"It is no longer as if we were separate, dearest; can't you remember and feel 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, are we?"
"No, and you never take me into the secret places of your heart and let me 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 understood by myself. I didn't want you to see all I saw, David. I don't know how comes it, but all the time, even in the midst of our great gladness – right when it is most beautiful – far before me, right across our way, is a place that is dim. It seems 'most like the shadows that fall 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 everywhere else."
"Your soul is still an undiscovered country to me, Cassandra."
"I should think you'd like that. Don't men love to go discovering? And if you could get into the secret chambers, as you call them, you wouldn'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 the message 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 as she had left him, but soon she returned. Standing behind him in the darkness, she put her interlaced fingers under his chin and drew his face backward until she could see it, white in the dusk, beneath her eyes.
"You have come back to explain?"
"If I can, David. It's hard for me to put in words what is so dim – what I see. It's all just love for you, David. The love burns and blazes up in me like the fire when it's fiercest on the hearth, when the day is cold outside. You've seen it so. In the little books my father used to read, there was a tale of a woman who had my name. She foretold the sorrows 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 knowing before, and I don't like it. Only once it made me feel glad – when it led me to you and Frale that terrible moment. But it wasn't a picture that time; it was a feeling that pulled me and made me go. I would have gone that time if I had died for it."
He took her two hands and covered them with kisses, there in the darkness. "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. I want 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 and wholesome not to try to probe into the future. I'll not attempt to take my coarser humanity into your holy places, dear."
He led her into their canvas sleeping chamber, and there she was soon calmly slumbering at his side; but he lay long pondering and trying to see his way out of a certain dilemma of unrest that had been creeping into his veins and prodding him forward ever since his reëstablished health had become an assured fact. He recognized it as no more than the proper impulse of his manhood not to stagnate and slumber in a lotus dream, even as delicious a dream as this. Ah, it was inevitable. His world must become her world.
Herein lay the dilemma. This unsullied, beautiful being must enter that sordid old world, that had so pressed upon him and broken him down. This idyl might go on for perhaps a year longer – but not for always – not for always.
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 a narrow, rushing stream, sparkling and tumbling over rocks, and winding in intricate turnings on itself; that they had laughed as they followed it, plashing among the stones where she led him by the hand, until it grew wider and deeper and colder, and they were lifted from their feet and were tossed and swirled about, and she cried and clung to him, and even as he clasped her and held her, he knew her to be slipping from him. Then in terror he awoke, and, reaching out in the darkness, drew her into his embrace and slept again.
CHAPTER XXII
IN WHICH DAVID TAKES LITTLE HOYLE TO CANADA
"David," said his wife next day, as he came whistling up to his cabin from the farm below, "do you mind if I give mother a little help with the weaving? Mattie can't do it. She's right nigh spoiled the counterpane we had on when she came, and since mother's hurt, she can't work the treadles, so now the hotel's open Miss Mayhew may come and find them not half done."
"Do I mind? Why should I mind, if you don't 'right nigh' spoil your back and wear yourself out?"
"Then I'll go down with you after dinner and see can I patch up Mattie's mistakes. It takes so much patience – a loom does, to understand it."
Mattie was the cousin David had imported from the low country to relieve Cassandra from the burden of the work in the home below. Although a disappointment to them, she still did her work after her own fashion, clumsily and slowly, but her Aunt 'Marthy' was never at rest, prodding the dull nature forward, trying to make her take the interest Cassandra had done.
David had wisely persuaded his wife to leave them to themselves, to work out the problem of adjustment to the new conditions as best they might, and his persuasions had been of a more peremptory nature than he realized. To Cassandra they had been as commands, but now – when the weaving on which the widow had counted so much was likely to be ruined by Mattie's unskilled hands – the old mother had declared she could not bear to see her niece around and should "pack her off whar she come from."
Therefore Cassandra had made her timid request – the first evidence of shrinking from her husband she had ever given. Why was it? he asked himself. What had he ever said or done to make her prefer a request in that way? But it was over in an instant, and her own poised manner returned as they ate and chatted together.
Little Hoyle came running up to eat with them. He had conceived a dislike to the home below since the incumbent had come to take his sister's place, and evaded thus, as often as possible, his mother's vigilance. David did not mind the intrusion, but suffered the adoring little chap to sit at his side, ever twisting his small body about to fix his great eyes on David's face, while he plied him with questions and hung on his words too intent to attend to his own eating unless admonished thereto by his sister.
"If you don't eat, son, I'll send you back to mother," she threatened.
"I won't go," he rebelled joyously. "I'll jes' set here 'longside brothah David."
"No, you won't, young man. You'll do whatever sister says. That's what I do." He put his hand on the boy's tousled head and turned him about to his plate, well filled with food still untouched, but he noticed that the child ate listlessly, more as an act of obedience than from a normal desire. He glanced up at his wife and saw that she also noticed Hoyle's languor. They finished the meal in a silence only broken by Hoyle's questions and David's replies, now serious, now teasing and bantering.
"You are so full of interrogation points you have no room for your dinner. Here – drink this milk – slowly; don't gulp it."
"I know what they be. They go this-a-way." The boy set down his glass to illustrate with his slender little hand the form of the question mark. Then he laughed out gayly. "You know hu' come I got filled up with them things? I done swallered that thar catechism Cass b'en teachin' me Sundays."
"No, I'm thinking you just are one yourself."
"'Cause I'm crooked like this-a-way?" He twisted about and looked up at David gravely.
"No, no, son. Doctor didn't mean that," said his sister.
"Finish your milk," said David. "We'll have some fun with the microscope." And once again the child essayed to eat and drink a little.
But the languor and pallor grew in spite of all David could do for him, and as the weeks passed his large eyes burned more brilliantly and his thin form grew more meagre. Cassandra got in the way of keeping him up at the cabin with her, and when she went down to weave, he went also and used to lie on the bundles of cotton, poring over the books which David procured for him from time to time.
"What he gets in that way won't hurt him. It's not like having set tasks to learn, and he's not burdened with any 'ought' or 'ought not' about it. Let him vegetate until cooler weather. Then, if he doesn't improve, we'll see what can be done. Something radical, I imagine."
The fall arrived in a splendor that was truly oriental in its gorgeousness. The changing colors of the foliage surpassed in brilliancy anything David had ever seen or imagined possible. The mantle of deepest green which had clothed the mountain sides all summer, became transmuted, until all the world was glorified and glowing as if the heat of the summer sun had been stored up during the drowsy days to burst forth thus in warmest reds and golds.
"The hills look as if they had clothed themselves in Turkish rugs, ancient and fine," said David one evening, as he sat on his rock, watching them burn in the afterglow of the setting sun.
"How much there is for me to learn and know," Cassandra replied in a low voice. "I never saw a Turkish rug. You often speak of things I know nothing about."
David laughed and turned upon her happy eyes. "Why so sad for that? Did you think I loved you and married you for your worldly knowledge?" She smiled back at him and was silent. Presently he continued. "Now, while Hoyle is not here, I wish to talk to you a little about him."
"Yes, David." Her heart fluttered with a nameless fear, but she betrayed no sign of emotion.
"You've seen, of course. It's not necessary to tell you."
"No, David – only – does it mean death?" She put her hand out to him, and he took it in his and stroked it.
"Not surely. We'll make a fight for him, won't we, dear?"
"Oh, David! What can we do?" she moaned.
"There's a thing to do that I've been reserving as a last resort. I think the time has come to try it. This curvature presses on some vital part, and the action of his heart is uncertain. He needs the tonic of the cold, – the ice and snow. Would you trust him to me, dear? I'll take him to Doctor Hoyle. You know very well everything kindness and skill can do will be done for him there."
"Yes, yes, David. You are so good to him always! Would – would you go – alone with him?" She drew closer to him, her head on his shoulder and her hand in his, but he could not see her face.
"You mean without you, dearest?"
"Yes."
"That may be as you say. Would you prefer to go with us?"
She drew a long breath, slowly, like an indrawn sigh, and something trembled to pass her heart, but suddenly the old habit of reserve sealed her lips and she remained silent.
"What do you say?" he urged.
"Tell me first – do you want me to go?"
He was silent, and they sat waiting for each other. Then he said, "I do want you to go – and yet I don't want you to go – yet. Sometime, of course, we must go where I may find wider scope for my activities." He felt her quiver of anxiety. "Not until you are quite ready yourself, dear, always remember that." Still she was silent, and he continued: "I can't say that I'm quite ready myself. I would prefer one more year here, but Hoyle must be removed without delay. We may have waited too long as it is. Will your mother consent? She must, if she cares to see him live."
"Oh, David! Go, go. Take him and go to-morrow. Leave me here and go – but – come back to me, David, soon – very soon. I – I shall need you, I – Can you leave Hoyle there and come back, David? Or must you bide there, too?" Suddenly she bowed her face in her hands. "Oh, I'm so wicked and selfish to think of leaving him there without you or me or mother – one. David, what can we do? He might die there, and you – you must come back for the winter; what would save him, might kill you. Oh, David! Take me with you, and leave me there with him, and you come back. Doctor Hoyle will take care of him – of us – once we are there."
"Now, now, now! hold your dear heart in peace. Why, I'm well. To stay another winter would only be to establish myself in a more rugged condition of body – not that I must do so. We'll talk with your mother to-morrow. It may be hard to persuade her."
But he found the mother most reasonable and practical. He even tried to abate her perfect trust in him and his ability to bring the child back to her quite well and strong.
"This isn't a trouble that is ever really cured, you know. When taken young enough, it may be helped, and I've known people who have lived long and useful lives in spite of it. That's all we may hope for."
"Waal, I 'low ye can't git him no younger'n he be now, an' he's that peart, I reckon he's worth hit – leastways to we-uns."
"Of course he's worth it."
"You are right good to keer fer him like you have. I'd do a heap fer you ef I could. All I have is jest this here farm, an' hit's fer you an' Cass. On'y ef ye'd 'low me an' leetle Hoyle to bide on here whilst we live – "
David was touched. "Do you realize I've found here the two greatest things in the world, love and health? All I want is for you to know and remember that if I can't succeed in doing all I would like for the boy, at least I tried my very best. I may not succeed, you know, but this is the only thing to do now – the only thing."
David parted from his young wife, leaving her standing in the door of their cabin, clad in her white homespun frock, smiling, yet tearful and pale. He was to walk down to the Fall Place, where Jerry Carew waited with the wagon in which he had arrived, and where his baggage had been brought the day before. When he came to the steepest part of the descent, he looked back and saw Cassandra still standing as if in a trance, gazing after him. He felt his heart lean towards her, and, turning sharply, walked swiftly to her and took her once more in his arms and looked down into those deep springs – her sweet gray eyes. Thus for a long moment he held her to his heart with never a word. Then she entered the little home, and he walked away, looking back no more.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN WHICH DOCTOR HOYLE SPEAKS HIS MIND
Doctor Hoyle sat in his office staring straight before him, not as if he were looking at David Thryng, who sat in range of his vision, but as if seeing beyond him into some other time and place. David had been speaking, but now they both were silent, and the young man wondered if his old friend had really been paying attention to his words or not.
"Well, Doctor," he said at last.
"Well, David."
"You don't seem satisfied. Is it with my condition?"
"Your condition? No, no, no! It's not your condition. Yes, yes – fine, fine. I never saw such a marvellous change in my life, never!"
David smiled over the old doctor's stammer of enthusiasm. It was as if his thoughts, fertile and vehement, and the feelings of his great, warm heart welled up within him, and, trying to burst forth all at once, tumbled over themselves, unable to secure words rapidly enough in which to give themselves utterance.
"Then why so silent and dubious?"
"Why – why – y – young man, I wasn't thinking anything about you just then." And again David laughed, while his wiry old friend jumped up and walked rapidly and restlessly about the small apartment and laughed in sympathy. "It's not – not – "
"I know." David grew instantly sober again. "Of course the little chap's case is serious – very – or I would not have brought him to you."
"Oh, no, no, I'm not thinking of Adam, bless you, no." The doctor always called his little namesake Adam. "I'm thinking of her – the little girl you left behind you. Yes – yes. Of her."
"She's not so little now, Doctor; she's tall – tall enough to be beautiful."
"I remember her, – slight – slight little creature, all eyes and hair, all soul and mind. Now what are you going to do with her, eh?"
"What is she going to do with me, rather! I'll go back to her as soon as I dare leave the boy."
"But, man alive! what – what are – you can't live down there all your days. It's to be life and work for you, sir, and what are you going to do with her, I say?"
"I'll bring her here with me. She'll come."
"Of course you'll bring her here with you, and you – you'll have plenty of friends. Maybe they'll appreciate her, and maybe they won't; maybe they won't, I say; Understand? And she'll c – come. Oh, yes, she'll come! she'll do whatever you say, and presently she'll break her heart and die for you. She'll never say a word, but that's what she'll do."
"Why, Doctor!" cried David, appalled. "I love her as my own life – my very soul."
"Of – of course. That goes without saying. We all do, we men, but we – damn it all! Do you suppose I've lived all these years and not seen? Why – we think of ourselves first every time. D – don't we, though? Rather!"
"But selfish as we are, we can love – a man can, if he sets himself to it honestly, – love a woman and make her happy, even without the appreciation of others, in spite of environment, – everything. It's the destiny of women to love us, thank God. She would have been doomed surely to die if she had married the one who wanted her first – or to live a life for her worse than death."
"Oh, Lord bless you, boy, yes. It's a woman's destiny. I'm an old fool. There – there's my own little girl, she's m – married and gone – gone to live in England. They will do it – the women will. Come, we'll go see Adam."
The doctor sprang up, brushed his hand across his eyes, and caught up a battered silk hat. He turned it about and looked at it ruefully, with a quizzical smile playing about the corners of his eyes. "Remember that hat?" he asked.
"Well do I remember it. You've driven many a mile in many a rainstorm by my side under that hat! When you're done with it, leave it to me in your will. I have a fancy for it. Will you?"
"Here, take it – take it. I'm done with it. Mary scolds me every day about it. No p – peace in life because of it. Here's a new one I bought the other day – good one – good enough."
He lifted a box which had fallen from his cluttered office table, and took from it a new hat which had evidently not been unpacked before. He tried it on his head, turned it about and about, took it off and gazed at it within and without, then hastily tossed it aside and, snatching his old one from David put it on his head, and they started off.
Hoyle had been placed in a small ward where were only two other little beds, both occupied, with one nurse to attend on the three patients. One of them had broken his leg and had to lie in a cast, and the other was convalescing from fever, but both were well enough to be companionable with the lonely little Southerner. Hoyle's face beamed upon David as he bent over him.
"I kin make pi'chers whilst I'm a-lyin' here," he cried ecstatically. "That thar lady, she 'lows me to make 'em. She 'lows mine're good uns." David glanced at the young woman indicated. She was pleasant-faced and rosy, and looked practical and good.
"He's such an odd little chap," she said.
"What be that – odd? Does hit mean this 'er lump on my back?" He pulled David down and whispered the question in his ear.
"No, no. She only means that you're a dear, queer little chap."
"What be I quare fer?"
"What are all these drawings? Tell us what they mean."
"This'n, hit's the ocean, an' that thar, hit's a steamship sailin' on th' ocean, like you done tol' me about. An' this'n, hit's our house an' here's whar ol' Pete bides at; an' this'n's ol' Pete kickin' out like he hated somethin' like he does when we give Frale's colt his corn first." The other small boys from their beds laughed out merrily and strained their necks to see. "These're theirn. I made this'n fer him an' this'n fer him."
He tossed the pictures feebly toward them, and they fluttered to the floor. David gathered them up and gave them to their respective owners. The old doctor stood beside the cot and looked down on the little artist. His lips twitched and his eyes twinkled.
"Which one is y – yours?" he asked.
"I keep this'n with the sea – an' – here, I made this'n fer you." He paused, and selected carefully among the pile of papers under his hand. "You reckon you kin tell what 'tis?"
The doctor took the paper and regarded it gravely a moment, then lifted his eyebrows and made grimaces of wonderment until the three patients in the three little beds were in gales of laughter. At last he said: —
"It's a pile of s – sausages."
"Hit hain't no sausages. Hit's jest a straight, cl'ar pi'cher of a house, an' hit's your house, too, whar brothah David lives at. See? Thar's the winder, an' the other winder hit's on t'othah side whar you can't see hit."
The doctor turned the paper over and regarded it a moment. "Show me the window. I – I see no window on the other side."
Again the three little invalids laughed uproariously at their visitor. David smilingly looked on. How often had he seen the delightful old man amuse himself thus with the children! He would contort his mobile face into all the varying expressions of wonder and dismay, of terror or stupefaction, and his entrance to the children's ward was always greeted with outcries of delight, when the little ones were well enough to allow of such freedom.
"Haven't you one to send to your sister?" asked David, stooping low to the child and speaking quietly. The boy's face lighted with a radiant smile that caused the old man to stand regarding him more intently.
"We'll sen' her this'n of the sea. You reckon hit looks like the ocean whar the ships go a-sailin' to t'othah side o' the world?" He held it in his slender fingers and eyed it critically.
"How did you come to try to make a picture of the sea when you never saw it?"
"Do' know. I feel like I done seed th' ocean when I'm settin' thar on the rock an' them white, big clouds go a-sailin' far – far, like they're goin' to anothah world an' hain't quite touchin' this'n."
"I wondered why you had your ship so high above the sea."
"I don't guess hit's a very good'n," said the child, ruefully, clinging to the scrap of paper with reluctant grasp. "You reckon she'd keer fer this'n?"
"I reckon she'd care for anything you made. Give it to me, and I'll send it to her."
"She tol' me the sea, hit war blue, an' I can't make hit right blue an' soft like she said. That thar blue pencil, hit's too slick. I can't make hit stay on the papah."
"What are these mounds here on either side of the sea?"
"Them's mountains."
"But why did you put mountains in the sea?" The boy looked with wide eyes dreamily past the two men so attentively regarding him.
"I – I reckon I jes' put 'em thar fer to look like the sea hit war on the world. I don't guess the'd be no ocean nor no world 'thout the' war mountains fer to hold everything whar hit belongs at."
"I shall bring you a box of paints to-morrow if the nurse will allow you to have them. I'll provide an oilcloth to spread around so he won't throw paint over your nice clean bed," he said to the pleasant-faced young woman.
"That's all right, Doctor," she said.
"Then you can make the blue stay on, and you can make the ocean with real water, and real blue for the sky and the sea."
The child's eyes glowed. He pulled David down and held him with his arm about his neck, and whispered in his ear, and what he said was: —
"When they're a-pullin' on me to git my hade straight an' my back right, I jes' think 'bout the far – far-away sea, with the ships a-sailin' an' how hit look, an' hit don't hurt so much. I kin b'ar hit a heap bettah. When you comin' back, brothah David?"
"Does it hurt you very much, Hoyle?"
"I reckon hit have to hurt," said the child, with fatalistic resignation. "I don't guess he'd hurt me 'thout he had to." He released David slowly, then pulled him down again. "Don't tell him I 'lowed hit hurted me. I reckon he'd ruthah hurt hisself if he could do me right that-a-way. You guess I – I'm goin' to git shet o' the misery some day?"
"That's what we're trying for, my brave little brother," and the two physicians bade the small patients good-by and walked out upon the street.