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Updated: June 10, 2025
"I'm going to walk across the fields to Chericoke," she said, "and Hosea is to bring the carriage for me about sunset. We must have some white silk to make those flags out of, and there isn't a bit in the house." She went out, stepping slowly in her wide skirts and holding the pitcher carefully before her. Floretta's baby was sleeping, and after a few pleasant words the girl kept on to Chericoke.
Here he was asked to stay the night, but with the memory of the blue valley before his eyes, he shook his head and pushed on again in the early afternoon. The vision of Chericoke hung like a star above his road, and he struggled a little nearer day by day.
"I can't help it, Betty, I can't help it," the Governor would declare, when he came back from following the old gentleman to the drive; "did you see Mr. Yancey step out of Dick Wythe's dry bones to-day? Poor Dick, an honest fellow who loved no man's quarrel but his own; it's too bad, I declare it's too bad." And the next day he would send Betty over to Chericoke to stroke down the Major's temper.
"We keep house for the soldiers now," she said, and went out to make things ready. As he plunged into the warm water and dried himself upon the fresh linen she had left, he heard the sound of passing feet in the broad hall, and from the outside kitchen there floated a savoury smell that reminded him of Chericoke at the supper hour.
In the road before him the door at Chericoke opened wide as on the old Christmas Eves, and he saw the Major and the Governor draining their glasses under the garlands of mistletoe and holly, while Betty and Virginia, in dresses of white tarleton, stood against the ruddy glow that filled the panelled parlour.
With the word he tossed back his hair and quickened his steps, as if he were leaving servitude behind him in the house at Chericoke; and, as the anger blazed up within his heart he found pleasure in the knowledge that at last he was starting out to level his own road.
She tossed a rose into Miss Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden. A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin.
For hours he was tortured by the longing for raw beef, for the fresh blood that would put heat into his veins. The kitchen at Chericoke flamed upon the hillside, as he remembered it on winter evenings when the great chimney was filled with light and the crane was in its place above the hickory.
With the half-forgotten sound, Dan returned as if in a vision to his last night at Chericoke, when he had run off in his boyish folly, with free Levi's hammer beating in his ears. Then he had dreamed of coming back again, but not like this.
And Betty came to him again not in detached visions, but entire and womanly. When he remembered her as on that last night at Chericoke it was with the impulse to fall down and kiss her feet. Reckless and blind with anger as he had been, she would have come cheerfully with him wherever his road led; and it was this passionate betrayal of herself that had taught him the full measure of her love.
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