Autumn came and the Legion was coming home--Basil was coming home. And
Phyllis was for one hour haughty and unforgiving over what she called
his shameful neglect and, for another, in a fever of unrest to see him.
No, she was not going to meet him. She would wait for him at her own
home, and he could come to her there with the honours of war on his brow
and plead on bended knee to be forgiven. At least that was the picture
that she sometimes surprised in her own mind, though she did not want
Basil kneeling to anybody--not even to her.
The town made ready, and the spirit of welcome for the home-coming was
oddly like the spirit of God-speed that had followed them six months
before; only there were more smiling faces, more and madder cheers, and
as many tears, but this time they were tears of joy. For many a mother
and daughter who did not weep when father and brother went away, wept
now, that they were coming home again. They had run the risk of fever
and sickness, the real terrors of war. God knew they had done their
best to get to the front, and the people knew what account they would
have given of themselves had they gotten their chance at war. They had
had all the hardship--the long, long hardship without the one moment of
recompense that was the soldier's reward and his sole opportunity for
death or glory. So the people gave them all the deserved honour that
they would have given had they stormed San Juan or the stone fort at
Caney. The change that even in that short time was wrought in the
regiment, everybody saw; but only the old ex-Confederates and Federals
on the street knew the steady, veteran-like swing of the march and felt
the solid unity of form and spirit that those few months had brought to
the tanned youths who marched now like soldiers indeed. And next the
Colonel rode the hero of the regiment, who had got to Cuba, who had
stormed the hill, and who had met a Spanish bullet face to face and come
off conqueror--Basil, sitting his horse as only the Southerner, born to
the saddle, can. How they cheered him, and how the gallant, generous old
Colonel nodded and bowed as though to say: "That's right; that's right. Give it to him! give it to him!"
Phyllis--her mother and Basil's mother being present--shook hands merely
with Basil when she saw him first at the old woodland, and Basil
blushed like a girl. They fell behind as the older people walked toward
the auditorium, and Basil managed to get hold of her hand, but she
pulled it away rather haughtily. She was looking at him very
reproachfully, a moment later, when her eyes became suddenly fixed to
the neck of his blouse, and filled with tears. She began to cry softly.