"Yer uniform?" she gasped, stepping back.Darby was not quick always, and he looked down at his clothes and then at her again, his dazed brain wondering.
"Whar's yer uniform?" she asked.
"At home," he said, quietly, still wondering.She seemed to catch some hope.
"Yer got a furlough?" she said, more quietly, coming a little nearer to him, and her eyes growing softer.
"Got a furlough?" he repeated to gain time for thought."I -- I ----"He had never thought of it before; the words in her letter flashed into his mind, and he felt his face flush.He would not tell her a lie.
"No, I ain't got no furlough," he said, and paused whilst he tried to get his words together to explain.But she did not give him time.
"What you doin' with them clo'se on?" she asked again.
"I -- I ----" he began, stammering as her suspicion dawned on him.
"You're a deserter!" she said, coldly, leaning forward, her hands clenched, her face white, her eyes contracted.
"A what!" he asked aghast, his brain not wholly taking in her words.
"You're a deserter!" she said again -- "and -- a coward!"All the blood in him seemed to surge to his head and leave his heart like ice.
He seized her arm with a grip like steel.
"Vashti Mills," he said, with his face white, "don't you say that to me --if yer were a man I'd kill yer right here where yer stan'!"He tossed her hand from him, and turned on his heel.
The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water as if he were on dry land.She could not have made him hear if she had wished it; for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines, bending them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom into white waves, and the thunder which had been rumbling in the distance suddenly broke with a great peal just overhead.
In a few minutes the rain came; but the girl did not mind it.
She stood looking across the bottom until it came in sheets, wetting her to the skin and shutting out everything a few yards away.
The thunder-storm passed, but all that night the rain came down, and all the next day, and when it held up a little in the evening the bottom was a sea.
The rain had not prevented Darby from going out -- he was used to it;and he spent most of the day away from home.When he returned he brought his mother a few provisions, as much meal perhaps as a child might carry, and spent the rest of the evening sitting before the fire, silent and motionless, a flame burning back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on his brow.He was in his uniform, which he had put on again the night before as soon as he got home, and the steam rose from it as he sat.The other clothes were in a bundle on the floor where he had tossed them the evening before.He never moved except when his mother now and then spoke, and then sat down again as before.
Presently he rose and said he must be going; but as he rose to his feet, a pain shot through him like a knife; everything turned black before him and he staggered and fell full length on the floor.
He was still on the floor next morning, for his mother had not been able to get him to the bed, or to leave to get any help; but she had made him a pallet, and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging fever.
Feeble as she was, the sudden demand on her had awakened the old woman's faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible.
One thing puzzled her: in his incoherent mutterings, Darby constantly referred to a furlough and a deserter.
She knew that he had a furlough, of course; but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the words.So the day passed and then, Darby's delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor's to ask help.The neighbor had to go to Mrs.Douwill's as the only place where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback, who asked her a few questions.They were members of a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day, and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days any more than at Mrs.Stanley's.Vashti was in a state of mind which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.
She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening, for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name.She kept his presence to herself, thinking that -- thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.
Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself of the thought of Darby.She could have torn it out for hate of herself;and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.
For two days she neither ate nor spoke.She watched the opposite hill through the rain which still kept up -- something was going on over there, but what it was she could not tell.At last, on the evening of the third day, she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something;she could not have gone to Mrs.Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so;for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side, and it was over her head in the current.She set off, therefore, up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way.
She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening, and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things the men of the conscript guard she had seen.Vashti's heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat.As she was so near she went on up to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen riding slowly along.She stood aside to let them pass;but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.
They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way.
