David Malcolm Part 24

"Davy!"

I looked down. He was indistinct in the shadow of the rough tent. He had brought his other hand to cover mine.

"It was a good fight, wasn't it, Davy?"

"It was a grand fight," said I.

"And you'll tell them at home, Davy?"

"Yes, you and I will tell them together," I said with forced cheerfulness. "But you must be quiet till the surgeon comes."

It was growing dark. Over the plain the bark of heavy guns and the crackle of rifles had stopped. Camp-fires were lighting, a circle of them hemming in the town. Even the near-by road had grown quite quiet, like any country road where the stillness is broken by the rare clatter of hoofs or the curses of some stumbling pedestrian.

His hands were pulling at mine and I leaned down over him in the darkness. He could only whisper those last few words.

One hand slipped from mine; from the other life seemed to have gone, it was so still and listless.

I leaned so close over the dark form that my face touched his. I knew that he was going from me, and I wanted to hold him back. It was so terrible for him to die this way, in this lonely field with no wise hand to help him. My useless hands would have shaken him to arouse his life again, but I stayed them.

I knew that it was futile to speak, that my voice was falling on dulled ears, but what else could I do to stir him to fight for life?

"I'll tell them--we will tell them together," I cried. "We will go home to Penelope, you and I, and they shall know how you fought. And they will be proud of you, Professor; I know they will. And how glad they will be to see you--how glad Penelope will be! Can't you hear me?"

I looked up, straining my ears for the sound of hoofs, but the road was as quiet as any country lane before dawn. I leaned over the dark form and listened, and I knew that his march was ended.

CHAPTER XXVI

Through what quiet lanes of trivial circ.u.mstance do we move toward the momentous events of our lives? We go our way, whistling thoughtlessly; we turn a corner and stand face to face with the all-important. In my boyhood I went fis.h.i.+ng and tumbled into a mountain stream; I overheard Boller of '89 speaking to Gladys Todd; I walked the Avenue at half past three in the afternoon and met Penelope Blight. How finely spun is the thread which holds together my story! A firmer foothold on the bank, an ear less quick to catch an undertone, a moment's delay before setting out on my daily airing, and there might have been no story to tell you; the valley might have been all the world I know and the wall of mountains my mind's horizon.

Then I come to the matter of Philip Bennett's motor. It was always breaking down. The delays that it caused as we journeyed north from Naples were annoying, but at the time these were trivial events, as we usually found a comfortable inn where we could wait while Bennett's man lay in the dust and peered up into the vitals of the machine. It was an adventurous thing to trust one's self to the mercy of the Italian highway in the untrustworthy little cars of those days, but Stephen Bennett insisted on our joining his brother, and as I was travelling back to England with him after a hard year in the Sudan I consented.

Bennett's brother met us at Naples, where we landed from the steamer, and, after pointing out to us the marvels of his self-propelling vehicle, put us into it, and took us puffing and rattling northward.

We broke down twice a day, but we did not mind it, for after the trip from Khartum, the saddle over the desert, and the uncomfortable Egyptian rail, this new invention was to us the height of luxury in travel.

Stephen Bennett was in the Egyptian army, in the camel corps. I had ridden many a long march with him, and was beside him at Omdurman when he was struck through the body by a Remington. We got in a nasty corner that morning on the heights of Kerreri, and were so hard pressed by the dervishes in the retreat that the wounded were saved with the greatest difficulty. Bennett was so badly hurt that it took two of us to hold him on my horse; but we got him back to the river and the hospital, and after Khartum fell I picked him up at Fort Atbara. To Cairo by rail, a week at sea, and in the October days we were rattling northward and homeward over the white Italian roads. We reached Rome.

I had one day in the Eternal City while Francois replaced a broken gear, and then we went on to Foligno, where we paced the Corso for an afternoon and the Frenchman fixed up his brakes. Late that night at Perugia we broke down at the foot of the hill and we had to climb to our hotel. At this last mishap Bennett began to show annoyance, for he had not as yet recovered his full strength, and the next morning, over our coffee and rolls, he proposed that we go by rail to Florence, where he knew people, and wait there until the car caught up with us. To Bennett's brother this suggestion was a reflection on the power of his beloved machine. He resented it, and I, not wis.h.i.+ng to inject myself into a fraternal argument of some heat, went out to see the town, promising to return when they had amicably settled our plans.

From the rampart, where I paused that morning, as I strolled out so carelessly, leaning over the wall and looking over the Umbrian plain, there is a fair prospect--the fairest, I think, that I have ever seen, save one--and I hung there drinking in its peace and ruminating.

Across that plain, and I should take another step toward home. But it was my boyhood's home alone, and yet I was going happily to sit again on the horse-hair sofa in the parlor, with my father on one hand and my mother on the other, and before me, perhaps, Mr. Pound, giving me his blessing. I saw it all: the valley clad white in snow, the house on the hill amid the bare oaks, the windows bright with potted plants, and down the path my father and mother running to meet me. I thought, with love in my heart, of that boyhood home and of my coming to it. Yet in that same heart there was a longing unfulfilled. Where was my manhood's home? Once I had had a tantalizing glimpse of it. That was when I sat at Penelope's side by the carved mantel, under the eyes of Reynolds's majestic lady. That for which I yearned so vainly was the spot which she made sweeter by her presence. Were she here at my side, looking with me over the Umbrian plain, this would be home. But wherever I travelled, east or west, north or south, my journey could have no such satisfying ending. Even in the valley, in the presence of familiar, homely things, I knew that I should look away vaguely, as I looked now, at distant mountains, wondering where Penelope was and how the world went with her.

After two years of absence from her and utter silence, I could drag out of my memory no pictures of her save old ones, and one by one I brought them forth, my favorite portraits, and saw her sitting in the carved chair pouring tea or driving down the Avenue, very still and very straight in her victoria. She must be in New York, I said, for in late October she would be hurrying back to town for the old futile routine.

I went on, recklessly fancying Penelope leading that life, dancing, dining and driving, as though this were all in the world she could possibly be doing. I knew that she had not married Talcott. I had learned this much of her from a stray newspaper which announced the breaking of the engagement. I knew that it could make no difference to me if she had married some one else. That was highly possible, yet it was not a possibility on which I cared to dwell in my moments of rumination. This day my mind dwelt on it, whether I would or not.

Over the plain, just beyond the mountains, I saw Penelope in my visionary eye, and I asked myself if I should find another in that coveted place from which I was barred. A bit of land, a bit of sea, and there was home. In a few hours the same sun would be smiling on it. At that moment I dreaded to go on. It was my duty, yet, could I, I would have turned back to the Sudan, to ride again over the yellow sands in the dust of marching regiments. I wanted action. Poor, pitiful action it was to walk, but with every fall of my feet and every click of my cane I could say to myself that I was going home, to my boyhood's home, and it mattered little if I had no other. The clatter of the Corso jarred on me. My mood demanded quiet places. The little streets called to me from their stillness, and I answered them. They led me higher and higher to the summit of the town. I crossed a deserted piazza, and by a gentle slope was carried down to the terrace of the Porta Sola.

There was in this secluded spot a soothing shade and silence. Old palaces, ghosts of another age, cast their shadows over it. Steps wound from its quiet, down the hill into the clatter of the lower town.

A rampart guarded the sheer cliff, and with elbows resting there and chin cupped in my hands I looked away to the Apennines. Below me two arms of the town stretched out into the plain, but their mingling discords rose to my ear like the drum of insects. Beyond them, in the nearer prospect, the land seemed topsy-turvy, a maze of little hills and valleys. A pink villa flamed against the brown, and its flat, squat tower, glowing in the sunlight, called to its gaunt neighbor, rising from a deserted monastery, to cheer up and be merry with it.

Distance levelled the land. It became broad plain, studded with gray villages and slashed by the Tiber; it rose to higher hills; then lifted sharply, the brown fading into the whiteness of ma.s.sed mountain peaks.

This is my fairest prospect. And yet at that moment it offered me no peace. I was so infinitely lonely. With Penelope at my side, I said, I could stand here for hours feasting my eyes on so lovely a picture.

To me, alone, it gave nothing. I should be happier with the Bennetts, forgetting self and self's vague longings in a plunge into the fraternal dispute.

I turned away into a narrow alley, but I was unaccustomed to Perugian streets and had not solved the mystery of their windings. Suddenly, pa.s.sing a corner, I found myself again in the deserted piazza, and, looking down the slope, saw the same picture framed by palace walls.

First my eyes grasped the panorama of plain and mountain. Then I saw only the terrace.

It was not mine any longer to hold in loneliness. I brushed my hand across my eyes to sweep away the taunting image. But she held there by the wall, leaning over it, her chin resting in her hands, wrapped in contemplation. Her face was turned from me, but there was no mistaking that still, black figure. If she heard my footfalls and the click of my cane, she gave no sign of being aware of my approach, but looked straight out over the plain. I checked an impulse to call her name and stood for a moment watching her. Would she greet me, I asked, with that same chilling stare with which she had said good-by? I feared it.

But I tiptoed down the slope to the wall, and, leaning over it in silence, enjoyed the stolen pleasure of her presence. Whether she would or not, we looked together over the fair land. And what a prospect it was with Penelope at my side!

"David!" she said.

She took a step back, and stood there, very straight, surveying me, as though she were not quite sure that it could be. I searched her eyes for a hostile gleam, but found none, and when her hand met mine it was with a friendly and firm grasp.

"Penelope," said I, "as I came down the hill there and saw you, I thought that I dreamed."

"And I," said she, "when I turned and found David Malcolm beside me. I had heard that you were in the Sudan."

"Much as I should have liked to bury myself in the Sudan, there were calls from home," I returned.

"From Miss Dodd--what are you laughing at, David? From Miss Todd, I mean. How could you talk of burying yourself when you have such happiness before you? But, David, why do you laugh?"

With this reproof she tilted her head. That did not trouble me. I had so often seen her tilt her head in the same scornful way in the old days. And I laughed on joyfully at her calm a.s.surance that I was going back to Gladys Todd.

"Gladys Todd is now Mrs. Bundy," I said.

"Oh!" Penelope exclaimed, and her voice changed to one of sympathy. "I am sorry, David. I see now what you meant by the Sudan."

"Didn't you know that Gladys Todd had jilted me years ago?" I asked.

"Why, no," she answered. "How should I? You never told me."

"I was on my way to tell you one day," said I. "And then----"

I stopped. Remembering why I had not told Penelope, I deemed it wiser to be evasive. I remembered, too, that in my joy at seeing her again I had been taking it for granted that she was still Penelope Blight. The gulf between us, which had been closing so fast, yawned again. "Tell me," said I in undisguised eagerness, "are you married, Penelope?"

Then she laughed, and in the gay ring of her laughter, I read her answer. She stepped back to a stone bench and seated herself, and I took a place beside her, watching as she made circles in the sand with the point of her parasol. There were a thousand commonplace questions that I might have asked her, but I was contented with the silence. It mattered little to me how she came there. It was enough that she was at my side. It mattered little to me that Bennett and his brother might have settled their dispute long since and be hunting for me, for I had made my farewell to them. I was home. I intended to stay at home. So I, too, fell to making circles in the sand, with my stick.

Then Penelope looked up and asked me: "David, how do you come to be here, in this out-of-the-way Italian town? I thought you were in the Sudan. Uncle Rufus told me that you were in the Sudan. That is how I happened to hear it. He always insists on reading to me everything of yours he can find--rather bores me, in fact, sometimes--not, of course, that I haven't been interested in what you were doing."

She spoke so coldly that I feared that, after all, I had best go my way with Bennett and his brother. I told her how I had travelled with them, and how the motor had broken down, and how my finding her was by the barest chance, for in a few hours I should have been on my way to Florence.

"It's strange," she said. "Our motor broke down, too, last night--just as we reached the gates; but this afternoon we hope to be off again to Rome."

"We?" I questioned.

"Uncle Rufus and I," she said.

"And Mrs. Bannister?"