Crittenden | Page 7

And Judith
had sat motionless, watching him with peculiar intensity and flushing a
little, perhaps at the memory of her jesting taunt, while Grafton had
stood still--his eyes fixed, his face earnest--missing not a word. He was
waiting for Crittenden, and he held his hand out when the latter

emerged from the crowd, with the curious embarrassment that assails
the newspaper man when he finds himself betrayed into unusual
feeling.
"I say," he said; "that was good, good!"
The officer who, too, had stood still as a statue, seemed to be moving
toward him, and again Crittenden turned away--to look for his mother.
She had gone home at once--she could not face him now in that
crowd--and as he was turning to his own buggy, he saw Judith and
from habit started toward her, but, changing his mind, he raised his hat
and kept on his way, while the memory of the girl's face kept pace with
him.
She was looking at him with a curious wistfulness that was quite
beyond him to interpret--a wistfulness that was in the sudden smile of
welcome when she saw him start toward her and in the startled flush of
surprise when he stopped; then, with the tail of his eye, he saw the
quick paleness that followed as the girl's sensitive nostrils quivered
once and her spirited face settled quickly into a proud calm. And then
he saw her smile--a strange little smile that may have been at herself or
at him--and he wondered about it all and was tempted to go back, but
kept on doggedly, wondering at her and at himself with a miserable
grim satisfaction that he was at last over and above it all. She had told
him to conquer his boyish love for her and, as her will had always been
law to him, he had made it, at last, a law in this. The touch of the
loadstone that never in his life had failed, had failed now, and now, for
once in his life, desire and duty were one.
He found his mother at her seat by her open window, the unopened
buds of her favourite roses hanging motionless in the still air outside,
but giving their fresh green faint fragrance to the whole room within;
and he remembered the quiet sunset scene every night for many nights
to come. Every line in her patient face had been traced there by a
sorrow of the old war, and his voice trembled:
"Mother," he said, as he bent down and kissed her, "I'm going."

Her head dropped quickly to the work in her lap, but she said nothing,
and he went quickly out again.

IV
It was growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great
chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged
darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies
were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the
twilight sounds of the farm--the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves
at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of
horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous
thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain--for that was the way the
horse got his name, being as black as a crow and, as Bob claimed,
always knowing when falling weather was at hand and speaking his
prophecy by stamping in his stall. He could hear Basil noisily making
his way to the barn. As he walked through the garden toward the old
family graveyard, he could still hear the boy, and a prescient tithe of the
pain, that he felt would strike him in full some day, smote him so
sharply now that he stopped a moment to listen, with one hand quickly
raised to his forehead. Basil was whistling--whistling joyously.
Foreboding touched the boy like the brush of a bird's wing, and death
and sorrow were as remote as infinity to him. At the barn-door the lad
called sharply:
"Bob!"
"Suh!" answered a muffled voice, and Bob emerged, gray with oatdust.
"I want my buggy to-night." Bob grinned.
"Sidebar?"
"Yes."
"New whip--new harness--little buggy mare--reckon?"

"I want 'em all."
Bob laughed loudly. "Oh, I know. You gwine to see Miss Phyllis dis
night, sho--yes, Lawd!" Bob dodged a kick from the toe of the boy's
boot--a playful kick that was not meant to land--and went into the barn
and came out again.
"Yes, an' I know somewhur else you gwine--you gwine to de war. Oh, I
know; yes, suh. Dere's a white man in town tryin' to git niggers to 'list
wid him, an' he's got a nigger sojer what say he's a officer hisself; yes,
mon, a corpril. An' dis nigger's jes a-gwine through