She looked at him affrightedly and shrank back from
the window. He seemed to have woefully expected
a reception of this kind for his question. He
gave her instantly a glance of appeal.
She said: “Why, no, I don’t suppose
you will.”
“Never?”
“Why, no, ’tain’t possible.
You—you are a—Yankee!”
“Oh, I know it, but——”
Eventually he continued: “Well, some day,
you know, when there’s no more fighting, we
might——” He observed that she
had again withdrawn suddenly into the shadow, so he
said: “Well, good-bye!”
When he held her fingers she bowed her head, and he
saw a pink blush steal over the curves of her cheek
and neck.
“Am I never going to see you again?”
She made no reply.
“Never?” he repeated.
After a long time, he bent over to hear a faint reply:
“Sometimes—when there are no troops
in the neighbourhood—grandpa don’t
mind if I—walk over as far as that old
oak tree yonder—in the afternoons.”
It appeared that the captain’s grip was very
strong, for she uttered an exclamation and looked
at her fingers as if she expected to find them mere
fragments. He rode away.
The bay horse leaped a flower-bed. They were
almost to the drive, when the girl uttered a panic-stricken
cry.
The captain wheeled his horse violently, and upon
his return journey went straight through a flower-bed.
The girl had clasped her hands. She beseeched
him wildly with her eyes. “Oh, please,
don’t believe it! I never walk to the old
oak tree. Indeed I don’t! I never—never—never
walk there.”
The bridle drooped on the bay charger’s neck.
The captain’s figure seemed limp. With
an expression of profound dejection and gloom he stared
off at where the leaden sky met the dark green line
of the woods. The long-impending rain began to
fall with a mournful patter, drop and drop. There
was a silence.
At last a low voice said, “Well—I
might—sometimes I might—perhaps—
but only once in a great while—I might walk
to the old tree—in the afternoons.”
Out of the low window could be seen three hickory
trees placed irregularly in a meadow that was resplendent
in spring-time green. Farther away, the old,
dismal belfry of the village church loomed over the
pines. A horse, meditating in the shade of one
of the hickories, lazily swished his tail. The
warm sunshine made an oblong of vivid yellow on the
floor of the grocery.
“Could you see the whites of their eyes?”
said the man, who was seated on a soap box.
“Nothing of the kind,” replied old Henry
warmly. “Just a lot of flitting figures,
and I let go at where they ’peared to be the
thickest. Bang!”
“Mr. Fleming,” said the grocer—his
deferential voice expressed somehow the old man’s
exact social weight—“Mr. Fleming,
you never was frightened much in them battles, was
you?”
