THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE
Along the dark turnpike John Valiant rode with his chin sunk on his
breast. He was wretchedly glad of the darkness, for it covered a
thousand familiar sights he had grown to love. Yet through the dark
came drifting sounds that caught at him with clutching hands--the bay
of a hound from some far-off kennel, the whirring note of frogs, the
impatient high whinny of a horse across pasture-bars--and his nostrils
widened to the wild braided fragrance of the fields over which the mist
was spinning its fairy carded wool.
The preparations for his going had been quickly made. He was leaving
behind him all but a single portmanteau. Uncle Jefferson had already
taken this--with Chum--to the station. The old man had now gone
sorrowfully afoot to the blockhouse, a half-mile up the track, to
bespeak the stopping of the express. He would go back on the horse his
master was riding.
The lonely little depot flanked a siding beside a dismal stretch of
yellow clay-bank gouged by rains. Its windows were dark and the
weather-beaten plank platform was illuminated by a single lantern
that hung on a nail beside the locked door, its sickly flame showing
bruise-like through smoky streakings of lamp-black. At one side, in the
shadow, was his bag, and beside it the tethered bulldog--sole spot of
white against the melancholy forlornness--lying with one splinted leg,
like a swaddled ramrod, sticking straight out before him.
In the saddle, Valiant struck his hand hard against his knee. Surely it
was a dream! It could not be that he was leaving Virginia, leaving
Damory Court, leaving _her_! But he knew that it was not a dream.
Far away, rounding Powhattan Mountain, he heard the long-drawn hoot of
the coming train, flinging its sky-warning in a host of scampering
echoes. Among them mixed another sound far up the desolate road, coming
nearer--the sound of a horse, galloping fast and hard.
His own fidgeted, flung up wide nostrils and neighed shrilly. Who was
coming along that runnelled highway at such an hour in such breakneck
fashion?
The train was nearer now; he could hear its low rumbling hum, rising to
a roar, and the click and spring of the rails. But though he lifted a
foot from the stirrup, he did not dismount. Something in the whirlwind
speed of that coming caught and held him motionless. He had a sudden
curious feeling that all the world beside did not exist; there were
only the sweeping rush of the nearing train--impersonal, unhuman--he,
sitting his horse in the gloom, and that unknown rider whose anguish
of speed outstripped the steam, riding--to whom?
The road skirted the track as it neared the station, and all at once a
white glare from the opened fire-box flung itself blindingly across the
dark, illuminating like a flare of summer lightning the patch of highway
and the rider. Valiant, staring, had an instant's vision of a streaming
cloak, of a girl's face, set in a tawny swirl of loosened hair. With a
cry that was lost in the shriek of escaping steam, he dragged his
plunging horse around and the white blaze swept him also, as the rider
pulled down at his side.
"You!" he cried. He leaned and caught the slim hands gripped on the
bridle, shaking now. "You!"
The dazzling brightness had gone by, and the air was full of the
groaning of the brakes as the long line of darkened sleepers shuddered
to its enforced stop. "John!"--He heard the sweet wild cry pierce
through the jumble of noises, and something in it set his blood running
molten through his veins. It held an agony of relief, of shame and of
appeal. "John ... John!"
And knowing suddenly, though not how or why, that all barriers were
swept away, his arms went out and around her, and in the shadow of
the lonely little station, they two, in their saddles, clung and
swayed together with clasping hands and broken words, while the train,
breathing heavily for a resentful second, shrieked itself away into the
night, and left only the fragrance from the misty fields, the crowding
silence and the sprinkling stars.
* * * * *
The breeze had risen and was blowing the mist away as they went back
along the road. A faint light was lifting, forerunner of the moon. They
rode side by side, and to the slow gait of the horses, touching noses in
low whinnyings of equine comradeship, by the faint glamour they gazed
into each other's faces. The adorable tweedy roughness of his shoulder
thrilled her cheek.
"... And you were going away. Yes, yes, I know. It was my fault. I ...
misunderstood. Forgive me!"
He kissed her hand. "As if there were anything to forgive! Do you
remember in the woods, sweetheart, the day it rained? What a brute I
was--to fight so! And all the time I wanted to take you in my arms
like a little hurt child...."
She turned toward him. "Oh, I _wanted_ you to fight! Even though it was
no use. I had given up, but your strength comforted me. To have you
surrender, too--"
"It was your face in the churchyard," he told her. "How pale and worn
you looked! It came to me then for the first time how horribly selfish
it would be to stay--how much easier going would make it for you."
"... And to think that it was Mad Anthony--Did the clock _really_ strike
thirteen, do you think? Or did I fancy it?"
"Why question it?" he said. "I believe in mysteries. The greatest
mystery of all is that you should love me. I doubt no miracle hereafter.
Dearest, dearest!"
* * * * *
At the entrance of the cherry lane, he fastened his horse to the hedge,
and noiselessly let down the pasture-bars for her golden chestnut. When
he came back to where she stood waiting on the edge of the lawn, the
late moon, golden-vestured, was just showing above the rim of the
hills, painting the deep soft blueness of the Virginian night with a
translucence as pure as prayer. Above the fallen hood of her cloak her
hair shone like a nimbus, and the loveliness of her face made him catch
his breath for the wonderfulness of it.
As they stood heavened in each other's arms, heart beating against
heart, and the whole world throbbing to joy, the nightingale beyond the
arbors began to bubble and thrill its unimaginable melody. It came to
them like the voice of the magical rose-scented night itself, set to
the wordless music of the silver leaves. It rose and swelled exultant to
break and die in a cascade of golden notes.
But in their hearts was the song that is fadeless, immortal.
THE END
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=Girl from His Town, The.= By Marie Van Vorst.
=Girl Who Won, The.= By Beth Ellis.
=Glory of Clementina, The.= By William J. Locke.
=Glory of the Conquered, The.= By Susan Glaspell.
=God's Good Man.= By Marie Corelli.
=Going Some.= By Rex Beach.
=Golden Web, The.= By Anthony Partridge.
=Green Patch, The.= By Bettina von Hutten.
=Happy Island.= (sequel to "Uncle William") By Jennette Lee.
=Hearts and the Highway.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
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=Hidden Water.= By Dane Coolidge.
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=House of the Whispering Pines, The.= By Anna Katherine Green.
=House on Cherry Street, The.= By Amelia E. Barr.
=How Leslie Loved.= By Anne Warner.
=Husbands of Edith, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
=Idols.= By William J. Locke.
=Illustrious Prince, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
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=Inez.= (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
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=In the Service of the Princess.= By Henry C. Rowland.
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=Jane Cable.= By George Barr McCutcheon.
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=Jude the Obscure.= By Thomas Hardy.
=Keith of the Border.= By Randall Parrish.
=Key to the Unknown, The.= By Rosa N. Carey.
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=Sunset Trail, The.= By Alfred Henry Lewis.
=Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop.= By Anne Warner.
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=Tales of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle.
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=Texican, The.= By Dane Coolidge.
=That Printer of Udell's.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=Three Brothers, The.= By Eden Phillpotts.
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=Thurston of Orchard Valley.= By Harold Bindloss.
=Title Market, The.= By Emily Post.
=Torn Sails.= A Tale of a Welsh Village. By Allen Raine.
=Trail of the Axe, The.= By Ridgwell Cullum.
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=Two-Gun Man, The.= By Charles Alden Seltzer.
=Two Vanrevels, The.= By Booth Tarkington.
=Uncle William.= By Jennette Lee.
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=Village of Vagabonds, A.= By F. Berkeley Smith.
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=Voice of the People, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Wanted--A Chaperon.= By Paul Leicester Ford.
=Wanted: A Matchmaker.= By Paul Leicester Ford.
=Watchers of the Plains, The.= Ridgwell Cullum.
=Wayfarers, The.= By Mary Stewart Cutting.
=Way of a Man, The.= By Emerson Hough.
=Weavers, The.= By Gilbert Parker.
=When Wilderness Was King.= By Randall Parrish.
=Where the Trail Divides.= By Will Lillibridge.
=White Sister, The.= By Marion Crawford.
=Window at the White Cat, The.= By Mary Roberts Rinehart.
=Winning of Barbara Worth, The.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=With Juliet in England.= By Grace S. Richmond.
=Woman Haters, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln.
=Woman in Question, The.= By John Reed Scott.
=Woman In the Alcove, The.= By Anna Katharine Green.
=Yellow Circle, The.= By Charles E. Walk.
=Yellow Letter, The.= By William Johnston.
=Younger Set, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
words and intent.
2. Words typeset as italic have been noted by an underscore (_) before
and after the word; words in the advertising pages that were typeset in
bold face have been noted with an equal sign (=) before and after the
word.
3. The original book that this e-text is transcribed from had been bound
with the advertising pages out of order; this has been corrected to
place those pages in alphabetical order by title.
4. The original book's Table of Contents showed Chapter XVI as beginning
on page 139; this has been corrected to show that the chapter in actual
fact begins on page 138.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Valiants of Virginia, by Hallie Erminie Rives