IN WHICH DAVID ACCOMPANIES CASSANDRA ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY
Filled with the enthusiasm of his thoughts, David climbed too rapidly,
and now he found he must take the more gradual rise of the mule trail
without haste. His cap thrust in his pocket, the breeze lifted his hair
and dried the perspiration which would still come with any too eager
exertion. But why should he care? Even to be alive these days was joy.
This was continually the refrain of his heart, nor had he begun to
exhaust his resources for entertainment in his solitary life.
Never were the days too long. Each was filled with such new and lively
interest as to preclude the thought of ennui. To provide against it, he
had sent for books--more than he had had time to read in all the busy
days of the last three years. These and his microscope and his surgical
instruments had been brought him on a mule team by Jerry Carew, who did
his "toting" for him, fetching all he needed for work or comfort, in
this way, from the nearest station where goods could be sent until the
hotel opened in the early summer. Not that he needed them, but that, as
an artist loves to keep a supply of paints and canvas, or a writer--even
when idle--is happier to know that he has at hand plenty of pens and
blank paper, he liked to have them.
Thus far he had felt no more need of his books than he had for his
surgical instruments, but now he was glad he had them for the sake of
the girl who was "that sot on all such." He would open the box the
moment he had eaten, and look them over. The little brother should take
them down to her one at a time--or better--he would take them himself
and watch the smile which came so rarely and sweetly to play about her
lips, and in her eyes, and vanish. Surely he had a right to that for his
pains.
He heard the sound of rapid hoof beats approaching across the level
space from the cabin above him, and looking up, as if conjured from his
innermost thought, he saw her coming, allowing the colt to swing along
as he would. Her bonnet hung by the strings from her arm, her hair blew
in crinkling wisps across her face, and the rapid exercise had brought
roses into the creamy whiteness of her skin. She kept to the brow of the
ridge and would have passed him unseeing, her eyes fixed on the distant
hills, had he not called to her in his clear Alpine jodel.
She reined in sharply and, slipping from the saddle, walked quickly to
him, leading the colt, which was warm and panting as if he had carried
her a good distance at that pace.
"Oh, Doctor Thryng, we need you right bad. That's why I took this way
home. Have you been to the house?"
"Yes. I have just come from there."
"Is mother all right?"
"Doing splendidly." He waited, and she lifted her face to him anxiously.
"We need you bad, Doctor."
"Yes--but not you--you're not--" he began stupidly.
"It's Mr. Irwin. I went there to see could I help any, and seemed like I
couldn't get here soon enough. When I found you were not at home, I was
that troubled. Can--can you go up there and see why I can't rest for
thinking he's a heap worse than he reckons? He thinks he's better,
but--but--"
"Come in and rest and tell me about it."
"Mistress Irwin isn't quite well, and I must go back as soon as I can
get everything done at home. I must get dinner for mother and Hoyle. You
have been that kind to mother--I thought--I thought--if you could only
see him--they can't spare him to die."
"Indeed, I'll go, gladly. But you must tell me more, so that I may know
what to take with me. What is the matter with the man? Is he ill or
hurt? Let me--oh, you are an independent young woman."
She had turned from him to mount, and he stepped forward with
outstretched hand to aid her, but, in a breath, not seeing his offer,
she placed her two hands on the horn of the saddle, and from the slight
rise of ground whereon she stood, with one agile spring, landed easily
in the saddle and wheeled about.
"He's been cutting trees to clear a patch for corn, and some way he hurt
his foot, and he's been lying there nigh a week with the misery. Last
evening she sent one of the children for mother, not knowing she was bad
herself, so I went for Aunt Sally; but she was gone, so I rode on to the
Irwins to see could I help. He said he wasn't suffering so much to-day,
and it made my heart just stop to hear that, when he couldn't lift
himself. You see, my stepfather--he--he was shot in the arm, and right
soon when the misery left him, he died, so I didn't say much--but on the
way home I thought of you, and I came here fast. We know so little here
on the mountains," she added sadly, as she looked earnestly down at him.
"You have acted wisely. Just ride on, Miss Cassandra, and I will follow
as soon as--"
"Come down with me now and have dinnah at our place. Then we can start
togethah."
"Thank you, I will. You are more expert in the art of dinner getting
than I am, so we will lose less time." He laughed and was rewarded with
the flash of a grateful smile as she started on without another word.
It took David but a few minutes to select what articles he suspected,
from her account, might be required. He hurried his preparations, and,
being his own groom, stable boy, and man-of-all-work, he was very busy
about it.
As a strain of music or a floating melody will linger in the background
with insistent repetition, while the brain is at the same time busily
occupied with surface affairs, so he found himself repeating some of her
quaint phrases, and seeing her eyes--the wisps of wind-blown hair--and
the smile on her lips, as she turned away, like an accompaniment to all
he was thinking and doing.
Soon, equipped for whatever the emergency might demand, he was at the
widow's door. His horse nickered and stretched out his nose toward
Cassandra's colt as if glad to have once more a little horse
companionship. Side by side they stood, with bridles slipped back and
hung to their saddles, while they crunched contentedly at the corn on
the ear, which Hoyle had brought them.
While at dinner, Cassandra showed David her books, pleased that he
asked to see them. "I brought them to study, should I get time. It's
right hard to give up hope--" she glanced at her mother and lowered her
voice. "To stop--anyhow--I thought I might teach Hoyle a little."
"Ah, these are mostly school-books," he said, glancing them over.
"Yes, I was at school this time--near Farington it was. Once I stayed
with Bishop Towahs and helped do housework. I could learn a heap
there--between times. They let me have all the books I wanted to read."
She looked lovingly at her few precious school-books. "I haven't touched
these since I got back--we're that busy."
Then she resumed her work about the house, cooking at the fireplace,
waiting upon David, and serving her mother, while directing Hoyle what
to do, should she be detained that night. He demurred and hung about
her, begging her not to stay.
"I won't, son, without I can't help it. You won't care so much
now--mother's not bad like she was."
"Yas, I will," he mourned.
"I reckon I'll have to call you 'baby' again," said his mother. "You're
gettin' that babyfied since Cass come back doin' all fer ye. You has a
heap o' company. Thar's the cow to keer fer, 'n' ol' Pete hollerin' at
ye, an' the chickens tellin' how many aigs they've laid fer ye. Run now.
Thar's ol' Frizzle cacklin'. Get the aig, an' we'll send hit to the pore
sick man. Thar, Cass," she added, as Hoyle ran out, half ashamed, to do
her bidding--"hit's your own fault fer makin' such a baby of him. I 'low
you betteh take 'long a few fresh aigs; likely they'll need 'em, so
triflin' they be. I don't guess you'll find a thing in the house fer him
to eat."
Cassandra packed one of her oddly shaped little baskets, as her mother
suggested, for the sadly demoralized and distracted family to which they
were going, and tucked in with the rest the warm, newly laid egg Hoyle
brought her, smiling indulgently, and kissing his upturned face as she
took it from him.
Toward David she was always entirely simple and natural, except when
abashed by his speech, which seemed to her most elaborate and sometimes
mystifying. She would pause and gaze on him an instant when he extended
to her a courtesy, as if to give it its exact value. Not that she in the
least distrusted him, quite the contrary, but that she was wholly unused
to hearing phrased courtesies, or enthusiasms expressed in the form of
words.
She had seen something of it in the bishop's pretty complimentary
pleasantries with his wife, but David's manner of handing her a chair,
offering her a suggestion--with a "May I be allowed?" was foreign to
her, and she accepted such remarks with a moment's hesitation and a
certain aloofness hardly understood by him.
He found himself treating her with a measure of freedom from the
constraint which men often place upon themselves because of the
recognition of the personal element which will obtrude between them and
femininity in general. He recognized the reason for this in her absolute
lack of coquetry toward him, but analyze the phenomenon, as yet, he
could not.
To her he was a being from another world, strange and delightful, but
set as far from her as if the sea divided them. She turned toward him
sweet, expectant eyes. She listened attentively, gropingly sometimes.
She would understand him if she could,--would learn from him and trust
him implicitly,--but her femininity never obtruded itself. Her
personality seemed to be enclosed within herself and never to lean
toward him with the subtile flattery men feel and like to awaken, but
which they often fear to arouse when they wish to remain themselves
unstirred. Her dignified poise and perfect freedom from all arts to
attract his favor and attention pleased him, but while it gave him the
safe and unconstrained feeling when with her, it still piqued his man's
nature a little to see her so capable of showing tenderness to her own,
yet so unstirred by himself.
Cassandra had never been up to his cabin when he was there, until
to-day, since the morning she came to consult him about Frale, nor had
that young man's name been uttered between them. David had said nothing
to her of the return of the valise, not wishing to touch on the subject
unless she gave the opportunity for him to ask what she knew about it.
Now, since his morning's talk with her mother had envisioned an ideal,
and shown a glory beyond, he was glad to have this opportunity of being
alone with her and of sounding her depths.
For a long time they rode in silence, and he remembered her mother's
words, "He may have told Cass, but she is that still." She carried her
basket carefully before her on the pommel of her saddle. Gradually the
large sunbonnet which quite hid her face slipped back, and the sun
lighted the bronze tints of her hair. As he rode at her side he studied
her watchfully, so simply dressed in homespun material which had faded
from its original color to a sort of turquoise green. The stuff was
heavy and clung closely to her figure, and she rode easily, perched on
her small, old-fashioned side-saddle, swaying with lithe movement to the
motion of her horse. She wore no wrap, only a soft silk kerchief knotted
about her neck, the fluttering ends of which caressed her chin.
Her cheeks became rosy with the exercise, and her gray eyes, under the
green pines and among the dense laurel thickets, took on a warm,
luminous green tint like the hue of her dress. David at last found it
difficult to keep his eyes from her,--this veritable flower of the
wilderness,--and all this time no word had been spoken between them. How
impersonal and far away from him she seemed! While he was filled with
interest in her and eager to learn the secret springs of her life, she
was riding on and on, swaying to her horse as a flower on its slender
stem sways in a breeze, as undisturbed by him as if she were not a human
breathing girl, subject to man's dominating power.
Was she, then, so utterly untouched by his masculine presence? he
wondered. If he did not speak first, would she keep silent forever?
Should he wait and see? Should he will her to speak and of herself
unfold to him?
Suddenly she turned and looked clearly and pleasantly in his eyes.
"We'll be on a straight road for a piece after this hill; shall we hurry
a little then?"
"Certainly, if you think best. You set the pace, and I'll follow." Again
silence fell.
"Do you feel in a hurry?" he asked at length.
"I would like to get there soon. We can't tell what might be." She
pressed her hand an instant to her throat and drew in her breath as if
something hurt her.
"What is it?" he asked, drawing his horse nearer.
"Nothing. Only I wish we were there now."
"You are suffering in anticipation, and it isn't necessary. Better not,
indeed. Think of something else."
"Yes, suh." The two little words sounded humbly submissive. He had never
been so baffled in an endeavor to bring another soul into a mood
responsive to his own. This gentle acquiescence was not what he wished,
but that she should reveal herself and betray to him even a hint--a
gleam--of the deep undercurrent of her life.
Suddenly they emerged on the crest of a narrow ridge from which they
could see off over range after range of mountain peaks on one side,
growing dimmer, bluer, and more evanescent until lost in a heavenly
distance, and on the other side a valley dropping down and down into a
deep and purple gloom richly wooded and dense, surrounded by precipices
topped with scrubby, wind-blown pines and oaks--a wild and rocky descent
into mystery and seclusion. Here and there a slender thread of smoke,
intensely blue, rose circling and filtering through the purple density
against a black-green background of hemlocks.
Contrasted with the view on the other side, so celestially fair, this
seemed to present something sinister, yet weirdly beautiful--a baffling,
untamed wilderness. Along this ridge the road ran straight before them
for a distance, stony and bleak, and the air swept over it sweet and
strong from the sea, far away.
"Wait--wait a moment," he called, as his panting horse rounded the last
curve of the climb, and she had already put her own to a gallop. She
reined in sharply and came back to him, a glowing vision. "Stand a
moment near me. We'll let our horses rest a bit and ourselves, too.
There is strength and vitality in this air; breathe it in deeply. What
joy to be alive!"
She came near, and their horses held quiet communion, putting their
noses together contentedly. Cassandra lifted her head high and turned
her face toward the billowed mountains, and did what Thryng had not
known her to do, what he had wondered if she ever did-- She
laughed--laughed aloud and joyously.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked, and laughed with her.
"I'm that glad all at once. I don't know why. If the mountains could
feel and be glad, seems like they'd be laughing now away off there by
the sea. I wonder will I ever see the ocean."
"Of course you will. You are not going to live always shut up in these
mountains. Laugh again. Let me hear you."
But she turned on him startled eyes. "I clean forgot that poor man down
below, so like to die I am 'most afraid to get back there. Look down. It
must have been in a place like that where Christian slew Apollyon in the
dark valley, like I was reading to Hoyle last night."
"Does he live down in there? I mean the man Irwin--not Apollyon. He's
dead, for Christian slew him."
"Yes, the Irwins live there. See yonder that spot of cleared red ground?
There's their place. The house is hid by the dark trees nigh the red
spot. Can you make it out?"
"Yes, but I call that far."
"It's easy riding. Shall we go on? I'm that frightened--we'd better
hurry."
"Is that your way when you are afraid to do a thing; you hurry to do it
all the more?"
"Seems like we have to a heap of times. Seems like if I were only a man,
I could be brave, but being a girl so, it is right hard."
She started her horse to a gallop, and side by side they hurried over
the level top of the ridge--to Thryng an exhilarating moment, to her a
speeding toward some terrible, unknown trial.