"Oh, Robert, Robert," Mrs. Tanberry cried, in a frightened whisper to herself, "all the fun and brightness went out of the world when you came home!"
For, in truth, the gayety and light-heartedness which, during the great lady's too brief reign, had seemed a vital adjunct of the house to make the place resound with music and laughter, were now departed. No more did Mrs. Tanberry extemporize Dan Tuckers, mazourkas, or quadrilles in the ball-room, nor Blind-Man's Buff in the library; no more did serenaders nightly seek the garden with instrumental plunkings and vocal gifts of harmony. Even the green bronze boy of the fountain seemed to share the timidity of the other youths of the town where Mr. Carewe was concerned, for the goblet he held aloft no longer sent a lively stream leaping into the sunshine in translucent gambols, but dribbled and dripped upon him like a morbid autumn rain. The depression of the place was like a drape of mourning purple; but not that house alone lay glum, and there were other reasons than the return of Robert Carewe why Rouen had lost the joy and mirth that belonged to it. Nay, the merry town had changed beyond all credence; it was hushed like a sick-room, and dolefully murmurous with forebodings of farewell and sorrow.
For all the very flower of Rouen's youth had promised to follow Tom Vanrevel on the long and arduous journey to Mexico, to march burning miles under the tropical sun, to face strange fevers and the guns of Santa Anna.
Few were the houses of the more pretentious sort that did not mourn, in prospect, the going of son, or brother, or close friend; mothers already wept not in secret, fathers talked with husky bravado; and everyone was very kind to those who were to go, speaking to them gently and bringing them little foolish presents. Nor could the hearts of girls now longer mask as blocks of ice to the prospective conquistadores; Eugene Madrillon's young brother, Jean, after a two years' Beatrice-and-Benedict wooing of Trixie Chenoweth (that notable spitfire) announced his engagement upon the day after his enlistment, and recounted to all who would listen how his termagant fell upon his neck in tears when she heard the news. "And now she cries about me all the time," finished the frank Jean blithely.
But there was little spirit for the old merriments: there were no more carpet-dances at the Bareauds', no masquerades at the Madrillons', no picnics in the woods nor excursions on the river; and no more did light feet bear light hearts through the "mazes of the intricate schottische, the subtle mazourka, or the stately quadrille," as Will Cummings remarked in the Journal. Fanchon, Virginia, and five or six others, spent their afternoons mournfully, and yet proudly, sewing and cutting large pieces of colored silk, fashioning a great flag for their sweethearts and brothers to bear southward and plant where stood the palace of the Montezumas.
That was sad work for Fanchon, though it was not for her brother's sake that she wept, since, as everyone knew, Jefferson was already so full of malaria and quinine that the fevers of the South and Mexico must find him invulnerable, and even his mother believed he would only thrive and grow hearty on his soldiering. But about Crailey, Fanchon had a presentiment more vivid than any born of the natural fears for his safety; it came to her again and again, reappearing in her dreams; she shivered and started often as she worked on the flag, then bent her fair head low over the gay silks, while the others glanced at her sympathetically. She had come to feel quite sure that Crailey was to be shot.
"But I've dreamed it--dreamed it six!" she cried, when he laughed, at her and tried to cheer her. "And it comes to me in the day-time as though I saw it with my eyes: the picture of you in an officer's uniform, lying on the fresh, green grass, and a red stain just below the throat."
"That shows what dreams are made of, dear lady," he smiled. "We'll find little green grass in Mexico, and I'm only a corporal; so where's the officer's uniform?"
Then Fanchon wept the more, and put her arms about him, while it seemed to her that she must cling to him so forever and thus withhold him from fulfilling her vision, and that the gentle pressure of her arms must somehow preserve him to life and to her. "Ah, you can't go, darling," she sobbed, while he petted her and tried to soothe her. "You can't leave me!
You belong to me! They can't, can't, can't take you away from me!"
And when the flag was completed, save for sewing the stars upon the blue ground, she took it away from the others and insisted upon finishing the work herself. To her own room she carried it, and each of the white stars that the young men of Rouen were to follow in the struggle that would add so many others to the constellation, was jewelled with her tears and kissed by her lips as it took its place with its brothers. Never were neater stitches taken, for, with every atom of her body yearning to receive the shot that was destined for Crailey, this quiet sewing was all that she could do! She would have followed him, to hold a parasol over him under the dangerous sun, to cook his meals properly, to watch over him with medicines and blankets and a fan; she would have followed barefoot and bareheaded, and yet, her heart breaking with the crucial yearning to mother him and protect him, this was all that she could for him, this small stitching at the flag he had promised to follow.
