The Christmas Peace | Page 4

character enough, as her friends knew: those gray eyes that smiled could grow haughty with disdain or flash with indignation, and she had taught many an uppish young man to feel her keen irony.
"She gets only her intellect from the Dray-tons; her beauty and her sweetness come from her mother," said a lady of the neighborhood to Judge Hampden, thinking to please him.
"She gets both her brains and beauty from her mother and only her name from her father," snapped the Judge, who had often seen her at church, and never without recalling Lucy Fielding as he knew her.
That she and young Oliver Hampden fought goes without saying. But no one knew why she was cruelly bitter to a young man who once spoke slightingly of Oliver, or why Oliver, who rarely saw her except at church, took up a quarrel of hers so furiously.
*****
The outbreak of the war, or rather the conditions preceding that outbreak, finally fixed forever the gulf between the two families. Judge Hampden was an ardent follower of Calhoun and "stumped" the State in behalf of Secession, whereas Major Drayton, as the cloud that had been gathering so long rolled nearer, emerged from his seclusion and became one of the sternest opponents of a step which he declared was not merely revolution, but actual rebellion. So earnest was he, that believing that slavery was the ultimate bone of contention, he emancipated his slaves on a system which he thought would secure their welfare. Nothing could have more deeply stirred Judge Hampden's wrath. He declared that such a measure at such a crisis was a blow at every Southern man. He denounced Major Drayton as "worse than Garrison, Phillips, and Greeley all put together."
They at last met in debate at the Court House. Major Drayton exasperated the Judge by his coolness, until the latter lost his temper and the crowd laughed.
"I do not get as hot as you do," said the Major, blandly. He looked as cool as a cucumber, but his voice betrayed him.
"Oh, yes, you do," snorted the Judge. "A mule gets as hot as a horse, but he does not sweat."
This saved him.
There came near being a duel. Everyone expected it. Only the interposition of friends prevented their meeting on the field. Only this and one other thing.
Though no one in the neighborhood knew it until long afterward--and then only in a conjectural way by piecing together fragments of rumors that floated about--young Oliver Hampden really prevented the duel. He told his father that he loved Lucy Drayton. There was a fierce outbreak on the Judge's part.
"Marry that girl!--the daughter of Wilmer Drayton! I will disinherit you if you but so much as----"
"Stop!" The younger man faced him and held up his hand with an imperious gesture. "Stop! Do not say a word against her or I may never forget it."
The father paused with his sentence unfinished, for his son stood before him suddenly revealed in a strength for which the Judge had never given him credit, and he recognized in his level eyes, tense features, and the sudden set of the square jaw, the Hampden firmness at its best or worst.
"I have nothing to say against her," said the Judge, with a sudden rush of recollection of Lucy Fielding. "I have no doubt she is in one way all you think her; but she is Wilmer Drayton 's daughter. You will never win her."
"I will win her," said the young man.
That night Judge Hampden thought deeply over the matter, and before daylight he had despatched a note to Major Drayton making an apology for the words he had used.
Both Judge Hampden and his son went into the army immediately on the outbreak of hostilities. Major Drayton, who to the last opposed Secession bitterly, did not volunteer until after the State had seceded; but then he, also, went in, and later was desperately wounded.
A few nights before they went off to the war, Judge Hampden and his son rode over together to Major Drayton's to offer the olive-branch of peace in shape of young Oliver and all that he possessed.
Judge Hampden did not go all the way, for he had sworn never to put foot again in Major Drayton's house so long as he lived, and, moreover, he felt that his son would be the better ambassador alone. Accordingly, he waited in the darkness at the front gate while his son presented himself and laid at Lucy Drayton's feet what the Judge truly believed was more than had ever been offered to any other woman. He, however, sent the most conciliatory messages to Major Drayton.
"Tell him," he said, "that I will take down my fence and he shall run the line to suit himself." He could not have gone further.
The time that passed appeared