VIII

James Haxall explained this to Rosemary. Elim, standing aside, could see

that the girl neither assented nor raised objection. She seemed utterly

listless; a fleet emotion at the knowledge of her father's death had, in

that public place, been immediately repressed. The sloop, Elim learned,

was ready to start at once. The afternoon was declining; to reach

Bramant's Wharf would take them through the night and into the meridian

of tomorrow. They had made no preparations for the trip, there was

neither bedding nor food; but Elim and Haxall agreed that it was best

for Rosemary Roselle to leave the city at the price of any slight

momentary discomfort.

Elim looked about for a place where he might purchase food. A near-by

eating house had been completely wrecked, its floor a debris of broken

crockery. Beyond, a baker's shop had been deserted, its window shattered

but the interior intact. The shelves, however, had been swept bare of

loaves. Elim searched behind the counters--nothing remained. But in

walking out his foot struck against a round object, wrapped in paper,

which on investigation proved to be a fruit cake of satisfactory

solidity and size. With this beneath his arm he returned to Rosemary

Roselle, and they followed Haxall to the wharf where the sloop lay.

The tiller was in charge of an old man with peering pale-blue eyes and

tremulous siccated hands. Yet he had an astonishingly potent voice, and

issued orders, in tones like the grating of metal edges, to a loutish

youth in a ragged shirt and bare legs. The cabin, partly covered, was

filled with bagged bales; a small space had been left for the steersman,

and forward the deck was littered with untidy ropes and swab, windlass

bar and other odds.

Elim Meikeljohn moved forward to assist Rosemary on to the sloop,

but she evaded his hand and jumped lightly down upon the deck, Indy,

grumbling and certain of catastrophe, was safely got aboard, and Elim

helped the youth to push the craft's bow out into the stream. The grimy

mainsail rose slowly, the jib was set, and they deliberately gathered

way, slipping silently between the timbered banks, emerging from the

thin pungent influence of the smoking ruins.

Behind them the sun transfused the veiled city into a coppery blur that

gradually sank into a tender-blue dusk. Indy had arranged a place with

the most obtainable comfort for Rosemary Roselle; she sat with her back

against the mast, gazing toward the bank, stealing backward, at the

darkening trees moving in solemn procession.

After the convulsed and burning city, the uproar of guns and clash of

conflict, the quiet progress of the sloop was incredibly peaceful and

withdrawn. Elim felt as if they had been detached from the familiar

material existence and had been set afloat in a stream of silken

shadows. The wind was behind them, the boom had been let far but, the

old steersman drowsed at his post, and the youth had fallen instantly

asleep in a strange cramped attitude.

Elim was standing at the stern--he had conceived it his duty to stay as

far away from Rosemary Roselle as her wish plainly indicated; but,

in this irrelated phase of living, he gradually lost his sense of

responsibility and restrained conduct. He wanted extravagantly to be

near Rosemary, to be where he could see her clearly. Perhaps, but this

was unlikely, she would speak to him. His desire gradually flooded him;

it induced a species of careless heroism, and he made his way resolutely

forward and sat on a heap of rope at a point where he could study her

with moderate propriety and success. She glanced at him momentarily when

he took his place--he saw that her under lip was capable of an extremely

human and annoying expression--and returned to her veiled scrutiny of

the sliding banks.

An unfamiliar emotion stirred at Elim's heart; and in his painstaking

introspective manner he exposed it. He found a happiness that, at the

same time, was a pain; he found an actual catch in his throat that was

a nebulous desire; he found an utter loneliness together with the

conviction that this earth was a place of glorious possibilities of

affinity. Principally he was conscious of an urging of his entire being

toward the slight figure in black, staring with wide bereft eyes into

the gathering evening. On the other side of the mast, Indy was sleeping

with her head upon her breast. The feeling in Elim steadily increased

in poignancy--faint stars appearing above the indefinite foliage pierced

him with their beauty, the ashen-blue sky vibrated in a singing chord,

the river divided in whispering confidences on the bow of the sloop.

Elim Meikeljohn debated the wisdom of a remark; his courage grew

immeasurably reckless.

“The wind and river are shoving us along together.” Pronounced, the

sentence seemed appallingly compromising; he had meant that the wind and

river together, not--

She made no reply; one hand, he saw, stirred slightly.

Since he had not been blasted into nothingness, he continued:

“I'm glad the war's over. Why,” he exclaimed in genuine surprise, “you

can hear the birds again.” A sleepy twitter had floated out over the

stream. Still no response. He should not, certainly, have mentioned

the war. He wondered desperately what a fine and delicate being like

Rosemary Roselle talked about? It would be wise to avoid serious and

immediate considerations for commonplaces.

“Ellik McCosh,” he said, “a girl in our village who went to Boston,

learned to dance, and when she came back she taught two or three. Her

communion medal was removed from her,” he added with complete veracity.

“Perhaps,” he went on conversationally, “you don't have communion medals

in Richmond--it's a little lead piece you have when you are in good

standing at the Lord's table. Mine was taken away for three months for

whistling by the church door. A long while ago,” he ended in a different

voice. He thought of the fruit cake, and breaking off a piece offered it

to the silent girl. “It's like your own,” he told her, placing it on a

piece of paper at her side; “it's from Richmond and wasn't even paid for

with strange silver.”

At this last a sudden uneasiness possessed him, and he hurriedly

searched his pockets. He had exactly fifty cents. Until the present he

had totally overlooked the depleted state of his fortune. Elim had

some arrears of pay, but now he seriously doubted whether they were

collectible. Nothing else. He had emerged from the war brevetted major

but as penniless as the morning of his enlistment. He doubted whether,

in the hurry of departure, Rosemary Roselle had remembered to bring any

money.

Still, she would be cared for, supplied with every necessity, at

Bramant's Wharf. There he would leave her ... his breathing stopped,

for, incredibly, he saw that her hand was suspended over the piece of

cake. She took it up and ate it slowly, absently. This, he felt,

had created a bond between them; but it was a conviction in which,

apparently, she had no share. She might have thanked him but she didn't.

An underhanded and indefensible expedient occurred to him, and he sat

for a perceptible number of minutes concentrating his memory upon a dim

and special object. Finally he raised his head.

“Indy,” he quoted, “a large light mulatto, hasn't much sense but a great

deal of sensibility. That,” he added of himself, “is evidently very

well observed.” He saw that Rosemary turned her head with an impatient

curiosity. “She is very unfortunate,” he continued uncertainly; “she

lost a present of money and couldn't work till it was given back.”

“But how,” demanded Rosemary Roselle, “did you know that?” Curiosity had

betrayed her.

Elim Meikeljohn concealed a grin with difficulty. It was evident that

she profoundly regretted the lapse, yet she would not permit herself to

retreat from her position. She maintained a high intolerant aspect of

query.

“Have you forgotten,” he went on, “how the dread day rolled around?” He

paused wickedly. “The slough of despond?” he added.

“What silly stuff!” Rosemary pronounced.

“It was,” he agreed, “mostly. But the paper about Indy was a superior

production. B plus, I think.”

A slow comprehension dawned on her face, blurred by the night.

“So that's where they went,” she observed; “you marked them.” He would

have sworn that a smile hovered for the fraction of a moment on her pale

lips. She drew up her shoulders slightly and turned away.

His best, his only hope had flickered for a minute and died away. Her

silence was like impregnable armor. A puff of wind filled the sails,

there was a straining of cordage, an augmented bubbling at the sloop's

bow, and then the stir subsided. He passed into a darkness of old

distresses, forebodings, grim recollections from his boyhood, inherited

bleak memories. Rosemary Roselle's upright figure gradually sank. He

realized that she was asleep on her arm. Elim bent forward shamelessly

and studied her worn countenance. There was a trace of tears on her

cheek. She was as delicate, as helpless as a flower sleeping on its

stalk.

An impulse to touch her hair was so compelling that he started back,

shaken; a new discordant tumult rose within him, out of which emerged

an aching hunger for Rosemary Roselle; he wanted her with a passion cold

and numbing like ether. He wanted her without reason, and in the desire

lost his deep caution, his rectitude of conscience. He was torn far

beyond the emotional possibilities of weak men. The fact that, penniless

and without a home, he had nothing to offer was lost in the beat and

surge of his feelings. He went with the smashing completeness of a heavy

body, broken loose in an elemental turmoil. He wanted her; her fragrant

spirit, the essence that was herself, Rosemary Roselle. He couldn't

take it; such consummations, he realized, were beyond will and act, they

responded from planes forever above human desire--there was not even

a rift of hope. The banks had been long lost in the night; the faint

disembodied cry of an owl breathed across the invisible river.