It was the third day before Christmas, and Betty, with her skirts pinned up, her sleeves turned back to her elbows, and a red silk handkerchief of the Colonel’s tied around her head, was preparing the icing for the Christmas cake, when she saw Fortescue passing the window. There was no time to escape. The next minute he was in the little sitting-room, and Betty was clasped to his heart. After the first rapture of meeting, Betty made numerous apologies, unpinned her skirts, pulled down her sleeves, and removed the handkerchief from her shining hair, but Fortescue told her she did not look half so pretty as before. It was a happy hour, one of those little glimpses of the Elysian fields of the soul which come only to the young and the pure. Luckily, the Colonel was taking his afternoon stroll supported by his stick, and with Kettle as aide-de-camp in attendance. The lovers had a full hour to themselves in the violet dusk, the room only lighted by the wood fire and the pale glow of the wintry sunset. Presently, the Colonel came in and shook hands cordially with Fortescue. It was the hour when Betty sang to her harp the old songs the Colonel loved. Fortescue thought he had never seen so sweet a picture as Betty playing and singing to the harp, while the Colonel, leaning forward on his stick, listened with his soul in his eyes. Kettle, squatting tailor-fashion on the hearth, fixed his round eyes on Betty, and his little woolly black head was motionless while she was singing.
Of course Fortescue stayed to supper, and Uncle Cesar was reinforced by Kettle, who was chief batter-cake server, and brought from the kitchen the numerous relays of hot batter-cakes, hot waffles, and hot biscuits of which the well known Virginia formula is, “Take two and butter them while they are hot.” Afterward, when Kettle had had his supper, he was sent for to exhibit his accomplishments with the fiddle. Kettle played dances and sang simultaneously, his merry music delighting Fortescue, whose musical education was not above rag-time. Fortescue told about the arrangements he had made for the Christmas Eve ball at Rosehill, and Betty thought them ineffably grand.
When Kettle had been sent away, there was much talk about armies and soldiers between Fortescue and the Colonel, whose heart was ever with the fighting men. Betty listened with delight to this modern Froissart’s Chronicle, and said presently:
“How glad I am to be a soldier’s daughter!”
“And that’s why you will make a glorious wife for a soldier,” replied Fortescue impudently, at which Betty blushed all over her face and neck.
When Fortescue was walking back to Rosehill, he saw over his shoulder the lights shining from Betty’s dormer windows. He went direct to his own room as soon as he reached Rosehill, and after a while saw the lights go out in Betty’s windows. Fortescue, who, like most soldiers, believed in God and respected Him as the Great Commander, knew that Betty was saying her simple, earnest prayers for him, and the thought that the prayers of the innocent were heard gave him a reverent thankfulness. To Betty, in her little white bed in the darkened room, with the curtain drawn wide so that she could watch the lights at Rosehill as long as they burned, it was as if the world were growing too beautiful. Deep in her heart was the old Greek superstition that one cannot walk the airy heights of happiness long without a precipice opening beneath one’s feet. The thought oppressed her and kept her awake long after the windows of Rosehill were dark. Something like a presentiment stole into her heart.
“Whatever happens, though,” she thought, “nothing can come between Jack and me. We understand each other too well.”
Suddenly the melancholy cry of a nightbird resounded outside in the darkness. It was strange to hear that cry at midnight in the dead of winter and it made Betty shiver.
The next day the gaieties began with great vigor. The county was full of visitors, and the whirl of dancing feet was everywhere.