Chapter 14

Autumn came and the Legion was coming home--Basil was coming home. And Phyllis was for one hour haughty and unforgiving over what she called his shameful neglect and, for another, in a fever of unrest to see him. No, she was not going to meet him. She would wait for him at her own home, and he could come to her there with the honours of war on his brow and plead on bended knee to be forgiven. At least that was the picture that she sometimes surprised in her own mind, though she did not want Basil kneeling to anybody--not even to her.

The town made ready, and the spirit of welcome for the home-coming was oddly like the spirit of God-speed that had followed them six months before; only there were more smiling faces, more and madder cheers, and as many tears, but this time they were tears of joy. For many a mother and daughter who did not weep when father and brother went away, wept now, that they were coming home again. They had run the risk of fever and sickness, the real terrors of war. God knew they had done their best to get to the front, and the people knew what account they would have given of themselves had they gotten their chance at war. They had had all the hardship--the long, long hardship without the one moment of recompense that was the soldier's reward and his sole opportunity for death or glory. So the people gave them all the deserved honour that they would have given had they stormed San Juan or the stone fort at Caney. The change that even in that short time was wrought in the regiment, everybody saw; but only the old ex-Confederates and Federals on the street knew the steady, veteran-like swing of the march and felt the solid unity of form and spirit that those few months had brought to the tanned youths who marched now like soldiers indeed. And next the Colonel rode the hero of the regiment, who had got to Cuba, who had stormed the hill, and who had met a Spanish bullet face to face and come off conqueror--Basil, sitting his horse as only the Southerner, born to the saddle, can. How they cheered him, and how the gallant, generous old Colonel nodded and bowed as though to say:

"That's right; that's right. Give it to him! give it to him!"

Phyllis--her mother and Basil's mother being present--shook hands merely with Basil when she saw him first at the old woodland, and Basil blushed like a girl. They fell behind as the older people walked toward the auditorium, and Basil managed to get hold of her hand, but she pulled it away rather haughtily. She was looking at him very reproachfully, a moment later, when her eyes became suddenly fixed to the neck of his blouse, and filled with tears. She began to cry softly.

"Why, Phyllis."

Phyllis was giving way, and, thereupon, with her own mother and Basil's mother looking on, and to Basil's blushing consternation, she darted for his neck-band and kissed him on the throat. The throat flushed, and in the flush a tiny white spot showed--the mouth of a tiny wound where a Mauser bullet had hissed straight through.

Then the old auditorium again, and Crittenden, who had welcomed the Legion to camp at Ashland, was out of bed, against the doctor's advice, to welcome it to home and fireside. And when he faced the crowd--if they cheered Basil, what did they do now? He was startled by the roar that broke against the roof. As he stood there, still pale, erect, modest, two pairs of eyes saw what no other eyes saw, two minds were thinking what none others were--the mother and Judith Page. Others saw him as the soldier, the generous brother, the returned hero. These two looked deeper and saw the new man who had been forged from dross by the fire of battle and fever and the fire of love. There was much humility in the face, a new fire in the eyes, a nobler bearing--and his bearing had always been proud--a nobler sincerity, a nobler purpose.

He spoke not a word of himself--not a word of the sickness through which he had passed. It was of the long patience and the patriotism of the American soldier, the hardship of camp life, the body-wearing travail of the march in tropical heat. And then he paid his tribute to the regular. There was no danger of the volunteer failing to get credit for what he had done, but the regular--there was no one to speak for him in camp, on the transports, on the march, in tropical heat, and on the battlefield. He had seen the regular hungry, wet, sick, but fighting still; and he had seen him wounded, dying, dead, and never had he known anything but perfect kindness from one to the other; perfect courtesy to outsider; perfect devotion to officer, and never a word of complaint--never one word of complaint.

"Sometimes I think that the regular who has gone will not open his lips if the God of Battles tells him that not yet has he earned eternal peace."

As for the war itself, it had placed the nation high among the seats of the Mighty. It had increased our national pride, through unity, a thousand fold. It would show to the world and to ourselves that the heroic mould in which the sires of the nation were cast is still casting the sons of to-day; that we need not fear degeneracy nor dissolution for another hundred years--smiling as he said this, as though the dreams of Greece and Rome were to become realities here. It had put to rest for a time the troublous social problems of the day; it had brought together every social element in our national life--coal-heaver and millionaire, student and cowboy, plain man and gentleman, regular and volunteer--had brought them face to face and taught each for the other tolerance, understanding, sympathy, high regard; and had wheeled all into a solid front against a common foe. It had thus not only brought shoulder to shoulder the brothers of the North and South, but those brothers shoulder to shoulder with our brothers across the sea. In the interest of humanity, it had freed twelve million people of an alien race and another land, and it had given us a better hope for the alien race in our own.

And who knew but that, up where France's great statue stood at the wide-thrown portals of the Great City of the land, it had not given to the mighty torch that nightly streams the light of Liberty across the waters from the New World to the Old--who knew that it had not given to that light a steady, ever-onward-reaching glow that some day should illumine the earth?

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The Cuban fever does not loosen its clutch easily.

Crittenden went to bed that day and lay there delirious and in serious danger for more than a fortnight. But at the end a reward came for all the ills of his past and all that could ever come.

His long fight was over, and that afternoon he lay by his window, which was open to the rich, autumn sunlight that sifted through the woods and over the pasture till it lay in golden sheens across the fence and the yard and rested on his window-sill, rich enough almost to grasp with his hand, should he reach out for it. There was a little colour in his face--he had eaten one good meal that day, and his long fight with the fever was won. He did not know that in his delirium he had spoken of Judith--Judith--Judith--and this day and that had given out fragments from which his mother could piece out the story of his love; that, at the crisis, when his mother was about to go to the girl, Judith had come of her own accord to his bedside. He did not know her, but he grew quiet at once when the girl put her hand on his forehead.

Now Crittenden was looking out on the sward, green with the curious autumn-spring that comes in that Bluegrass land: a second spring that came every year to nature, and was coming this year to him. And in his mood for field and sky was the old, dreamy mistiness of pure delight--spiritual--that he had not known for many years. It was the spirit of his youth come back--that distant youth when the world was without a shadow; when his own soul had no tarnish of evil; when passion was unconscious and pure; when his boyish reverence was the only feeling he knew toward every woman. And lying thus, as the sun sank and the shadows stole slowly across the warm bands of sunlight, and the meadow-lark called good-night from the meadows, whence the cows were coming homeward and the sheep were still browsing--out of the quiet and peace and stillness and purity and sweetness of it all came his last vision--the vision of a boy with a fresh, open face and no shadow across the mirror of his clear eyes. It looked like Basil, but it was "the little brother" of himself coming back at last--coming with a glad, welcoming smile. The little man was running swiftly across the fields toward him. He had floated lightly over the fence, and was making straight across the yard for his window; and there he rose and floated in, and with a boy's trustfulness put his small, chubby hand in the big brother's, and Crittenden felt the little fellow's cheek close to his as he slept on, his lashes wet with tears.

The mother opened the door; a tall figure slipped gently in; the door was closed softly after it again, and Judith was alone; for Crittenden still lay with his eyes closed, and the girl's face whitened with pity and flamed slowly as she slowly slipped forward and stood looking down at him. As she knelt down beside him, something that she held in her hand clanked softly against the bed and Crittenden opened his eyes.

"Mother!"

There was no answer. Judith had buried her face in her hands. A sob reached his ears and he turned quickly.

"Judith," he said; "Judith," he repeated, with a quick breath. "Why, my God, you! Why--you--you've come to see me! you, after all--you!"

He raised himself slowly, and as he bent over her, he saw his father's sword, caught tightly in her white hands--the old sword that was between him and Basil to win and wear--and he knew the meaning of it all, and he had to steady himself to keep back his own tears.

"Judith!"

His voice choked; he could get no further, and he folded his arms about her head and buried his face in her hair.