Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.
It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
those two sinking stars.
Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
though I little thought so then.
We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
you--being the angel you are?"
My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."
I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"
"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."
I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
Ever have one?"