The Long Roll Part 52

He thought that afternoon, as he pa.s.sed through the road gates and into the drive between the oaks, that he had never seen the Greenwood place look so fair. The sun was low and there were shadows, but where the light rays touched, all lay mellow and warm, golden and gay and sweet.

On the porch he found Unity, sitting with her guitar, singing to a ragged grey youth, thin and pale, with big hollow eyes. She smiled and put out her hand. "Judith said you were coming. She will be down in a moment. Major Stafford--Captain Howard--Go on singing? Very well,--

"Soft o'er the fountain, lingering falls the southern moon--"

"Why is it that convalescent soldiers want the very most sentimental ditties that can be sung?

"Far o'er the mountain, breaks the day too soon!"

"I know that string is going to snap presently! Then where would I buy guitar strings in a land without a port?

"Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part-- Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart!"

Judith came down in a soft old muslin, pale violet, open at the throat.

It went well with that warm column, with the clear beauty of her face and her dark liquid eyes. She had a scarf in her hand; it chanced to be the long piece of black lace that Stafford remembered her wearing that April night.--"It is a lovely evening. Suppose we walk."

There was a path through the flower garden, down a slope of gra.s.s, across a streamlet in a meadow, then gently up through an ancient wood, and more steeply to the top of a green hill--a hill of hills from which to watch the sunset. Stafford unlatched the flower-garden gate. "The roses are blooming as though there were no war!" said Judith. "Look at George the Fourth and the Seven Sisters and my old Giant of Battle!"

"Sometimes you are like one flower," answered Stafford, "and sometimes like another. To-day, in that dress, you are like heliotrope."

Judith wondered. "Is it wise to go on--if he has forgotten so little as that?" She spoke aloud. "I have hardly been in the garden for days.

Suppose we rest on the arbour steps and talk? There is so much I want to know about the Valley--"

Stafford looked pleadingly. "No, no! let us go the old path and see the sunset over Greenwood. Always when I ride from here I say to myself, 'I may never see this place again!'"

They walked on between the box. "The box has not been clipped this year.

I do not know why, except that all things go unpruned. The garden itself may go back to wilderness."

"You have noticed that? It is always so in times like these. We leave the artificial. Things have a hardier growth--feeling breaks its banks--custom is not listened to--"

"It is not so bad as that!" said Judith, smiling. "And we will not really let the box grow out of all proportion!--Now tell me of the Valley."

They left the garden and dipped into the green meadow. Stafford talked of battles and marches, but he spoke in a monotone, distrait and careless, as of a day-dreaming scholar reciting his lesson. Such as it was, the recital lasted across the meadow, into the wood, yet lit by yellow light, a place itself for day dreams. "No. I did not see him fall. He was leading an infantry regiment. He was happy in his death, I think. One whom the G.o.ds loved.--Wait! your scarf has caught."

He loosed it from the branch. She lifted the lace, put it over her head, and held it with her slender hand beneath her chin. He looked at her, and his breath came sharply. A shaft of light, deeply gold, struck across the woodland path. He stood within it, on slightly rising ground that lifted him above her. The quality of the light gave him a singular aspect. He looked a visitant from another world, a worn spirit, of fine temper, but somewhat haggard, somewhat stained. Lines came into Judith's brow. She stepped more quickly, and they pa.s.sed from out the wood to a bare hillside, gra.s.s and field flowers to the summit. The little path that zigzagged upward was not wide enough for two. He moved through the gra.s.s and flowers beside her, a little higher still, and between her and the sun. His figure was dark; no longer lighted as it was in the wood.

Judith sighed inwardly. "I am so tired that I am fanciful. I should not have come." She talked on. "When we were children and read 'Pilgrim's Progress' Unity and I named this the Hill Difficulty. And we named the Blue Ridge the Delectable Mountains--War puts a stop to reading."

"Yes. The Hill Difficulty! On the other side was the Valley of Humiliation, was it not?"

"Yes: where Christian met Apollyon. We are nearly up, and the sunset will be beautiful."

At the top, around a solitary tree, had been built a bench. The two sat down. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge. Above the mountains sailed a fleet of little clouds, in a sea of pale gold shut in by purple headlands. Here and there on the earth the yellow light lingered. Judith sat with her head thrown back against the bark of the tree, her eyes upon the long purple coast and the golden sea. Stafford, his sword drawn forward, rested his clasped hands upon the hilt and his cheek on his hands. "Are they not like the Delectable Mountains?" she said. "Almost you can see the shepherds and the flocks--hear the pilgrims singing.

Look where that shaft of light is striking!"

"There is heliotrope all around me," he answered. "I see nothing, know nothing but that!"

"You do very wrongly," she said. "You pain me and you anger me!"

"Judith! Judith! I cannot help it. If the wildest tempest were blowing about this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and strive to cling to the bough, to remain with its larger self--yet would it be twisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My pa.s.sion is that tempest and my soul is that leaf."

"It is more than a year since first I told you that I could not return your feeling. Last October--that day we rode to the old mill--I told you so again, and told you that if we were to remain friends it could only be on condition that you accepted the truth as truth and let the storm you speak of die! You promised--"

"Even pale friends.h.i.+p, Judith--I wanted that!"

"If you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October I thought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, wonderful letters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood--"

"I could hear from you only on those terms. I kept them until they, too, were of no use--"

"When I wrote to you last month--"

"I knew of your happiness--before you wrote. I learned it from one nearly concerned. I--I--" He put his hand to his throat as if he were choking, arose, and walked a few paces and came back. "It was over there near Gordonsville--under a sunset sky much like this. What did I do that night? I have a memory of all the hours of blackness that men have ever pa.s.sed, lying under forest trees with their faces against the earth. You see me standing here, but I tell you my face is against the earth, at your feet--"

"It is madness!" said Judith. "You see not me, but a G.o.ddess of your own making. It is a chain of the imagination. Break it! True G.o.ddesses do not wish such love--at least, true women do not!"

"I cannot break it. It is too strong. Sometimes I wish to break it, sometimes not."

Judith rose. "Let us go. The sun is down."

She took the narrow path and he walked beside and above her as before.

Darker crimson had come into the west, but the earth beneath had yet a glow and warmth. They took a path which led, not by way of the wood, but by the old Greenwood graveyard, the burying-place of the Carys. At the foot of the lone tree hill they came again side by side, and so mounted the next low rise of ground. "Forgive me," said Stafford. "I have angered you. I am very wretched. Forgive me."

They were beside the low graveyard wall. She turned, leaning against it.

There were tears in her eyes. "You all come, and you go away, and the next day brings news that such and such an one is dead! With the sound of Death's wings always in the air, how can any one--I do not wish to be angry. If you choose we will talk like friends--like a man and a woman of the South. If you do not, I can but shut my ears and hasten home and henceforth be too wise to give you opportunity--"

"I go back to the front to-morrow. Be patient with me these few minutes.

And I, Judith--I will cling with all my might to the tree--"

A touch like sunlight came upon him of his old fine grace, charming, light, and strong. "I won't let go! How lovely it is, and still--the elm tops dreaming! And beyond that gold sky and the mountains all the fighting! Let us go through the graveyard. It is so still--and all their troubles are over."

Within the graveyard, too, was an old bench around an elm. "A few minutes only!" pleaded Stafford. "Presently I must ride back to town--and in the morning I return to the Valley." They sat down. Before them was a flat tombstone sunk in ivy, a white rose at the head.

Stafford, leaning forward, drew aside with the point of his scabbard the dark sprays that mantled the graved coat of arms.

LUDWELL CARY

_In part I sleep. I wake within the whole._

He let the ivy swing back. "I have seen many die this year who wished to live. If death were forgetfulness! I do not believe it. I shall persist, and still feel the blowing wind--"

"Listen to the cow-bells!" said Judith. "There shows the evening star."

"Can a woman know what love is? This envelope of the soul--If I could but tear it! Judith, Judith! Power and longing grow in the very air I breathe!--will to move the universe if thereby I might gain you!--your presence always with me in waves of light and sound! and you cannot truly see nor hear me! Could you do so, deep would surely answer deep!"

"Do you not know," she said clearly, "that I love Richard Cleave? You do not attract me. You repel me. There are many souls and many deeps, and the ocean to which I answer knows not your quarter of the universe!"

"Do you love him so? I will work him harm if I can!"

She rose. "I have been patient long enough.--No! not with me, if you please! I will go alone. Let me pa.s.s, Major Stafford!--"

She was gone, over the dark trailing periwinkle, through the little gate canopied with honeysuckle. For a minute he stayed beneath the elms, calling himself fool and treble fool; then he followed, though at a little distance. She went before him, in her pale violet, through the gathering dusk, unlatched for herself the garden gate and pa.s.sed into the shadow of the box. A few moments later he, too, entered the scented alley and saw her waiting for him at the gate that gave upon the lawn.