The Tyranny of Weakness | Page 2

to have been his cue, carrying him with the momentum of its intrinsic heroism over the ramparts of tongue-tied shyness. That was what he had essayed this morning, aided and abetted by the tuneful fragrance of June in Virginia. The stage had been set--his courage had mounted--and before he had reached his magnificent peroration, she had laughed at him. Ye Gods! She had affronted the erstwhile Confederate States of America and his spirit was galled.
Suddenly Conscience looked up and met his gaze penitently. It was a change from mockery so swift and complete that he should have suspected it, but he saw only a flash of sun through dark clouds.
"Do you like poetry?" she abruptly demanded.
"Like poetry!" Again the boy's countenance needed a twinkle of merriment to redeem it from a too serious acceptance of self. "Not to like poetry--if it's real poetry--is simply to be a plain clod." He spoke with an oracular and pedantic assurance which challenged the girl's mischief afresh.
"Shall I recite you something?" was her mild and seemingly placating suggestion, "just to see if it is real poetry?"
"Will you? I wish you would." He bent forward in eager anticipation. Verse should pave the way with music for the avowal which he had so far failed to force across the barrier between heart and lips.
She rose from the hammock and stood beside one of the broad verandah pillars, very straight and slender and flower-like, with the June sun on her hair. Stuart's heart was conscious of a sudden glow. A boy new to love, like a man new to drink, can recognize from a sip an elation that the jaded taste has forever forfeited. Then in a rich voice with a slightly exaggerated elocution, Conscience began:
"Up from the meadows, rich with corn, clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand, green-walled by the hills of Maryland."
Those schools wherein the last of the Farquaharsons had derived his primary education had not starred or featured the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier. Stuart's eyes dwelt devouringly on the elocutionist--as yet unruffled by suspicion. They were doing their best to say the things at which his lips balked. But as the recitation proceeded their light died from hope to misery and from misery to the anger of hurt pride. He stood very rigid and very attentive, making no effort to interrupt, but holding her gaze defiantly as she went on:
"Up the street came the Rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouch hat left and right, he glanced and the old flag caught his sight."
At these lines the boy flinched, but still he said nothing. Like a soldier who stands at attention under the threat of a firing squad he listened to the end--or rather to the stanzas which recite:
"'Shoot, if you must at this old gray head, but spare your country's flag,' she said. A flush of manhood, a look of shame, into the face of their leader came...."
That was too much! The man of whom these impious words were spoken was that gallant knight, without reproach, whose name is hallowed in every Southern heart. Very slowly Stuart Farquaharson raised his hand.
"I think," he announced with a shake of repressed fury in his voice, "I'll have to go home now. Good afternoon."
"Then you don't like poetry?"
"I don't consider that poetry," he said with a dignity which an archbishop might have envied. "I consider it slander of a dead hero."
"You mean, then," Conscience seemed a little frightened now and her utterance was hurried and fluttering, "that you are mad and are going? You never go until later than this."
It was difficult to be both courteous and honest, and Stuart's code demanded both.
"I expect there wasn't ever the same reason before."
This time it was the girl's eyes that leaped into flame and she stamped a small foot.
"Did you ever have any fun in your life?" she demanded. "You know perfectly well that I teased you just because you were such a solemn owl that you're not far from being a plain, every-day prig. All right; go if you like and don't come to see me again until you get over the idea that you're a--a--" she halted for a word, then added scornfully--"a combination high priest and Prince of Wales."
Stuart Farquaharson bowed stiffly.
"All right," he said. "I won't forget. Good-by."
* * * * *
At the dinner table that evening Mrs. Farquaharson noted with concern the trance-like abstraction in which her son sat, as one apart. Later as she mixed for the General the night-cap toddy, which was an institution hallowed by long usage, she commented on it.
"I'm afraid Stuart isn't well," she volunteered. "He's not a moody boy by nature, and he doesn't seem himself to-day. Perhaps we had better send him to Doctor Heathergill. It wouldn't