The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

tightened. “But you have! You owe it to Marianna to listen to her now. This is important, Drew, more important than you can guess. No, Boyd—” her gesture checked her son as he arose from the chair—“this is none of your affair. Come with me, Drew!”
    He picked up a borrowed coat, also much too wide for him, pulled it on over the bunchiness of his shirt, and followed her, swallowing what he knew to be a useless protest.
    The parlor was as bright with sun as the upper room had been. As Drew entered a pace or two behind Cousin Merry, the officer in blue strode away from the hearth to meet them. But Aunt Marianna forestalled her husband’s greeting, rising suddenly from a chair, her crinoline rustling across the carpet. She held out her hands, and then hesitated, studying Drew’s face, looking a little daunted, as if she had expected something she did not find. The assurance she had displayed at their last meeting on the Lexington road was missing.
    “Drew?”
    He bowed, conscious that he must present an odd figure in the ill-fitting clothing of Meredith Barrett’s long dead husband.
    Major Forbes held out his hand. “Welcome home, my boy.”
    My boy. Consciously or unconsciously the major’s tone strove to thrust Drew into the past, or so he believed. The major might almost be considering Drew an unruly schoolboy now safely out of some scrape, welcome indeed if he would settle down quietly into the conventional mold of Oak Hill or Red Springs. But he was no schoolboy, and at that moment the parlor of Oak Hill, for all its luxury and warmth, was a box sealing him in stifling confinement which he could no longer endure. Drew held tight control over that resurgence of his old impatience, knowing that his first instinct had been right: the old life fitted him now no better than his coat. But he answered civilly:
    “Thank you, suh.”
    His proper courtesy apparently reassured his aunt. She came to him, her hands on his shoulders as she stood on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. “Drew, come home with us, dear—please!”
    He shook his head. “I don’t belong at Red Springs, ma’am. I never did.”
    “Nonsense!” Major Forbes put the force of a field officer’s authority into that denial. “I do not and never did agree with many of Alexander Mattock’s decisions. I do so even less when they pertain to your situation, my boy. You have every right to consider Red Springs your home. You must come to us, resume your interrupted education, take your proper place in the family and the community—”
    Drew shook his head again. The major paused. He had been studying Drew, and now there was a faint shadow of uneasiness in his own expression. He might be slowly realizing that he was not fronting a repentant schoolboy rescued from a piece of regrettable youthful folly. A veteran was being forced against his will to recognize the stamp of his own experience on another, if much younger, man.
    “What are your plans?” he asked in another tone of voice entirely.
    “Drew—” Major Forbes waved aside that tentative interruption from Cousin Merry.
    “I don’t know. But I can’t stay here.” That much he was sure of, Oak Hill, Red Springs, all of this was no longer necessary to him any more than the outgrown toys of childhood could hold the interest of a man. Once, hurt and seeking for freedom, he had thought of the army as home. Now he knew he had yet to find what he wanted or needed. But there was no reason why he could not go looking, even if he could not give a name to the object of such a search. “I might go west. It’s all new out there, a good place to start on my own.”
    There was a catch of breath from Aunt Marianna. The look she gave Cousin Merry held something of accusation. “You told him!”
    “Told me what, ma’am?”
    “That your father is alive.…” She saw his surprise.
    “Is that true, suh?” Drew appealed to the major.
    Forbes scowled, tugging at the belt supporting his saber. “Yes. We found some letters among your grandfather’s papers after his death. Your father wasn’t killed; he was in a Mexican prison during the war. When he escaped and returned to Texas, your grandfather had already been there and taken your mother away. Hunt Rennie was too ill to follow immediately. Before he had recovered enough to travel, he was informed his wife was dead, and he was allowed to believe that you died with her—at birth.”
    “But why?” Alexander Mattock had disliked, even hated his