Thankful Blossom
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Bret Harte >> Thankful Blossom
She paused, as the major approached her earnestly, and waved him
back with her hand. "He reproached me bitterly with my want of
feeling for his misfortunes," she went on again: "he recalled my
past protestations; he showed me my love-letters; and he told me
that if I were still his true sweetheart I ought to help him. I
told him if he would never call me by that name again; if he would
give up all claim to me; if he would never speak, write to me, nor
see me again; if he would hand me back my letters,--I would help
him." She stopped: the blood rushed into her pale face. "You will
remember, major, that I accepted this man's love as a young,
foolish, trustful girl; but when I made him this offer--he--he
accepted it."
"The dog!" said Major Van Zandt. "But in what way could you help
this double traitor?"
"I HAVE helped him," said Thankful quietly.
"But how?" said Major Van Zandt.
"By becoming a traitor myself," she said, turning upon him almost
fiercely. "Hear me! While you were quietly pacing these halls,
while your men were laughing and talking in the road, Caesar was
saddling my white mare, the fleetest in the country. He led her to
the lane below. That mare is now two miles away, with Capt.
Brewster on her back. Why do you not start, major? Look at me. I
am a traitor, and this is my bribe;" and she drew a package of
letters from her bosom, and flung them on the table.
She had been prepared for an outbreak or exclamation from the man
before her, but not for his cold silence. "Speak," she cried at
last, passionately. "Speak! Open your lips, if only to curse me!
Order in your men to arrest me. I will proclaim myself guilty, and
save your honor. But only speak!"
"May I ask," said Major Van Zandt coldly, "why you have twice
honored me with a blow?"
"Because I loved you; because, when I first saw you I saw the only
man that was my master, and I rebelled; because, when I found I
could not help but love you, I knew I never had loved before, and I
would wipe out with one stroke all the past that rose in judgment
against me; because I would not have you ever confronted with one
endearing word of mine that was not meant for you."
Major Van Zandt turned from the window where he had stood, and
faced the girl with sad resignation. "If I have in my foolishness,
Mistress Thankful, shown you how great was your power over me, when
you descended to this artifice to spare my feelings by confessing
your own love for me, you should have remembered that you were
doing that which forever kept me from wooing or winning you. If
you had really loved me your heart, as a woman's, would have warned
you against that which my heart, as a gentleman's, has made a law
of honor; when I tell you, as much for the sake of relieving your
own conscience as for the sake of justifying mine, that if this
man, a traitor, my prisoner, and your recognized lover, had escaped
from my custody without your assistance, connivance, or even
knowledge, I should have deemed it my duty to forsake you until I
caught him, even if we had been standing before the altar."
Thankful heard him, but only as a strange voice in the distance, as
she stood with fixed eyes, and breathless, parted lips before him.
Yet even then I fear that, womanlike, she did not comprehend his
rhetoric of honor, but only caught here and there a dull, benumbing
idea that he despised her, and that in her effort to win his love
she had killed it, and ruined him forever.
"If you think it strange," continued the major, "that, believing as
I do, I stand here only to utter moral axioms when my duty calls me
to pursue your lover, I beg you to believe that it is only for your
sake. I wish to allow a reasonable time between your interview
with him, and his escape, that shall save you from any suspicion of
complicity. Do not think," he added with a sad smile, as the girl
made an impatient step toward him, "do not think I am running any
risk. The man cannot escape. A cordon of pickets surrounds the
camp for many miles. He has not the countersign, and his face and
crime are known."
"Yes," said Thankful eagerly, "but a part of his own regiment
guards the Baskingridge road."
"How know you this?" said the major, seizing her hand.
"He told me."
Before she could fall on her knees, and beg his forgiveness, he had
darted from the room, given an order, and returned with cheeks and
eyes blazing.
"Hear me," he said rapidly, taking the girl's two hands, "you know
not what you've done. I forgive you. But this is no longer a
matter of duty, but my personal honor. I shall pursue this man
alone. I shall return with him, or not at all. Farewell. God
bless you!"
But before he reached the door she caught him again. "Only say you
have forgiven me once more."
"I do."
"Guert!"
There was something in the girl's voice more than this first
utterance of his Christian name, that made him pause.
"I told--a--lie--just--now. There is a fleeter horse in the stable
than my mare; 'tis the roan filly in the second stall."
"God bless you!"
He was gone. She waited to hear the clatter of his horse's hoofs
in the roadway. When Caesar came in a few moments later, to tell
the news of Capt. Brewster's escape, the room was empty; but it was
soon filled again by a dozen turbulent troopers.
"Of course she's gone," said Sergeant Tibbitts: "the jade flew with
the captain."
"Ay, 'tis plain enough. Two horses are gone from the stable
besides the major's," said Private Hicks.
Nor was this military criticism entirely a private one. When the
courier arrived at headquarters the next morning, it was to bring
the report that Mistress Thankful Blossom, after assisting her
lover to escape had fled with him. "The renegade is well off our
hands," said Gen. Sullivan gruffly: "he has saved us the public
disgrace of a trial. But this is bad news of Major Van Zandt."
"What news of the major?" asked Washington quickly.
"He pursued the vagabond as far as Springfield, killing his horse,
and falling himself insensible before Major Merton's quarters.
Here he became speedily delirious, fever supervened, and the
regimental surgeon, after a careful examination, pronounced his
case one of small-pox."
A whisper of horror and pity went around the room. "Another
gallant soldier, who should have died leading a charge, laid by the
heels by a beggar's filthy distemper," growled Sullivan. "Where
will it end?"
"God knows," said Hamilton. "Poor Van Zandt! But whither was he
sent,--to the hospital?"
"No: a special permit was granted in his case; and 'tis said he was
removed to the Blossom Farm,--it being remote from neighbors,--and
the house placed under quarantine. Abner Blossom has prudently
absented himself from the chances of infection, and the daughter
has fled. The sick man is attended only by a black servant and an
ancient crone; so that, if the poor major escapes with his life or
without disfigurement, pretty Mistress Bolton of Morristown need
not be scandalized or jealous."
V
The ancient crone alluded to in the last chapter had been standing
behind the window-curtains of that bedroom which had been Thankful
Blossom's in the weeks gone by. She did not move her head, but
stood looking demurely, after the manner of ancient crones, over
the summer landscape. For the summer had come before the tardy
spring was scarce gone, and the elms before the window no longer
lisped, but were eloquent in the softest zephyrs. There was the
flash of birds in among the bushes, the occasional droning of bees
in and out the open window, and a perpetually swinging censer of
flower incense rising from below. The farm had put on its gayest
bridal raiment; and looking at the old farm-house shadowed with
foliage and green with creeping vines, it was difficult to conceive
that snow had ever lain on its porches, or icicles swung from its
mossy eaves.
"Thankful!" said a voice still tremulous with weakness.
The ancient crone turned, drew aside the curtains, and showed the
sweet face of Thankful Blossom, more beautiful even in its
paleness.
"Come here, darling," repeated the voice.
Thankful stepped to the sofa whereon lay the convalescent Major Van
Zandt.
"Tell me, sweetheart," said the major, taking her hand in his,
"when you married me, as you told the chaplain, that you might have
the right to nurse me, did you never think that if death spared me
I might be so disfigured that even you, dear love, would have
turned from me with loathing?"
"That was why I did it, dear," said Thankful mischievously. "I
knew that the pride, and the sense of honor, and self-devotion of
some people, would have kept them from keeping their promises to a
poor girl."
"But, darling," continued the major, raising her hand to his lips,
"suppose the case had been reversed: suppose you had taken the
disease, that I had recovered without disfigurement, but that this
sweet face--"
"I thought of that too," interrupted Thankful. "Well, what would
you have done, dear?" said the major, with his old mischievous
smile.
"I should have died," said Thankful gravely.
"But how?"
"Somehow. But you are to go to sleep, and not ask impertinent and
frivolous questions; for father is coming to-morrow."
"Thankful, dear, do you know what the trees and the birds said to
me as I lay there tossing with fever?"
"No, dear."
"Thankful Blossom! Thankful Blossom! Thankful Blossom is coming!"
"Do you know what I said, sweetheart, as I lifted your dear head
from the ground when you reeled from your horse just as I overtook
you at Springfield?"
"No, dear."
"There are some things in life worth stooping for."
And she winged this Parthian arrow home with a kiss.