Part 37 (2/2)
”I noted nothing about those breeches; they went straight into the fire!
Such rags....”
”Miss Merry, ma'am--” small Hetty showed an eager face around the corner of the door--”Majuh Forbes and Missus Forbes--they's downstairs.”
Drew faced away from the mirror. ”Why?” he demanded with almost hostile emphasis.
Meredith Barrett untied the strings of her sewing ap.r.o.n. ”Hetty, tell Mam Gusta to set out some of the English biscuits and make tea.” Then she turned back to face Drew. ”Why, Drew? Rather--why not? They're your kin, and I think that Marianna feels it deeply that you came here and not to Red Springs. Not to go home....”
”Home?” There was heat in that. ”You, if anyone, know that Red Springs was never really my home. And Forbes is an officer in the Union Army.
This is no time for a Reb to camp out in his house. My grandfather wanted the place to be just Aunt Marianna's, didn't he?” He paused by the chest of drawers, his hand going out to the spurs, the gold cord.
Three years--in a way a small lifetime--all to be summed up now by a slightly tarnished cord from a general's hat, a pair of spurs a young Texan had jauntily worn.
But it _was_ a lifetime. He was not a boy any more, to have to endure his elders making decisions for him. His future was his own, and he had earned the right to that. Drew did not know that his face had hardened, that he suddenly looked a stranger to the woman who was watching him with concern.
”Please, Drew, you mustn't allow yourself to be so bitter--”
”Bitter? About Red Springs, you mean? Lord, I never wanted the place. I hate every brick of it, and I think I always have. But I don't hate Forbes or Aunt Marianna if that's what you're afraid of. It's just that I have no place there any more.”
Her mouth tightened. ”But you have! You owe it to Marianna to listen to her now. This is important, Drew, more important than you can guess. No, Boyd--” her gesture checked her son as he arose from the chair--”this is none of your affair. Come with me, Drew!”
He picked up a borrowed coat, also much too wide for him, pulled it on over the bunchiness of his s.h.i.+rt, and followed her, swallowing what he knew to be a useless protest.
The parlor was as bright with sun as the upper room had been. As Drew entered a pace or two behind Cousin Merry, the officer in blue strode away from the hearth to meet them. But Aunt Marianna forestalled her husband's greeting, rising suddenly from a chair, her crinoline rustling across the carpet. She held out her hands, and then hesitated, studying Drew's face, looking a little daunted, as if she had expected something she did not find. The a.s.surance she had displayed at their last meeting on the Lexington road was missing.
”Drew?”
He bowed, conscious that he must present an odd figure in the ill-fitting clothing of Meredith Barrett's long dead husband.
Major Forbes held out his hand. ”Welcome home, my boy.”
My boy. Consciously or unconsciously the major's tone strove to thrust Drew into the past, or so he believed. The major might almost be considering Drew an unruly schoolboy now safely out of some sc.r.a.pe, welcome indeed if he would settle down quietly into the conventional mold of Oak Hill or Red Springs. But he was no schoolboy, and at that moment the parlor of Oak Hill, for all its luxury and warmth, was a box sealing him in stifling confinement which he could no longer endure.
Drew held tight control over that resurgence of his old impatience, knowing that his first instinct had been right: the old life fitted him now no better than his coat. But he answered civilly:
”Thank you, suh.”
His proper courtesy apparently rea.s.sured his aunt. She came to him, her hands on his shoulders as she stood on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. ”Drew, come home with us, dear--please!”
He shook his head. ”I don't belong at Red Springs, ma'am. I never did.”
”Nonsense!” Major Forbes put the force of a field officer's authority into that denial. ”I do not and never did agree with many of Alexander Mattock's decisions. I do so even less when they pertain to your situation, my boy. You have every right to consider Red Springs your home. You must come to us, resume your interrupted education, take your proper place in the family and the community--”
Drew shook his head again. The major paused. He had been studying Drew, and now there was a faint shadow of uneasiness in his own expression. He might be slowly realizing that he was not fronting a repentant schoolboy rescued from a piece of regrettable youthful folly. A veteran was being forced against his will to recognize the stamp of his own experience on another, if much younger, man.
”What are your plans?” he asked in another tone of voice entirely.
”Drew--” Major Forbes waved aside that tentative interruption from Cousin Merry.
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