The Christmas Peace | Page 5

unending to the Judge waiting in the darkness; but in truth it was not long, for the interview was brief. It was with Major Drayton and not with his daughter.
Major Drayton declined, both on his daughter's part and on his own, the honor which had been proposed.
At this moment the door opened and Lucy herself appeared. She was a vision of loveliness. Her face was white, but her eyes were steady. If she knew what had occurred, she gave no sign of it in words. She walked straight to her father's side and took his hand.
"Lucy," he said, "Mr. Hampden has done us the honor to ask your hand and I have declined it."
"Yes, papa." Her eyelids fluttered and her bosom heaved, but she did not move, and Lucy was too much a Drayton to unsay what her father had said, or to undo what he had done.
Oliver Hampden's eyes did not leave her face. For him the Major had disappeared, and he saw only the girl who stood before him with a face as white as the dress she wore.
"Lucy, I love you. Will you ever care for me? I am going--going away to-morrow, and I shall not see you any more; but I would like to know if there is any hope." The young man's voice was strangely calm.
The girl held out her hand to him.
"I will never marry anyone else."
"I will wait for you all my life," said the young man.
Bending low, he kissed her hand in the palm, and with a bow to her father, strode from the room.
The Judge, waiting at the gate in the darkness, heard the far-off, monotonous galloping of Oliver's horse on the hard plantation road. He rode forward to meet him.
"Well!"
It was only a word.
"They declined."
The father scarcely knew his son's voice, it was so wretched.
"What! Who declined? Did you see--"
"Both!"
Out in the darkness Judge Hampden broke forth into such a torrent of rage that his son was afraid for his life and had to devote all his attention to soothing him. He threatened to ride straight to Drayton's house and horsewhip him on the spot. This, however, the young man prevented, and the two rode home together in a silence which was unbroken until they had dismounted at their own gate and given their horses to the waiting servants. As they entered the house, Judge Hampden spoke.
"I hope you are satisfied," he said, sternly. "I make but one request of you--that from this time forth, you will never mention the name of Drayton to me again as long as you live."
"I suppose I should hate her," said the son, bitterly, "but I do not. I love her and I believe she cares for me."
His father turned in the door-way and faced him.
"Cares for you! Not so much as she cares for the smallest negro on that place. If you ever marry her, I will disinherit you."
"Disinherit me!" burst from the young man. "Do you think I care for this place? What has it ever brought to us but unhappiness? I have seen your life embittered by a feud with your nearest neighbor, and now it wrecks my happiness and robs me of what I would give all the rest of the world for."
Judge Hampden looked at him curiously. He started to say, "Before I would let her enter this house, I would burn it with my own hands"; but as he met his son's steadfast gaze there was that in it which made him pause. The Hampden look was in his eyes. The father knew that another word might sever them forever.
*****
If ever a man tried to court death, young Oliver Hampden did. But Death, that struck many a happier man, passed him by, and he secured instead only a reputation for reckless courage and was promoted on the field.
His father rose to the command of a brigade, and Oliver himself became a captain.
At last the bullet Oliver had sought found him; but it spared his life and only incapacitated him for service.
There were no trained nurses during the war, and Lucy Drayton, like so many girls, when the war grew fiercer, went into the hospitals, and by devotion supplied their place.
Believing that life was ended for her, she had devoted herself wholly to the cause, and self-repression had given to her face the gentleness and consecration of a nun.
It was said that once as she bent over a wounded common soldier, he returned to consciousness, and after gazing up at her a moment, asked vaguely, "Who are you, Miss?"
"I am one of the sisters whom our Father has sent to nurse you and help you to get well. But you must not talk."
The wounded man closed his eyes and then opened them with a faint smile.
"All right; just one