The Littlest Rebel Part 13

The soldier started violently, wrenched back from the selfish dream of happiness that rose as he looked at the picture of his child.

"What! Is _that_ why your father comes?"

"Yes, sir."

"I didn't know! I thought he came--"

He rose to his feet and turned away, his thoughts atumble, a pang of parental pity gnawing at his heart; then he wheeled and faced her, asking, with a break in his husky voice:

"And at other times--what do you eat, then?"

She made a quaint, depreciating gesture toward the appointments of her breakfast table.

"Blackberries--an'--an' coffee made out of aco'ns."

Again the troubled conqueror turned away.

"Oh, it's a shame!" he muttered between his teeth. "A wicked shame!"

He stood for a moment, silently, till Virgie spoke and jarred him with another confidence.

"My cousin Norris told me that the Yankees have bread every day; an'

tea--an' milk--an' everything. _An' b.u.t.ter!_"

This last-named article of common diet was mentioned with an air of reverential awe; and, somehow, it hurt the well-fed Union officer far more than had she made some direct accusation against the invading armies of the North.

"Don't, Virgie--please," he murmured softly. "There are some things we just can't bear to listen to--even in times of war." He sighed and dropped into his former seat, striving gently to change the subject.

"You have lived here--always?"

"Oh, no," she a.s.sured him, with a lift of her small, patrician brows.

"_This_ is the overseer's house. _Our_ house used to be up on the hill, in the grove."

"_Used_ to be--?"

"Yes, sir. But--but the Yankees burnt it up."

Morrison's fist came down on the table with a crash. He remembered now his raid of some months before upon this same plantation, so unfamiliar in its present neglected state. Again he looked into the fearless eyes of a Southern gentlewoman who mocked him while her lover husband swam the river and escaped. Again he saw the mansion wrapped in flame and smoke--the work of a drunken fiend in his own command. Yes, he remembered now; too well; then he turned to the child and spoke:

"Tell me about it. Won't you?"

She nodded, wriggled from her chair, and stood beside the table.

"Oh, it was a long time ago--a month, maybe--an' they came after our horses. Mamma an' me were all by ourselves--'ceptin' Uncle Billy and Sally Ann. An' we were dreadful scared--an' we hid in the ice house."

She paused. Her listener had leaned his elbow on the table, his hand across his eyes.

"Yes, dear. Go on."

The child had been standing opposite, with Susan Jemima and the acorn-coffee pot between them; but gradually she began to edge a little nearer, till presently she stood beside him, fingering a s.h.i.+ny b.u.t.ton on his coat.

"An' the blue boys ate up everything we had--an' took our corn. An' when they went away from our house, they--a man set it on fire. But another man got real mad with him, an'--an' shot him. _I_ know, 'cause Uncle Billy put him in the ground." She paused, then sank her voice to a whisper of mysterious dread, "An'--_an' I saw him!_"

"Don't think about it, Virgie," begged Morrison, slipping his arm about the mite, and trying not to put his own beloved ones in the little rebel's place. "What happened then?"

"We came to live here," said Virgie; "but Mamma got sick. Oh, she got terrible sick--an' one night Daddy came through, and put her in the ground, too. But _he_ says she's jus' asleep."

The soldier started. Mrs. Cary dead? This poor tot motherless? He drew the baby closer to him, stroking her hair, as her sleeping mother might have done, and waited for the rest.

"An' las' Friday, Sally Ann went away--I don't know where--an'--"

"What?" asked Morrison. "She left you here--all by yourself?"

"Yes, sir," said the child, with a careless laugh. "But _I_ don't mind.

Sally Ann was a triflin' n.i.g.g.e.r, anyhow. You see--"

"Wait a minute," he interrupted, "what became of the old colored man who--"

"Uncle Billy? Yes, sir. We sent him up to Richmond--to get some things, but he can't come back--the Yankees won't let him."

"Won't they?"

"No, sir. An' Daddy's been tryin' to get me up to Richmon', where my Aunt Margaret lives at, but he can't--'cause the Yankees are up the river an' down the river, an'--an' everywhere--an' he can't." She paused, as Morrison turned to her from his restless pacing up and down.

"My, but you've got fine clo'es! Daddy's clo'es are all rags--with--with holes in 'em."

He could not answer. There was nothing for him to say, and Virgie scorched him with another question:

"What did you come after Daddy for?"

"Oh, not because I _wanted_ to, little girl," he burst out harshly. "But you wouldn't understand." He had turned away, and was gazing through the open door, listening to the muttered wrath of the big black guns far down the river. "It's war! One of the hateful, pitiful things of war! I came because I had my orders."

"From your Gen'ral?"

He lowered his chin, regarding her in mild astonishment.

"Yes--my General."

"An' do you love _him_--like _I_ love Gen'ral Lee?"

"Yes, dear," he answered earnestly; "of course."

He wondered again to see her turn away in sober thought, tracing lines on the dusty floor with one small brown toe; for the child was wrestling with a problem. If a soldier had orders from his general, as she herself might put it, "he was _bound_ to come"; but still it was hard to reconcile such duty with the capture of her father. Therefore, she raised her tiny chin and resorted to tactics of a purely personal nature:

"An' didn't you know, if you hurt my daddy, I'd tell Uncle Fitz Lee on you?"

"No," the Yankee smiled. "Is he your uncle?"

The littlest rebel regarded him with a look of positive pity for his ignorance.

"He's _everybody's_ uncle," she stated warmly. "An' if I was to tell him, he'd come right after you an'--an' lick the _stuffins_ out of you."