He hurried to the house to prepare to go to the Union meeting. He had a reason for going. The Federal troops held Romney then, a neighboring village, and he knew many of the officers would be at this meeting. There was a party of Confederates in Blue's Gap, a mountain-fastness near by, and Scofield had heard a rumor that the Unionists would attack them to-morrow morning: he meant to try and find out the truth of it, so as to give the boys warning to be ready, and, maybe, lend them a helping hand. Only for Dode's sake, he would have been in the army long ago.
He stopped on the porch to clean his shoes, for the floor was newly scrubbed, and Miss Scofield was a tidy housekeeper, and had, besides, a temper as hot and ready to light as her father's pipe. The old man stopped now, half chuckling, peeping in at the window to see if all was clear within. But you must not think for this that Dode's temper was the bugbear of the house,—though the girl herself thought it was, and shed some of the bitterest tears of her life over it. Just a feverish blaze in the blood, caught from some old dead grandfather, that burst out now and then.
Dode, not being a genius, could not christen it morbid sensibility; but as she had a childish fashion of tracing things to commonplace causes, whenever she felt her face grow hot easily, or her throat choke up as men's do when they swear, she concluded that her liver was inactive, and her soul was tired of sitting at her Master's feet, like Mary. So she used to take longer walks before breakfast, and cry sharply, incessantly, in her heart, as the man did who was tainted with leprosy, "Lord, help me!" And the Lord always did help her.
My story is of Dode; so I must tell you that these passion-fits were the only events of her life. For the rest, she washed and sewed and ironed. If her heart and brain needed more than this, she was cheerful in spite of their hunger. Almost all of God's favorites among women, before their life-work is given them, pass through such hunger,—seasons of dull, hot inaction, fierce struggles to tame and bind to some unfitting work the power within. Generally, they are tried thus in their youth,—just as the old aspirants for knighthood were condemned to a night of solitude and prayer before the day of action. This girl was going through her probation with manly-souled bravery.
She came out on the porch now, to help her father on with his coat, and to tie his spatterdashes. You could not see her in the dark, of course; but you would not wonder, if you felt her hand, or heard her speak, that the old man liked to touch her, as everybody did,—spoke to her gently: her own voice, did I say? was so earnest and rich,—hinted at unsounded depths of love and comfort, such as utter themselves in some unfashionable women's voices and eyes. Theodora, or -dosia, or some such heavy name, had been hung on her when she was born,—nobody remembered what: people always called her Dode, so as to bring her closer, as it were, and to fancy themselves akin to her.
Bone, going in, had left the door ajar, and the red firelight shone out brightly on her, where she was stooping. Nature had given her a body white, strong, and womanly,—broad, soft shoulders, for instance, hands slight and nervous, dark, slow eyes. The Devil never would have had the courage to tempt Eve, if she had looked at him with eyes as tender and honest as Dode Scofield's.
Yet, although she had so many friends, she impressed you as being a shy home-woman. That was the reason her father did not offer to take her to the meeting, though half the women in the neighborhood would be there.
"She a'n't smart, my Dode," he used to say,—"'s got no public sperrit."
He said as much to young Gaunt, the Methodist preacher, that very day, knowing that he thought of the girl as a wife, and wishing to be honest as to her weaknesses and heresies. For Dode, being the only creature in the United States who thought she came into the world to learn and not to teach, had an odd habit of trying to pick the good lesson out of everybody: the Yankees, the Rebels, the Devil himself, she thought, must have some purpose of good, if she could only get at it. God's creatures alike. She durst not bring against the foul fiend himself a "railing accusation," being as timid in judging evil as were her Master and the archangel Michael. An old-fashioned timidity, of course: people thought Dode a time-server, or "a bit daft."
"She don't take sides sharp in this war," her father said to Gaunt, "my little girl; 'n fact, she isn't keen till put her soul intill anythin' but lovin'. She's a pore Democrat, David, an' not a strong Methody,—allays got somethin' till say fur t' other side, Papishers an' all. An' she gets religion quiet. But it's the real thing,"—watching his hearer's face with an angry suspicion. "It's out of a clean well, David, I say!"