"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
much the same until near the end of our détour, when my horse swerved
abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.
"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
you're safe!"
She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
escaping to the Federal camp.
Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"