew, Cleare as the sky, withouten blame or blot--

A bell rang below. Youthful and gay, shattering the quiet of the house, a burst of voices proclaimed ”the children's” return from Tullius's cabin. When, in another moment, Cleave came downstairs, it was to find them both in wait at the foot, illumined by the light from the dining-room door. Miriam laid hold of him. ”Richard, Richard! tell me quick! Which was the greatest, Achilles or Hector?”

Will, slight and fair, home for the holidays from Lexington and, by virtue of his cadets.h.i.+p in the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute, an authority on most things, had a movement of impatience. ”Girls are so stupid! Tell her it was Hector, and let's go to supper! She'll believe you.”

Within the dining-room, at the round table, before the few pieces of tall, beaded silver and the gilt-banded china, while Mehalah the waitress brought the cakes from the kitchen and the fire burned softly on the hearth below the Saint Memin of a general and law-giver, talk fell at once upon the event of the day, the meeting that had pa.s.sed the Botetourt Resolutions. Miriam, with her wide, sensitive mouth, her tip-tilted nose, her hazel eyes, her air of some quaint, bright garden flower swaying on its stem, was for war and music, and both her brothers to become generals. ”Or Richard can be the general, and you be a cavalryman like Cousin Fauquier! Richard can fight like Napoleon and you may fight like Ney!”

The cadet stiffened. ”Thank you for nothing, Missy! Anyhow, I shan't sulk in my tents like your precious Achilles--just for a girl! Richard!

'Old Jack' says--”

”I wish, Will,” murmured his mother, ”that you'd say 'Major Jackson.'”

The boy laughed. ”'Old Jack' is what we call him, ma'am! The other wouldn't be respectful. He's never 'Major Jackson' except when he's trying to teach natural philosophy. On the drill ground he's 'Old Jack.'

Richard, he says--Old Jack says--that not a man since Napoleon has understood the use of cavalry.”

Cleave, sitting with his eyes upon the portrait of his grandfather, answered dreamily: ”Old Jack is probably in the right of it, Will.

Cavalry is a great arm, but I shall choose the artillery.”

His mother set down her coffee cup with a little noise, Miriam shook her hair out of her eyes and came back from her own dream of the story she was reading, and Will turned as sharply as if he were on the parade ground at Lexington.