John March, Southerner

"No, no! Let them go! They were mine when they were property, and they are mine now! Let them go!"

The singing ceased. The child in the next room had not stirred. The dumfounded husband sat motionless under pretence of listening. His wife made a despairing gesture. He motioned to hearken a moment more; but no human sound sent a faintest ripple across the breathless air; the earth was as silent as the stars. Still he waited – in vain – they were gone.

The soldier and his wife lay down once more without a word. There was no more need of argument than of accusation. For in those few moments the weight of his calamities had broken through into the under quicksands of his character and revealed them to himself.

VIII.

SEVEN YEARS OF SUNSHINE

Poets and painters make darkness stand for oblivion. But for evil things or sad there is no oblivion like sunshine.

The next day was hot, blue, and fragrant. John rose so late that he had to sit up in front of his breakfast alone. He asked the maid near by if she thought his father would be home soon. She "reckoned so."

"I wish he would be home in a hour," he mused, aloud. "I wish he would be on the mountain road right now."

When he stepped down and started away she crouched before him.

"Whah you bound fuh, ole gen'leman, lookin' so sawt o' funny-sad?"

"I dunno."

"W'at you gwine do, boss?"

"I dunno."

"Well, cayn't you kiss me, Mist' I-dunno?"

He paid the toll and passed out to his play. With an old bayonet fixed on a stick he fell to killing Yankees – colored troops. Pressing them into the woods he charged, yelling, and came out upon the mountain road that led far down to the pike. Here a new impulse took him and he moved down this road to form a junction with his father. For some time the way was comparatively level. By and by he came to heavier timber and deeper and steeper descents. He went ever more and more loiteringly, for his father did not appear. He thought of turning back, yet his longing carried him forward. He was tired, but his mother did not like him to walk long distances when he was tired, so it wouldn't be right to turn back. He decided to wait for his father and ride home.

Meantime he would go to the next turn in the road and look. He looked in vain. And so at the next – the next – the next. He went slowly, for his feet were growing tender. Sometimes he almost caught a butterfly. Sometimes he slew more Yankees. Always he talked to himself with a soft bumbling like a bee's.

But at last he ceased even this and sat down at the edge of the stony road ready to cry. His bosom had indeed begun to heave, when in an instant all was changed. Legs forgot their weariness, the heart its dismay, for just across the road, motionless beside a hollow log, what should he see but a cotton-tail rabbit. As he stealthily reached for his weapon the cotton-tail took two slow hops and went into the log. Charge bayonets! – pat-pat-pat – slam! and the stick rattled in the hole, the deadly iron at one end and the deadly boy at the other.

And yet nothing was impaled. Singular! He got his eyes to the hole and glared in, but although it was full of daylight from a larger hole at the other end, he could see no sign of life. It baffled comprehension. But so did it defy contradiction. There was but one Resource: to play the rabbit was still there and only to be got out by rattling the bayonet every other moment and repeating, in a sepulchral voice, "I – I – I'm gwine to have yo' meat fo' dinneh!"

He had been doing this for some time when all at once his blood froze as another voice, fifteen times as big as his, said, in his very ear —

"I – I – I'm gwine to have yo' meat fo' dinneh."

He dropped half over, speechless, and beheld standing above him, nineteen feet high as well as he could estimate hastily, a Yankee captain mounted and in full uniform. John leaped up, and remembered he was in gray.

"What are you doing here all alone, Shorty?"

"I dunno."

"Who are you? What's your name?"

"I dunno."

The Captain moved as if to draw his revolver, but brought forth instead a large yellow apple. Then did John confess who he was and why there. The Captain did as much on his part.

He had risen with the morning star to do an errand beyond Widewood, and was now getting back to Suez. This very dawn he had made Judge March's acquaintance beside his broken wagon, and had seen him ride toward Suez to begin again the repair of his disasters. Would the small Confederate like to ride behind him?

Very quickly John gave an arm and was struggling up behind the saddle. The Captain touched the child's back.

"Owch!"

"Why, what's the matter? Did I hurt you?"

"No, sir."

The horse took his new burden unkindly, plunged and danced.

"Afraid?" asked the Captain. John's eyes sparkled merrily and he shook his head.

"You're a pretty brave boy, aren't you?" said the stranger. But John shook his head again.

"I'll bet you are, and a tol'able good boy, too, aren't you?"

"No, sir, I'm not a good boy, I'm bad. I'm a very bad boy, indeed."

The horseman laughed. "I don't mistrust but you're good enough."

"Oh, no. I'm not good. I'm wicked! I'm noisy! I make my ma's head ache every day! I usen't to be so wicked when I was a little shaver. I used to be a shaver, did you know that? But now I'm a boy. That's because I'm eight. I'm a boy and I'm wicked. I'm awful wicked, and I'm getting worse. I whistle. Did you think I could whistle? Well, I can… There! did you hear that? It's wicked to whistle in the house – to whistle loud – in the house – it's sinful. Sometimes I whistle in the house – sometimes." He grew still and fell to thinking of his mother, and how her cheek would redden with something she called sorrow at his shameless companioning with the wearer of a blue uniform. But he continued to like his new friend; he was so companionably "low flung."

"Do you know Jeff-Jack?" he asked. But the Captain had not the honor.

"Well, he captures things. He's brave. He's dreadful brave."

"No! Aw! you just want to scare me!"

"So is Major Garnet. Did you ever see Major Garnet? Well, if you see him you mustn't make him mad. I'd be afraid for you to make him mad."

"Why, how's that?"

"I dunno," said Johnnie, very abstractedly.

As they went various questions came up, and by and by John discoursed on the natural badness of "black folks" – especially the yellow variety – with imperfections of reasoning almost as droll as the soft dragging of his vowels. Time passed so pleasantly that when they came into the turnpike and saw his father coming across the battle-field with two other horsemen, his good spirits hardly had room to rise any higher. They rather fell. The Judge had again chanced upon the company of Major Garnet and Jeff-Jack Ravenel, and it disturbed John perceptibly for three such men to find him riding behind a Yankee.

It was a double surprise for him to see, first, with what courtesy they treated the blue-coat, and then how soon they bade him good-day. The Federal had smilingly shown a flask.

"You wouldn't fire on a flag of truce, would you?"

"I never drink," said Garnet.

"And I always take too much," responded Jeff-Jack.

I think we have spoken of John's slumbers being dreamless. A child can afford to sleep without dreaming, he has plenty of dreams without sleeping. No need to tell what days, weeks, months, of sunlit, forest-shaded, bird-serenaded, wide-awake dreaming passed over this one's wind-tossed locks between the ages of eight and fifteen.