CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH THE SUMMER PASSES
Midsummer arrived, and David, healed of his wounds, pronounced himselfas "strong as a cricketer." What he meant by that Hoyle could onlyconjecture, and, after much pondering, decided that his strength was nowso great that should he desire to do so, he could leap into the air orjump long distances after the manner of crickets.
"You reckon you could jump as fer in one jump now as from here tot'other side the water trough yandah?" he asked one day, as they sat onthe porch steps together.
"No, I don't reckon so," said David, laughing.
"Well, could you jump ovah this here house and the loom shed in onejump?"
"I don't reckon so."
"Be sensible, honey son. You mustn't 'low him to ax ye fool questions,Doctah. You knows they hain't nobody kin do such as that, Hoyle," calledhis mother from within.
"He has some idea in his head. What is it, brother Hoyle?"
"I heered you tellin' Cass 'at you was gettin' strong as one o' thesehere cricket bugs, an' I had one t'other day; he could jump as fer ascl'ar acrost the po'ch--and he was only 'bout a inch long--er less 'n ainch. I thought if brothah David was that strong, he could jump a heap."
David had comforted Hoyle for the loss of Cassandra from the home byexplaining that they were now become brothers for the rest of theirlives, and in order to give this assurance appreciable significance, hehad taken the small chap to the circus and had treated him to pinklemonade and a toy balloon.
They had remained over until the next day, and Doctor Bartlett and Davidhad examined him all over at the old physician's office and then hadgone into a little room by themselves and stayed a long time, leavinghim outside. Then, to compensate for such gross neglect, David hadtaken him to a clothing store and bought him a complete suit of storeclothing, very neat and pretty. Hoyle would have been in the seventhheaven over all this, were it not, alas! that there the child for thefirst time in his life looked into a mirror that revealed him to himselffrom head to foot, little wry neck, hunched back and all.
David, not realizing this was a revelation to the little man, wondered,as they walked away, that all his enthusiasm and exuberance of spiritshad left him, and that he walked at his side wearily and sadly silent.His pathetic little legs spindled down from the smart new trousers, andhis hands dangled weakly from his thin wrists, albeit his fingers clungtightly to his toy balloon.
"We're going back to the bishop's now, and we'll have a good dinner, andthen you'll have a whole hour to play with Dorothy before we leave forhome," said David, cheeringly. The child made no response other than toslip his hand into David's. "What are you thinking about, brotherHoyle?"
"Jest nothin'. I war a-wonderin'."
"Oh, there is a difference? What were you wondering?"
"Maw told me if you war that good to take me to a circus, I mustn'tbothah you with a heap o' questions 'at wa'n't no good."
"That's all right. I'm questioning you now."
"What war you an' that old man feelin' me all ovah for? War you tryin'to make out hu' come my hade is sot like this-a-way? Reckon you r'alycould set hit straight an' get this 'er lump off'n my back?"
"Don't worry about your head and your back. You have a very good head.That's more than some can say."
"I nevah see nary othah boy like I be. You reckon that li'l' girl, shethought I war quare?"
"What little girl?"
"Mrs. Towahs's li'l' girl. She said 'turn roun',' an' when I done hit,she said 'turn roun' agin.' Then she said, 'Whyn't you hol' your hadelike I do?'"
"What did you say?"
"Didn't say nothin.' Jes' axed her whyn't she hol' her head like I did?an' she said, 'Don't want to.' So I said, 'Don't want to.'" He twistedhis head about to look up in David's face, and his lips smiled, but inhis eyes was a suspicion of tears. His heart heavy for the child, Davidpraised him for a brave little chap, comforting him as best he could.
"You reckon she'd like me if I war to give her this here balloon?"
"No, you take that home to sister. The little girl can get one when thecircus comes again." But after dinner, David did not send Hoyle off toplay the hour with Dorothy. He took her on his knee and entertained themboth with tales and mimicry until he had them in gales of laughter, andfor the time being Hoyle forgot his troubles.
As the days passed, David became more and more interested in his patchof ground and the growing things in his garden. Never had he laboredwith his hands in this fashion, and each night he lay down to sleepphysically weary, in contentment of spirit. Steadily he progressedtoward the desired goal of health. In his young wife, also, he found arich satisfaction, watching her unfold and blossom into the graciouswifehood and ladyhood he had dreamed of for her.
Together they used to stroll to the little farm, where she told him allshe knew about the crops--what was best for the animals, and what wouldbe needed for themselves. Long before David was able to oversee the workhimself, she had set Elwine Timms to sowing cow-peas and planting corn.
"Behold your heritage!" David said to her one morning, as they strolledthus among the thrifty greenness and patches of vetch where the cow wascontentedly feeding. He laughed joyously and drew his wife's arm throughhis. She looked up at him wistfully. He thought she sighed, and bent hishead to listen. "What was that little sound?"
"I was only thinking."
"We'll sit here where we sat that morning when we both put our hands tothe plough, and you tell me what you were thinking."
"I ought not to stop now, David. I've left all for mother to do. I wasthat busy at the cabin I didn't get down to her this morning."
"You can't keep two homes going with only your own two dear hands,Cassandra. It must be stopped. We'll find some one to live with yourmother and take your place." She gave a little gasp, then sat silently,her hands dropped passively in her lap, and he thought she seemed sad.He took her face between his hands and made her look into his eyes."Don't be worried, sweetheart; we'll make a few changes. You're minenow, you know--not only to serve me and labor for me as you have beendoing all these weeks, but--"
"But I like it, David. I like doing for you. I hope it may always be soI can do for you."
"Would you like me to become an invalid again so you could keep on inthe way you began?"
"Not that--but sometimes I think what if you shouldn't really need me!"She hid her face on his breast. "I--I want you to need me--David!" Itwas almost like a cry for help, as she said it.
"Dear heart, dear heart! What are you thinking and fearing? Can't youunderstand? You are mine now, to be cared for and loved and held verynear and dear to my heart. We are no more twain, we are one."
"Yes, but--but--David, I--I want you to need me," she sobbed, and heknew some thought was stirring in her heart which she could not yet putinto words. He comforted her and soothed her, explaining certain planswhich later he put into execution, so that her duties at the Fall Placewere brought to an end and he could have her always with him.
A daughter of her Uncle Cotton, who had gone down into South Carolina tolive, was induced to come and stay with the widow, and the girl'sbrother came with her and helped David on the farm.
Then David made changes in and about his cabin. He built on another roomand put therein a cook stove. He could not bear to see his young wifebending at the hearth preparing their meals, and when she demurred, heexplained that he wished to keep her as she was and not see her growingold and wrinkled before her time, with the burning heat of the open firein her face, like many of the mountain women.
One evening,--they had eaten their supper out under the trees,--sheproposed they should walk up to her father's path, as she called thespot toward which she so often lifted her eyes, and David was wellpleased to go with her. As they set out, she asked him to wait a momentwhile she went back for something, and quickly returned, bringing hisflute.
"I've often wished father could have heard you play on this," she said,as he took it from her hand.
The
y crossed the little river that tumbled and rushed among greatmoss-covered boulders on its way to the fall, and followed its waywardcourse toward its head, where the way was untrodden and wild, as if nohuman foot had ever climbed along its banks. After a little they turnedoff toward a tremendous rock of solid granite that had been cleftsmoothly in twain by some gigantic force of nature, and, walking betweenthe towering walls of stone, came out on the farther side upon a smalllevel space, where immense ferns and flags grew thickly in the richsoil, held in place and kept damp by the great cool masses of stone.
Above this little dell the hill rose steeply, and Cassandra led him to anarrow opening in the dense shrubbery surrounding the spot from which abeaten path wound upward, overarched with thickly interlacing branchesof birch wood and hemlocks. Along this winding trail they climbed, untilthey reached a cluster of enormous cedars which made the dark place onthe mountain Cassandra had pointed out to him from below. Here the pathwidened so they could walk side by side, and continued along a levelline at the foot of the dark mass of trees.
"Here father used to walk up and down reading in his little books; seemslike I can hear his voice now. Sometimes he would look off over thevalley below us there and repeat parts by heart. Isn't it beautifulhere, David?"
"Heavenly beautiful!"
"I'm glad we never came here before."
"Why, dearest?"
"Because." She hesitated with parted lips, and cheeks flushed from theclimb. David stood with bared head. He felt as if he were in acathedral.
"And why because?" he asked again.
"For now we bring just happiness with us. We're not troubled orwondering about anything. No sorrow comes with us. In our hearts we aresure--sure--" She paused again and lifted her eyes to his.
"Sure that all is right when we belong to each other--this way?"
"Yes, sure! Oh, David, sure--sure!" She threw her arms about his neckand drew his face down to hers. "It's even a greater happiness than whenhe used to carry me in his arms here. There's no sorrow near us. It'sall far away."
Thus, sometimes she would throw off all the habitual reserve of hermanner and open her heart to him, following the rich impulses of hernature to their glorious revelation.
"Now, David, sit here and play; play your flute as you did that firsttime when I learned who made the music that I thought must be the'Voices,' that time I climbed up to see."
They sat under the great cedars on a bank of moss, and David took theflute from her hand, smiling as he thought of that moment when he hadstood among the blossoming laurel and watched her as she moved about hiscabin, the day before his hurt, and how she had kissed it.
"I used to sit here like this." She bent forward and rested her head onhis knee. She had a way of putting her two hands together as a child istaught to hold them in prayer and placing them beneath her cheek; and soshe waited while David paused, his hand on her hair, and his eyes fixedon the sea of hilltops where they melted into the sky,--a mysterious,undulating line of the faintest blue, seen through the arching branchesabove, and the swaying hemlocks on either side, and over the tops of ahundred varieties of pines and deciduous trees beneath them, all downthe long slope up which they had climbed.
Thus they waited, until she lifted her head and looked into his eyesquestioningly. He bent forward and kissed her lips and then lifted theflute to his own--but again paused.
"What are you thinking now, David?" she asked.
"So you really thought it was the 'Voices'? What was their message,Cassandra?"
"I couldn't make it out then, but I thought of this place and of father,and it was all at once like as if he would make me know something, andI prayed God would he lead me to understand was it a message or not. Sothat was the way I kept on following--until I--"
"You came to me, dear?"
"Yes."
"And what did you think the interpretation was then?"
"Yes, it was you--you, David. It was love--and hope--andgladness--everything, everything--"
"Go on."
"Everything good and beautiful--but--sometimes it comes again--"
"What comes?"
"Play, David, play. I'll tell you another time in another place, nothere. No, no."
So he played for her until the dusk deepened around and below them, andthey had to make their way back stumblingly. When they came to the wild,untrodden bank of the little river, David resigned the choosing of theirpath entirely to her and followed close, holding her hand where she led.When at last they reached their cabin, they did not light candles, butsat long in the doorway conversing on the deep things of their souls.
It still seemed to David as if she held something back from him, and nowhe begged her for a more perfect self-revealing.
"It is no longer as if we were separate, dearest; can't you remember andfeel that we are one?"
"In a way I do. It is very sweet."
"You say in a way. In what way?"
"Why, David?"
"I want your point of view."
"I see. We're not really one until we see from each other's hilltop, arewe?"
"No, and you never take me into the secret places of your heart and letme look off from your own hilltop."
"Didn't I this very evening, David?"
"We stood on the same spot of earth and looked off on the same distance,yet in my soul I know I did not see what you saw."
"Pictures come to me very suddenly and just float by, hardly understoodby myself. I didn't want you to see all I saw, David. I don't know howcomes it, but all the time, even in the midst of our greatgladness--right when it is most beautiful--far before me, right acrossour way, is a place that is dim. It seems 'most like the shadows thatfall on the hills when those great piles of clouds pass through the sky,when it is deep blue all around them and the sun shines everywhereelse."
"Your soul is still an undiscovered country to me, Cassandra."
"I should think you'd like that. Don't men love to go discovering? Andif you could get into the secret chambers, as you call them, youwouldn't find much. Then you'd be sorry."
"Cassandra, what are you covering and holding back?"
"I don't know, David. It's like it was when I couldn't understand themessage of the 'Voices'! When it comes clear and strong, I'll tell you."
"Then there is something?"
"Yes."
With a little sigh, she rose and entered the cabin. He sat in silence asshe had left him, but soon she returned. Standing behind him in thedarkness, she put her interlaced fingers under his chin and drew hisface backward until she could see it, white in the dusk, beneath hereyes.
"You have come back to explain?"
"If I can, David. It's hard for me to put in words what is so dim--whatI see. It's all just love for you, David. The love burns and blazes upin me like the fire when it's fiercest on the hearth, when the day iscold outside. You've seen it so. In the little books my father used toread, there was a tale of a woman who had my name. She foretold thesorrows to come. Perhaps she saw as I see things in the dim pictures,only more clearly, and wisdom was given her to interpret them.
"Often and often I've felt that in me--that strange seeing and knowingbefore, and I don't like it. Only once it made me feel glad--when it ledme to you and Frale that terrible moment. But it wasn't a picture thattime; it was a feeling that pulled me and made me go. I would have gonethat time if I had died for it."
He took her two hands and covered them with kisses, there in thedarkness. "I told you you were my priestess of all that is good."
"But I don't want to be always seeing the shadows and foreboding. Iwant to be all happy--happy--the way you are."
"I believe you are one of the blessed ones of God who have 'the gift';but you are right to feel as you do. Your life will be more normal andwholesome not to try to probe into the future. I'll not attempt to takemy coarser humanity into your holy places, dear."
He led her into their canvas sleeping chamber, and there she was sooncalmly slumbering at his side; but h
e lay long pondering and trying tosee his way out of a certain dilemma of unrest that had been creepinginto his veins and prodding him forward ever since his reestablishedhealth had become an assured fact. He recognized it as no more than theproper impulse of his manhood not to stagnate and slumber in a lotusdream, even as delicious a dream as this. Ah, it was inevitable. Hisworld must become her world.
Herein lay the dilemma. This unsullied, beautiful being must enter thatsordid old world, that had so pressed upon him and broken him down. Thisidyl might go on for perhaps a year longer--but not for always--not foralways.
He slept at last, and dreamed that they were being driven along a dark,cold river, wide and swift; that they had entered it where it was only anarrow, rushing stream, sparkling and tumbling over rocks, and windingin intricate turnings on itself; that they had laughed as they followedit, plashing among the stones where she led him by the hand, until itgrew wider and deeper and colder, and they were lifted from their feetand were tossed and swirled about, and she cried and clung to him, andeven as he clasped her and held her, he knew her to be slipping fromhim. Then in terror he awoke, and, reaching out in the darkness, drewher into his embrace and slept again.