CHAPTER XI

BELLEGARDE ONCE MORE

Supper at Bellegarde was not the simple meal it had been for a year past at Colonel Carvel’s house in town.  Mrs. Colfax was proud of her table, proud of her fried chickens and corn fritters and her desserts.  How Virginia chafed at those suppers, and how she despised the guests whom her aunt was in the habit of inviting to some of them!  And when none was present, she was forced to listen to Mrs. Colfax’s prattle about the fashions, her tirades against the Yankees.

“I’m sure he must be dead,” said that lady, one sultry evening in July.  Her tone, however, was not one of conviction.  A lazy wind from the river stirred the lawn of Virginia’s gown.  The girl, with her hand on the wicker back of the chair, was watching a storm gather to the eastward, across the Illinois prairie.

“I don’t see why you say that, Aunt Lillian,” she replied.  “Bad news travels faster than good.”

“And not a word from Comyn.  It is cruel of him not to send us a line, telling us where his regiment is.”

Virginia did not reply.  She had long since learned that the wisdom of silence was the best for her aunt’s unreasonableness.  Certainly, if Clarence’s letters could not pass the close lines of the Federal troops, news of her father’s Texas regiment could not come from Red River.

“How was Judge Whipple to-day?” asked Mrs. Colfax presently.

“Very weak.  He doesn’t seem to improve much.”

“I can’t see why Mrs. Brice,—­isn’t that her name?—­doesn’t take him to her house.  Yankee women are such prudes.”

Virginia began to rock slowly, and her foot tapped the porch.

“Mrs. Brice has begged the Judge to come to her.  But he says he has lived in those rooms, and that he will die there,—­when the time comes.”

“How you worship that woman, Virginia!  You have become quite a Yankee yourself, I believe, spending whole days with her, nursing that old man.”

“The Judge is an old friend of my father’s; I think he would wish it,” replied the girl, in a lifeless voice.

Her speech did not reveal all the pain and resentment she felt.  She thought of the old man racked with pain and suffering in the heat, lying patient on his narrow bed, the only light of life remaining the presence of the two women.  They came day by day, and often Margaret Brice had taken the place of the old negress who sat with him at night.  Worship Margaret Brice!  Yes, it was worship; it had been worship since the day she and her father had gone to the little whitewashed hospital.  Providence had brought them together at the Judge’s bedside.  The marvellous quiet power of the older woman had laid hold of the girl in spite of all barriers.

Often when the Judge’s pain was eased sufficiently for him to talk, he would speak of Stephen.  The mother never spoke of her son, but a light would come into her eyes at this praise of him which thrilled Virginia to see.  And when the good lady was gone, and the Judge had fallen into slumber, it would still haunt her.