Part 2 (1/2)

But to-day seemed pleasantly momentous; it called for the unusual. ”I say, Bibi, when a knight went off to fight, you know, his lady used to give him a stirrup-cup at good-by. Don't you think it would be really sweet of you--”

She held off, only to be provoking. She would have thought no more of kissing Guy than a brother--or she thought she wouldn't. To be sure, she hadn't for years; there was no occasion; and then, of course, one didn't.

She laughed and shook her head, and retreated laughing. And he promptly captured her.... She freed herself, suddenly serious. And Guy stood sobered--sobered not at going to the war, but at leaving her.

”There now, run along.”

”Well, good-by.” But he lingered. There was nothing more to say, but he lingered. ”Well, good-by. Be good, Bibi.”

”It looks as if that was all I'd have a chance to be.” The drawl of the light voice with its rising inflection was so engaging, no one called it nasal. ”And it's so much more difficult and important to be charming!”

He was sobered at leaving her, but he never thought of not going with the rest. He went, and all the rest. And Bessie found herself, just when nature had crowned her with womanhood, a princess without a kingdom. To be sure, living on the border gave her double opportunities, and for contrasting romances. There were episodes that comforted her with the reflection that she was not getting wholly out of practice in the arts. And there was real adventure in flying and secret visits from Guy and the rest--Guy, who was never again just the same with her; but, for that matter, neither was she just the same with him. But, on the whole, as she pouted to him afterward, she wouldn't call that four years' war exactly entertaining!

The Halls personally did not suffer so deeply as their neighbors except from property loss. All they could afford, and more, they gave to the South, and the Northern invader took what was left. When there was nothing left, he hacked the rosewood furniture and made targets of the family portraits, in the mere wantonness of loot that, as a recriminative compliment, cannot be laid to the charge of any one period or section. Most of the farm negroes crossed the river. Funds ran low.

There had been ease and luxury in the family always, and just when Bessie reached the time to profit by them she remarked that they failed.

Even if the Halls were not in mourning, no one lives through such a time without feeling the common humanity. But Bessie, though she lingered on the brink of love as of all the other deeps of life--curious, adventurous, at once willing and reluctant--was still, in the end, quite steady.

When the war was over, the Halls were poor, on a competence of land run to waste, with no labor to work it, and no market to sell it. And Mr. Hall, like so many of his generation, was too hampered by habit and crushed by reminiscence to meet the new day.

It was the contrast in Guy's spirit that won Bessie. His was indeed the immemorial spirit of youth--whether it be of the young world, or the young male, or the young South--to accept the issue of trial by combat and give loyalty to one proved equally worthy of sword or hand.

”We're whipped,” he told her, ”and that settles it. Now there's other work for us than brooding over it. All the same, the South has a future, Bibi, and that means a future for you and me.”

”Not in the manufacture of poetry, I'm afraid,” she laughed. ”You dropped a st.i.tch.”

She did not seem to take his prowess, either past or to come, very seriously; and her eyebrows and her inflection went up at the a.s.sumption of the ”we” in his plans. But--she listened.

His definiteness was itself effective. She herself did not know what she wanted. Something was wrong; or rather, everything was. She was finding life a great bore. But what would be right, she couldn't say, except that it must be different.

Guy looked sure and seasoned as he poured out his plans; and together with the maturing tan and breadth from his rough life, there was an unconquerable boyishness in the lift of his head and the light of his eyes.

”This enthusiasm is truly beautiful!” she teased.

It was, in truth, infectious.

Why! it was love she had wanted. The four years had been so empty--without Guy.

She went into it alert, receptive, optimistic. But it nettled her that everybody should be so congratulatory, and n.o.body surprised. It wasn't what _she_ would call ideal for two impoverished young aristocrats to start life on nothing but affection and self-confidence.

It did seem as if the choicest fruit always came to _her_ specked.

”Never mind,” Guy encouraged her. ”Just give me ten years. It will be a little hard on you at first, Bibi dear, I know, but it would be harder at your father's now. And it won't be long!”

There was only one comment of whose intention Bessie was uncertain: ”So Guy is to continue carrying you over the bad places, Bessie?”

Hm! She had been thinking it rather a fine thing for _her_ to do. And that appealed to her.

”And think what an amusing anecdote it will make after a while, Guy,--how, with all your worldly goods tied up in a red bandanna, and your wife on your arm instead of her father's doorstep, you set out to make your fortune, and to live meanwhile in the City of Un-Brotherly Love!”

But Bessie had the standards of an open-handed people to whom economy was not a virtue. There had always been on her mother's table for every meal ”salt-risin' light bread” and corn pone or griddle-cakes, half a dozen kinds of preserves, the staples in proportion. Her mother would have been humiliated had there been any noticeable diminution in the supply when the meal was over; and she and the cook would have had a council of war had a guest failed to eat and praise any single dish.