The Trumpeter Swan Part 12

An owl hooted overhead. A whip-poor-will in a distant swamp sounded his plaintive call.

Randy could not have a.n.a.lyzed the instinct which sent him back to Becky. It was not in the least to spy upon her, nor upon Dalton. He only knew that he could not sleep, that something drew him on and on, as Romeo was drawn perchance to Capulet's orchard.

He came out from under the trees to other hills. He was still on his own land. These acres had belonged to his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and back of that to a certain gallant gentleman who had come to Virginia with grants from the King. There had been, too, a great chief, whose blood was in his veins, and who had roamed through this land before Europe knew it. Powhatan was a rare old name to link with one's own, and Randy had a Virginian's pride in his savage strain.

So, as he went along, he saw canoes upon the s.h.i.+ning river. He saw tall forms with feathers blowing. He saw fires on the heights.

The hill in front of him dipped to a little stream. He and Becky had once waded in that stream together. How white her feet had been on the brown stones. His life, as he thought of it, was bound up in memories of Becky. She had come down from school for blissful week-ends and holidays, and she and Randy had tramped over the hills and through the pine woods, finding wild-flowers in the spring, arbutus, flus.h.i.+ng to beauty in its hidden bed, blood-root, hepatica, wind-flowers, violets in a purple glory; finding in the summer wild roses, dewberries, blackberries, bees and b.u.t.terflies, the cool shade of the little groves, the s.h.i.+ne and s.h.i.+mmer of the streams; finding in the fall a golden stillness and the redness of Virginia Creeper. They had ridden on horseback over the clay roads, they had roamed the stubble with a pack of wiry hounds at their heels, they had gathered Christmas greens, they had sung carols, they had watched the Old Year out and the New Year in, and their souls had been knit in a comrades.h.i.+p which had been a very fine thing indeed for a boy like Randy and a girl like Becky.

There had been, too, about their friends.h.i.+p a rather engaging seriousness. They had talked a great deal of futures. They had dreamed together very great dreams. Their dreams had, of course, changed from time to time. There had been that dream of Becky's when she first went to the convent, that she wanted some day to be a nun like Sister Loretto. The fact that it would involve a change of faith was thrashed over flamingly by Randy. "It is all very well for an old woman, Becky. But you'd hate it."

Becky had been sure that she would not hate it. "You don't know how lovely she looks in the chapel."

"Well, there are other ways to look lovely."

"But it would be nice to be--good."

"You are good enough."

"I am not really, Randy. Sister Loretto says her prayers all day----"

"How often do you say yours?"

"Oh, at night. And in the mornings--sometimes----"

"That's enough for anybody. If you say them hard enough once, what more can the Lord ask?"

He had been a rather fierce figure as he had flung his questions, but he had not swerved her in the least from her thought of herself as a novice in a white veil, and later as a full-fledged sister, with beads and a black head-dress.

This dream had, in time, been supplanted by one imposed upon her by the ambitions of a much-admired cla.s.smate.

"Maude and I are going to be doctors," Becky had announced as she and Randy had walked over the fields with the hounds at their heels. "It's a great opportunity for women, Randy, and we shall study in Philadelphia."

"Shall you like cutting people up?" he had demanded brutally.

She had shuddered. "I shan't have to cut them up very much, shall I?"

"You'll have to cut them up a lot. All doctors do, and sometimes they are dead."

She had argued a bit shakily after that, and that night she had slept badly. The next morning they had gone over it again. "You fainted when the kitten's paw was crushed in the door."

"It was dreadful----"

"And you cried when I cut my foot with the hatchet and we were out in the woods. And if you are going to be a doctor you'll have to look at people who are crushed and cut----"

"Oh, please, Randy----"

Three days of such intensive argument had settled it. Becky decided that it was, after all, better to be an auth.o.r.ess. "There was Louisa Alcott, you know, Randy."

He was scornful. "Women weren't made for that--to sit in an attic and write. Why do you keep talking about doing things, Becky? You'll get married when you grow up and that will be the end of it."

"I am not going to get married, Randy."

"Well, of course you will, and I shall marry and be a lawyer like my father, and perhaps I'll go to Congress."

Later he had a leaning towards the ministry. "If I preached I could make the world better, Becky."

That was the time when she had come down for Hallowe'en, and it was on Sunday evening that they had talked it over in the Bird Room at Huntersfield. There had been a smouldering fire on the wide hearth, and the Trumpeter Swan had stared down at them with s.h.i.+ning eyes. They had been to church that morning and the text had been, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

"I want to make the world better, Becky,"

Randy had said in the still twilight, and Becky had answered in an awed tone, "It would be so splendid to see you in the pulpit, Randy, wearing a gown like Dr. Hodge."

But the pulpit to Randy had meant more than that. And the next day when they walked through the deserted mill town, he had said, "Everybody is dead who lived here, and once they were alive like us."

She had s.h.i.+vered, "I don't like to think of it."

"It's a thing we've all got to think of. I like to remember that Thomas Jefferson came riding through and stopped at the mill and talked to the miller."

"How dreadful to know that they are--dead."

"Mother says that men like Jefferson never die. Their souls go marching on."

The stream which ground the county's corn was at their feet. "But what about the miller?" Becky had asked; "does his soul march, too?"

Randy, with the burden of yesterday's sermon upon him, hoped that the miller was saved.

He smiled now as he thought of the rigidness of his boyish theology.

To him in those days Heaven was Heaven and h.e.l.l was h.e.l.l.

The years at school had brought doubt--apostasy. Then on the fields of France, Randy's G.o.d had come back to him--the Christ who bound up wounds, who gave a cup of cold water, who fought with flaming sword against the battalions of brutality, who led up and up that white company who gave their lives for a glorious Cause. Here, indeed, was a G.o.d of righteousness and of justice, of tenderness and purity. To other men than Randy, Christ had in a very personal and specific sense been born across the sea.

It was in France, too, that the dream had come to him of a future of creative purpose. He had always wanted to write. Looking back over his University days, he was aware of a formative process which had led towards this end. It was there he had communed with the spirit of a tragic muse. There had been all the traditions of Poe and his tempestuous youth--and Randy, pa.s.sing the door which had once opened and closed on that dark figure, had felt the thrill of a living personality--of one who spoke still in lines of ineffable beauty--"_Banners yellow, glorious, golden. On its roof did float and flow----_" and again "_A dirge for her the doubly dead, in that she died so young----_" with the gayety and gloom and grandeur of those chiming, rhyming, tolling bells--"_Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme----_" and that "_grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly sh.o.r.e----_"

"Do you think I could write?" Randy had asked one of his teachers, coming verse-saturated to the question.

The man had looked at him with somber eyes. "You have an ear for it--and an eye---- But genius pays a price."

"What do you mean?"

"It shows its heart to the world, dissects its sacred thoughts, has no secrets----"

"But think of leaving a thing behind you like--'To Helen----'"

"Do you think the knowledge that he had written a few bits of incomparable verse helped Poe to live? If he had invented a pill or a headache powder, he would have slept on down and have dined from gold dishes."

"I'd rather write 'Ulalume' than dine from gold dishes."