The Eye of Dread. Erskine Payne

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Yes, I heard his voice. I am glad he came.”

      “See here, mother! I know what you are doing. This won’t do. Every one who goes to war doesn’t get killed or go to the bad. Look at that old redcoat up in my room. He wasn’t killed, or where would I be now? I’m coming back, just as he did. We are born to fight, we Craigmiles, and father feels it or he never would have given his consent.”

      Slowly they went down the long winding flight of stairs–a flight with a smooth banister down which it had once been Peter Junior’s delight to slide when there was no one nigh to reprove. Now he went down with his arm around his slender mother’s waist, and now and then he kissed her cheek like a lover.

      The Elder looked up as they entered, with a slight wince of disapproval, the only demonstration of reproof he ever gave his wife, which changed instantly to as slight a smile, as he noticed the faint color in her cheek, and a brighter light in her eyes than there was at breakfast. He and Richard were both seated as they entered, but they rose instantly, and the Elder placed her chair with all the manner of his forefathers, a courtesy he never neglected.

      Hester Craigmile forced herself to converse, and tried to smile as if there were no impending gloom. It was here Mary Ballard’s influence was felt by them all. She had helped her friend more than she knew.

      “I’m glad to see you, Richard; I was afraid I might not.”

      “Oh, no, Aunt Hester. I’d never leave without seeing you. I went into the bank and the Elder asked me to dinner and I jumped at the chance.”

      “This is your home always, you know.”

      “And it’s good to think of, too, Aunt Hester.”

      She looked at her son and then her nephew. “You are so like in your uniforms I would not know you apart on the street in the dark,” she said. Richard shot a merry glance in his uncle’s eyes, then only smiled decorously with him and Peter Junior.

      “I wish you’d visit the camp and see us drill. We go like clockwork, Peter and I. They call us the twins.”

      “There is a very good reason for that, for your mother and I were twins, and you resemble her, while Peter Junior resembles me,” said the Elder.

      “Yes,” said Hester, “Peter Junior looks like his father;” but as she glanced at her son she knew his soul was hers.

      Thus the meal passed in quiet, decorous talk, touching on nothing vital, but holding a smoldering fire underneath. The young men said nothing about the fact that the regiment had been called to duty, and soon the camp on the bluff would be breaking up. They dared not touch on the past, and they as little dared touch on the future–indeed there might be no future. So they talked of indifferent things, and Hester parted with her nephew as if they were to meet again soon, except that she called him back when he was halfway down the steps and kissed him again. As for her son, she took him up to his room and there they stayed for an hour, and then he came out and she was left in the house alone.

      CHAPTER IV

      LEAVE-TAKING

      Early in the morning, while the earth was still a mass of gray shadow and mist, and the sky had only begun to show faint signs of the flush of dawn, Betty, awake and alert, crept softly out of bed, not to awaken Martha, who slept the sleep of utter weariness at her side. Martha had returned only the day before from her visit to her grandfather’s, a long carriage ride away from Leauvite.

      Betty bathed hurriedly, giving a perfunctory brushing to the tangled mass of curls, and getting into her clothing swiftly and silently. She had been cautioned the night before by her mother not to awaken her sister by getting up at too early an hour, for she would be called in plenty of time to drive over with the rest to see the soldiers off. But what if her mother should forget! So she put on her new white dress and gathered a few small parcels which she had carefully tied up the night before, and her hat and little white linen cape, and taking her shoes in her hand, softly descended the stairs.

      “Betty, Betty,” her mother spoke in a sleepy voice from her own room as the child crept past her door; “why, my dear, it isn’t time to get up yet. We shan’t start for hours.”

      “I heard Peter Junior say they were going to strike camp at daybreak, and I want to see them strike it. You don’t need to get up. I can go over there alone.”

      “Why, no, child! Mother couldn’t let you do that. They don’t want little girls there. Go back to bed, dear. Did you wake Martha?”

      “Oh, mother. Can’t I go downstairs? I don’t want to go to bed again. I’ll be very still.”

      “Will you lie on the lounge and try to go to sleep again?”

      “Yes, mother.”

      Mary Ballard turned with a sigh and presently fell asleep, and Betty softly continued her way and obediently lay down in the darkened room below; but sleep she could not. At last, having satisfied her conscience by lying quietly for a while, she stole to the open door, for in that peaceful spot the Ballards slept with doors and windows wide open all through the warm nights. Oh, but the world was cool and mysterious, and the air was sweet! Little rustling noises made her feel as if strange beings were stirring; above her head were soft chirpings, and somewhere a bird was calling an undulating, long-drawn note, low and sweet, like a tone drawn from her father’s violin.

      Betty sat on the edge of the porch and put on her shoes, and then walked down the path to the gate. The white peonies and the iris flowers were long since gone, and on the Harvest apple trees and the Sweet Boughs the fruit hung ripening. All Betty’s life long she never forgot this wonderful moment of the breaking of day. She listened for sounds to come to her from the camp far away on the river bluff, but none were heard, only the restless moving of her grandfather’s team taking their early feed in the small pasture lot near by.

      How fresh everything smelled! And the sky! Surely it must be like this in heaven! It must be heaven showing through, while the world slept. She was glad she had awakened early so she might see it,–she and God and the angels, and all the wild things of earth.

      Slowly everything around her grew plainer, and long rays of color, faintly pink, streamed up into the sky from the eastern horizon; then suddenly some pale gray, floating clouds above her head blossomed into a wonderful rose laid upon a sea of gold, then gradually turned shell-pink, then faded through changing shades to daytime clouds of white. She wondered if the soldiers saw it, too. They were breaking camp now, surely, for it was day. Still she swung on the gate and dreamed, until a voice roused her.

      “So Betty sleeps all night on the gate like a chicken on the fence.” A pair of long arms seized her and lifted her high in the air to a pair of strong shoulders. Then she was tossed about and her cheeks rubbed red against grandfather Clide’s stubby beard, until she laughed aloud. “What are you doing here on the gate?”

      “I was watching the sky. I think God looked through and smiled, for all at once it blossomed. Now the colors are gone.”

      Grandfather Clide set her gently on her feet and stood looking gravely down on her for a moment. “So?” he said.

      “The soldiers are striking camp over there, and then they are going to march to the square, and then every one is to see them form and salute–and then they are to march to the station, and–and–then–and then I don’t know what will be–I think glory.”

      Her grandfather shook his head, his thoughtful face half smiling and СКАЧАТЬ