Crittenden. Jr. John Fox

of him in pulpit or in private. So that all that was said against him by the pious was that he did not go to church as he should; and by the thoughtful, that he was making a shameful waste of the talents that the Almighty had showered so freely down upon him. And so without suffering greatly in public estimation, in spite of the fact that the ideals of Southern life were changing fast, he passed into the old-young period that is the critical time in the lives of men like him—when he thought he had drunk his cup to the dregs; had run the gamut of human experience; that nothing was left to his future but the dull repetition of his past. Only those who knew him best had not given up hope of him, nor had he really given up hope of himself as fully as he thought. The truth was, he never fell far, nor for long, and he always rose with the old purpose the same, even if it stirred him each time with less and less enthusiasm—and always with the beacon-light of one star shining from his past, even though each time it shone a little more dimly. For usually, of course, there is the hand of a woman on the lever that prizes such a man's life upward, and when Judith Page's clasp loosened on Crittenden, the castle that the lightest touch of her finger raised in his imagination—that he, doubtless, would have reared for her and for him, in fact, fell in quite hopeless ruins, and no similar shape was ever framed for him above its ashes.

      It was the simplest and oldest of stories between the two—a story that began, doubtless, with the beginning, and will never end as long as two men and one woman, or two women and one man are left on earth—the story of the love of one who loves another. Only, to the sufferers the tragedy is always as fresh as a knife-cut, and forever new.

      Judith cared for nobody. Crittenden laughed and pleaded, stormed, sulked, and upbraided, and was devoted and indifferent for years—like the wilful, passionate youngster that he was—until Judith did love another—what other, Crittenden never knew. And then he really believed that he must, as she had told him so often, conquer his love for her. And he did, at a fearful cost to the best that was in him—foolishly, but consciously, deliberately. When the reaction came, he tried to reëstablish his relations to a world that held no Judith Page. Her absence gave him help, and he had done very well, in spite of an occasional relapse. It was a relapse that had sent him to the mountains, six weeks before, and he had emerged with a clear eye, a clear head, steady nerves, and with the one thing that he had always lacked, waiting for him—a purpose. It was little wonder, then, that the first ruddy flash across a sky that had been sunny with peace for thirty years and more thrilled him like an electric charge from the very clouds. The next best thing to a noble life was a death that was noble, and that was possible to any man in war. One war had taken away—another might give back again; and his chance was come at last.

      It was midnight now, and far across the fields came the swift faint beat of a horse's hoofs on the turnpike. A moment later he could hear the hum of wheels—it was his little brother coming home; nobody had a horse that could go like that, and nobody else would drive that way if he had. Since the death of their father, thirteen years after the war, he had been father to the boy, and time and again he had wondered now why he could not have been like that youngster. Life was an open book to the boy—to be read as he ran. He took it as he took his daily bread, without thought, without question. If left alone, he and the little girl whom he had gone that night to see would marry, settle down, and go hand in hand into old age without questioning love, life, or happiness. And that was as it should be; and would to Heaven he had been born to tread the self-same way. There was a day when he was near it; when he turned the same fresh, frank face fearlessly to the world, when his nature was as unspoiled and as clean, his hopes as high, and his faith as child-like; and once when he ran across a passage in Stevenson in which that gentle student spoke of his earlier and better self as his "little brother" whom he loved and longed for and sought persistently, but who dropped farther and farther behind at times, until, in moments of darkness, he sometimes feared that he might lose him forever—Crittenden had clung to the phrase, and he had let his fancy lead him to regard this boy as his early and better self—better far than he had ever been—his little brother, in a double sense, who drew from him, besides the love of brother for brother and father for son, a tenderness that was almost maternal.

      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?