“I suppose the tramp is hungry; they always are,” she said, apologetically, as her eyes wandered across the orchard to the enclosure on the hillside where, under the pine trees, our boy in grey was lying, with a boy in blue beside him.
That night I saw Fan put Col. Errington’s note in a little box on our dressing bureau, where she kept her few trinkets, but his name was not mentioned between us until after the fall of Richmond, when Jack Fullerton, our neighbor, who had been in the war and who knew about Fan’s pony and the officer, whom he teasingly called Fan’s Yankee, brought a Washington paper in which we read that Col. Errington, who was so severely wounded at Petersburg, was recovering rapidly and would soon be able to be moved into his house on Franklin Square.
“I suppose you are very glad that your gallant Colonel is getting well,” Jack said, and Fan replied, “Of course I am. Do you think me a murderess that I want any man to die.”
“I thought at one time you would like to exterminate the entire Federal army,” Jack said, and Fan replied, “So I would, and I have no love for them now; but can’t a body change some of his views?”
And, truly, Fan’s views were greatly changed from what they were at the beginning of the war, to which time I must go back for a little and tell of the boy in grey and the boy in blue, who brought the change and who, though dead, have much to do with this story.
Chapter II—An Episode.
THE BOY IN GREY AND THE BOY IN BLUE.
I have written of Dr. Hathern’s daughters, but have said nothing of his son, our brother Charlie, who was four years our senior and little more than a boy when the war broke out. Too young by far to join the army, father and I said. But Fan thought differently, and when the clouds of strife grew darker and denser and there were calls for more recruits she urged him on until at last he enlisted and we saw him with others march away on the Monday after the Easter of ’62. How handsome he was in his new uniform, and how proud we were of him, he was so tall and straight, with such a sunny smile on his boyish face and in his laughing blue eyes.
“Bress de boy; he look like Sol’mon in all his best clos’,” Phyllis said, regarding him admiringly when he put them on, “an’ though I spec’s I’se a mighty bad un seein’ I’se a nigger and one of Linkum’s folks, I hope he’ll beat ’em sho’.”
“Beat them! Of course we shall!” Fan said, putting her arms around Charlie’s neck and laying a hand on the shoulder of Jack Fullerton, who had also enlisted. “Of course we shall beat them. The Northerners are all cowards. One or two battles will end the matter and you will come marching home covered with glory.”
She was talking mostly to Jack, flashing upon him a look from her bright eyes which would have made a less brave man face the cannon’s mouth. Jack had been my hero since my earliest remembrance, although I knew that he preferred Fan, who was tall and fair and comely, while I was short and dark and homely. It was mainly owing to her influence that he had enlisted, and he was to dine with us that Easter Day as his father was dead and his mother, who was an invalid, was away at some springs. How bright we made the house with the lilies Charlie was so fond of, saying they made him think of his mother and the angels, and I never see one now, nor inhale its perfume, that it does not bring Charlie back to me as he was that last day at home when there were great bowls of them on the mantels and stands and dinner table, which was loaded with every delicacy Phyllis could devise. The rooms looked as if decked for a bridal, but they seemed like a funeral, we were all so sad, except Fan. She was in the wildest of spirits and talked of the next Easter when the war would be over, and Charlie with us again, wearing shoulder straps may be, or at all events covered with honor as a soldier who had done his duty.