Crittenden: A Kentucky Story of Love and War

by Jr. John Fox

XIV

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."