"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."
"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"
"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
calls."
"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
contrabands.
We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.
"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.
In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
love itself.
She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
house by the back door?"
"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
pass.
She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"
"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."
"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
him."
"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
helping her to guess more correctly.
"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.