The Eye of Dread. Erskine Payne

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СКАЧАТЬ has one for him. I put C because–you’ll see when you open it. Everything’s bound all round with my very best cherry-colored hair ribbon, to make it very special, and that is what C is for. All the rest are brown, and this is prettier, and it won’t get mixed with Peter Junior’s.”

      “Ah, yes. C is for cherry–Betty’s hair ribbon; and the gold-brown leather is for Betty’s hair. Is that it?”

      “Yep.”

      “Haven’t I one, too?” asked Peter Junior.

      “Yep. We made them just alike, and you can sew on buttons and everything.”

      Thus the children made the leave-taking less somber, to the relief of every one.

      Grandfather and grandmother Clide had friends of their own whom they had come all the forty miles to see,–neighbor boys from many of the farms around their home, and their daughter-in-law’s own brother, who was like a son to them. There he stood, lithe and strong and genial, and, alas! too easy-going to be safe among the temptations of the camp.

      Quickly the hour passed and the call came to form ranks for the march to the town square, where speeches were to be made and prayers were to be read before the march to the station.

      Our little party waited until the last company had left the camp ground and the excited children had seen them all and heard the sound of the fife and drum to their last note and beat as the “boys in blue” filed past them and off down the winding country road among the trees. Nothing was said by the older ones of what might be in the future for those gallant youths–yes, and for the few men of greater years with them–as they wound out of sight. It was better so. Bobby fell asleep in Mary Ballard’s arms as they drove back, and a bright tear fell from her wide-open, far-seeing eyes down on his baby cheek.

      It was no lack of love for his son that kept Elder Craigmile away at the departure of the boys from their camp on the bluff. He had virtually said his say and parted from his son when he gave his consent to his going in the first place. To him war meant sacrifice, and the parting with sons, at no matter what cost. The dominant idea with him was ever the preservation of the Union. At nine o’clock as usual that morning he had entered the bank, and a few minutes later, when the troops formed on the square, he came out and took his appointed place on the platform, as one of the speakers, and offered a closing prayer for the confounding of the enemy after the manner of David of old–then he descended and took his son’s hand, as he stood in the ranks, with his arm across the boy’s shoulder, looked a moment in his eyes; then, without a word, he turned and reëntered the bank.

      CHAPTER V

      THE PASSING OF TIME

      It was winter. The snow was blowing past the windows in blinding drifts, and the road in front of the Ballards’ home was fast filling to the tops of the fences. A bright wood-fire was burning in the great cookstove, which had been brought into the living room for warmth and to economize steps, as all the work of the household devolved on Mary and little Betty, since Martha spent the week days at the Deans in the village in order to attend the high school.

      Mary gazed anxiously now and then through the fast-frosting window panes on the opaque whiteness of the storm without, where the trees tossed their bare branches weirdly, like threatening gray phantoms, grotesque and dimly seen through the driving snow. It was Friday afternoon and still early, and brave, busy little Martha always came home on Fridays after school to help her mother on Saturdays.

      “Oh, I hope Martha hasn’t started,” said Mary. “Look out, Bertrand. This is the wildest storm we have had this year.”

      “Mrs. Dean would never allow her to set out in this storm, I’m sure,” said Bertrand. “I cautioned her yesterday when I was there never to start when the weather seemed like a blizzard.”

      Bertrand had painted in his studio above as long as the light remained, and now he was washing his brushes, carefully swishing the water out of them and drawing each one between his lips to shape it properly before laying it down. Mary laid the babe in her arms in its crib, and rocked it a moment while she and Bertrand chatted.

      A long winter and summer had passed since the troops marched away from Leauvite, and now another winter was passing. For a year and a bit more, little Janey, the babe now being hushed to sleep, had been a member of the family circle. Thus it was that Mary Ballard seldom went to the village, and Betty learned her lessons at home as best she could, and tended the baby and helped her mother. But Bertrand and his wife had plenty to talk about; for he went out and saw their friends in the village, led the choir on Sundays, taught the Bible class, heard all the news, and talked it over with Mary.

      Thus, in one way or another, all the new books found their way into the Ballards’ home, were read and commented on, even though books were not written so much for commercial purposes then as now, and their writers were looked up to with more respect than criticism. The Atlantic Monthly and Littell’s Living Age, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Tribune also brought up a variety of subjects for discussion. Now and then a new poem by Whittier, or Bryant, or some other of the small galaxy of poets who justly were becoming the nation’s pride, would appear and be read aloud to Mary as she prepared their meals, or washed the dishes or ironed small garments, while Betty listened with intent eyes and ears, as she helped her mother or tended the baby.

      That afternoon, while the storm soughed without, the cow and horse were comfortably quartered in their small stable, which was banked with straw to keep out the cold. Indoors, Jamie was whittling behind the warm cookstove over a newspaper spread to catch the chips, while Bobby played quietly in a corner with two gray kittens and a worsted ball. Janey was asleep in the crib which Betty jogged now and then while she knit on a sock for the soldiers,–Mary and the two little girls were always knitting socks for the soldiers these days in their spare moments and during the long winter evenings,–Mary was kneading white loaves of bread with floury hands, and Bertrand sat close beside the window to catch the last rays of daylight by which to read the war news.

      Bertrand always read the war news first,–news of battles and lists of wounded and slain and imprisoned, and saddest of all, lists of the missing,–following closely the movements of their own company of “boys” from Leauvite. Mary listened always with a thought of the shadow in the banker’s home, and the mother there, watching and waiting for the return of her boy. Although their own home was safe, the sorrow of other homes, devastated and mourning, weighed heavily upon Mary Ballard, and she needed to listen to the stirring editorials of the Tribune, which Bertrand read with dramatic intensity, to bolster up her faith in the rightness of this war between men who ought to be brothers in their hopes and ambitions for the national life of their great country.

      “I suppose it is too great a thing to ask–that such a tremendous and mixed nation as ours should be knit together for the good of all men in a spirit of brotherly love–but what a thing to ask for! What a thing to try for! If I were a man, I would pray that I might gain influence over my fellows just for that–just–for that,” said Mary.

      “Ah,” replied her husband, with fond optimism, “you need not say ‘If I were a man,’ for that. It is the women who have the influence; don’t you know that, Mary?”

      Mary looked down at her work, an incredulous smile playing about her lips.

      “Well, my dear?” Bertrand loved a response.

      “Well, Bertrand? Men do like to talk about our ‘sweet influence,’ don’t they?” Then she laughed outright.

      “But, Mary–but, Mary, it is true. Women do more with their influence than men can do with their guns,” and Bertrand really meant what he said. Dusky СКАЧАТЬ