The pike-gate slammed now and the swift rush of wheels over the
bluegrass turf followed; the barn-gate cracked sharply on the night air
and Crittenden heard him singing, in the boyish, untrained tenor that is
so common in the South, one of the old-fashioned love-songs that are
still sung with perfect sincerity and without shame by his people: "You'll never find another love like mine,
"You'll never find a heart that's half so true."
And then the voice was muffled suddenly. A little while later he entered
the yard-gate and stopped in the moonlight and, from his window,
Crittenden looked down and watched him. The boy was going through the
manual of arms with his buggy-whip, at the command of an imaginary
officer, whom, erect and martial, he was apparently looking straight in
the eye. Plainly he was a private now. Suddenly he sprang forward and
saluted; he was volunteering for some dangerous duty; and then he walked
on toward the house. Again he stopped. Apparently he had been promoted
now for gallant conduct, for he waved his whip and called out with low,
sharp sternness; "Steady, now! Ready; fire!" And then swinging his hat over his head: "Double-quick--charge!" After the charge, he sat down for a moment on
the stiles, looking up at the moon, and then came on toward the house,
singing again: "You'll never find a man in all this world
Who'll love you half so well as I love you."
And inside, the mother, too, was listening; and she heard the elder
brother call the boy into his room and the door close, and she as well
knew the theme of their talk as though she could hear all they said. Her
sons--even the elder one--did not realize what war was; the boy looked
upon it as a frolic. That was the way her two brothers had regarded the
old war. They went with the South, of course, as did her father and her
sweetheart. And her sweetheart was the only one who came back, and him
she married the third month after the surrender, when he was so sick and
wounded that he could hardly stand. Now she must give up all that was
left for the North, that had taken nearly all she had.
Was it all to come again--the same long days of sorrow, loneliness, the
anxious waiting, waiting, waiting to hear that this one was dead, and
that this one was wounded or sick to death--would either come back
unharmed? She knew now what her own mother must have suffered, and what
it must have cost her to tell her sons what she had told hers that
night. Ah, God, was it all to come again?