Part 81 (1/2)

CHAPTER XI. BELLEGARDE ONCE MORE

Supper at Bellegarde was not the simple meal it had been for a year past at Colonel Carvel's house in town. Mrs. Colfax was proud of her table, proud of her fried chickens and corn fritters and her desserts. How Virginia chafed at those suppers, and how she despised the guests whom her aunt was in the habit of inviting to some of them! And when none was present, she was forced to listen to Mrs. Colfax's prattle about the fas.h.i.+ons, her tirades against the Yankees.

”I'm sure he must be dead,” said that lady, one sultry evening in July.

Her tone, however, was not one of conviction. A lazy wind from the river stirred the lawn of Virginia's gown. The girl, with her hand on the wicker back of the chair, was watching a storm gather to the eastward, across the Illinois prairie.

”I don't see why you say that, Aunt Lillian,” she replied. ”Bad news travels faster than good.”

”And not a word from Comyn. It is cruel of him not to send us a line, telling us where his regiment is.”

Virginia did not reply. She had long since learned that the wisdom of silence was the best for her aunt's unreasonableness. Certainly, if Clarence's letters could not pa.s.s the close lines of the Federal troops, news of her father's Texas regiment could not come from Red River.

”How was Judge Whipple to-day?” asked Mrs. Colfax presently.

”Very weak. He doesn't seem to improve much.”

”I can't see why Mrs. Brice,--isn't that her name?--doesn't take him to her house. Yankee women are such prudes.”

Virginia began to rock slowly, and her foot tapped the porch.

”Mrs. Brice has begged the Judge to come to her. But he says he has lived in those rooms, and that he will die there,--when the time comes.”

”How you wors.h.i.+p that woman, Virginia! You have become quite a Yankee yourself, I believe, spending whole days with her, nursing that old man.”

”The Judge is an old friend of my father's; I think he would wish it,”

replied the girl, in a lifeless voice.

Her speech did not reveal all the pain and resentment she felt. She thought of the old man racked with pain and suffering in the heat, lying patient on his narrow bed, the only light of life remaining the presence of the two women. They came day by day, and often Margaret Brice had taken the place of the old negress who sat with him at night. Wors.h.i.+p Margaret Brice! Yes, it was wors.h.i.+p; it had been wors.h.i.+p since the day she and her father had gone to the little whitewashed hospital.

Providence had brought them together at the Judge's bedside. The marvellous quiet power of the older woman had laid hold of the girl in spite of all barriers.

Often when the Judge's pain was eased sufficiently for him to talk, he would speak of Stephen. The mother never spoke of her son, but a light would come into her eyes at this praise of him which thrilled Virginia to see. And when the good lady was gone, and the Judge had fallen into slumber, it would still haunt her.

Was it out of consideration for her that Mrs. Brice would turn the Judge from this topic which he seemed to love best? Virginia could not admit to herself that she resented this. She had heard Stephen's letters to the Judge. They came every week. Strong and manly they were, with plenty of praises for the Southern defenders of Vicksburg. Only yesterday Virginia had read one of these to Mr. Whipple, her face burning. Well that his face was turned to the window, and that Stephen's mother was not there!

”He says very little about himself,” Mr. Whipple complained. ”Had it not been for Brinsmade, we should never know that Sherman had his eye on him, and had promoted him. We should never have known of that exploit at Chickasaw Bluff. But what a glorious victory was Grant's capture of Vicksburg, on the Fourth of July! I guess we'll make short work of the Rebels now.”

No, the Judge had not changed much, even in illness. He would never change. Virginia laid the letter down, and tears started to her eyes as she repressed a retort. It was not the first time this had happened.

At every Union victory Mr. Whipple would loose his tongue. How strange that, with all his thought of others, he should fall short here!

One day, after unusual forbearance, Mrs. Brice had overtaken Virginia on the stairway. Well she knew the girl's nature, and how difficult she must have found repression. Margaret Brice had taken her hand.

”My dear,” she had said, ”you are a wonderful woman.” That was all. But Virginia had driven back to Bellegarde with a strange elation in her heart.

Some things the Judge had forborne to mention, and for this Virginia was thankful. One was the piano. But she had overheard Shadrach telling old Nancy how Mrs. Brice had pleaded with him to move it, that he might have more room and air. He had been obdurate. And Colonel Carvel's name had never once pa.s.sed his lips.

Many a night the girl had lain awake listening to the steamboats as they toiled against the river's current, while horror held her. Horror lest her father at that moment be in mortal agony amongst the heaps left by the battle's surges; heaps in which, like mounds of ashes, the fire was not yet dead. Fearful tales she had heard in the prison hospitals of wounded men lying for days in the Southern sun between the trenches at Vicksburg, or freezing amidst the snow and sleet at Donelson.

Was her bitterness against the North not just? What a life had been Colonel Carvel's! It had dawned brightly. One war had cost him his wife.

Another, and he had lost his fortune, his home, his friends, all that was dear to him. And that daughter, whom he loved best in all the world, he was perchance to see no more.