She woke with a little confused cry, and sat gazing distractedly into
the dark, her hands pressed to her cheeks.
“Don't you remember,” Elim Meikeljohn spoke, “Haxall and the sloop; your
relatives at Bramant's Wharf?”
She returned to a full consciousness of her surroundings.
“I was dreaming so differently,” she told him. It seemed to Elim that
the antagonism had departed from her voice; he even had a feeling that
she was glad of his presence. Indy, prostrate on the deck with her chin
elevated to the stars, had not moved.
The darkness increased, broken only by the colored glimmer of the port
and starboard lights and a wan blur about the old man bent over the
tiller. Once he woke the youth and sent him forward with a sounding
pole, once the sloop scraped heavily over a mud bank, but that was all;
their imperceptible progress was smooth, unmarked.
Elim, recalling Joshua, wished that the sloop and night were anchored,
stationary. Already he smelled the dawn in a newly stirring, cold air.
The darkness thickened. Rosemary Roselle said:
“I'm dreadfully hungry.”
He immediately produced the fruit cake.
“It's really quite satisfactory,” she continued, eating; “It's like the
rest of this--unreal.... What is your name?” she demanded unexpectedly.
“Elim Meikeljohn.”
“That's a very Northern sort of name.”
“It would be hard to come by one more so,” he agreed. “It's from the
highlands of Scotland.”
“Then if you don't mind, I'll think of you as Scotch right now.”
He conveyed to her the fact that he didn't.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “There's the morning!”
A thin gray streak widened across the east. Almost immediately the night
dissolved. They were sweeping down the middle of a river that surprised
Elim with its width and majesty. The withdrawn banks bore clustered
trees, undulating green reached inland, the shaded facades of houses sat
back on lawns that dipped to the stream.
Rosemary Roselle's face was pale with fatigue; her eyes appeared
preternaturally large; and this, for Elim, made her charm infinitely
more appealing. She smoothed her dress, touched her hair with light
fingers. The intimacy of it all thrilled him. A feeling of happy
irresponsibility deepened. He lost sight of the probable unhappiness of
tomorrow, the catastrophe that was yesterday; Elim was radiantly content
with the present.
“You look Northern too,” she went on; “you are so much more solemn than
the Virginia men--I mean your face is.”
“I suppose I've had a solemn sort of existence,” he agreed. “Life's
an awful serious thing where I was born. The days are not long enough,
life's too short, to get your work done. It's a stony pasture,” he
admitted. He described the Meikeljohn farm land, sloping steeply
to swift rocky streams, the bare existence of the sheep, the bitter
winters. He touched briefly on Hester and his marriage.
“It's no wonder,” she pronounced, “that you have shadows in your eyes.
You can't imagine,” she continued, “how wonderful everything was in
Richmond, before--I simply can't talk about it now. I suppose we are
ruined, but there isn't a man or woman who wouldn't do the same thing
all over again. I'm almost glad that father isn't--isn't here; misery
of any kind made him so wretched ... perfect memories.” She closed her
eyes.
Her under lip, he saw, projected slightly, her chin was fine but
stubborn. These details renewed his delight; they lent a warm humanity
to her charm.
“Any one would know,” she said, regarding him, “that you are absolutely
trustworthy. It's a nice quality now, but I don't think I would have
noticed it even a month ago. You can see that I have grown frightfully
old in the littlest while. Yes, you are comfortable to be with, and I
suspect that counts for a great deal. It's quite sad, too, to grow old.
Oh, look, we've changed! Where do you suppose he is going? This can't
nearly be Bramant's.”
The mainsail had been hauled in, and the course of the sloop changed,
quartering in toward the shore. The youth, moving forward, stopped to
enlighten them. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the old man.
“He's got kin here at Jerico,” he explained; “and we're setting in to
see them. We won't stop long.”
The mainsail came smoothly down, the jib fluttered, and the sloop slid
in beside a sturdy old wharf, projecting from a deep fringe of willows.
No sign of life or habitation was visible.
The youth made fast a hawser, the old man mounted painfully to the dock,
and Indy stirred and rose.
“I must have just winked asleep,” she declared in consternation.
Rosemary Roselle lightly left the boat, and Elim followed. “If we
explored,” he proposed, “perhaps we could get you a cup of coffee.”
She elected, however, to stay by the river, and Elim went inward alone.
Beyond the willows was an empty marshland. The old man had disappeared,
with no trace of his objective kin. A road, deep in yellow mire, mounted
a rise beyond and vanished a hundred yards distant. Elim, unwilling to
get too far away from the sloop, had turned and moved toward the wharf,
when he was halted by the sound of horses' hoofs.
He saw approaching him over the road a light open carriage with a
fringed canopy and a pair of horses driven by a negro in a long white
dust coat. In the body of the carriage a diminutive bonneted head
was barely visible above an enormous circumference of hoops. Elim saw
bobbing gray curls, peering anxious eyes, and a fluttering hand in a
black silk-thread mit.
“Gossard,” a feminine voice cried shrilly to the driver, at the sight of
Elim on the roadside, “here's a Yankee army; lick up those horses!”
The negro swung a vicious whip, the horses started sharply forward,
but the carriage wheels, sinking in a deep slough, remained fixed; the
harness creaked but held; the equipage remained stationary. The negro
dismounted sulkily, and Elim crossed the road and put his shoulder to a
wheel. Together with the driver, he lifted the carriage on to a firmer
surface. The old lady was seated with tightly shut eyes.
“This here man ain't going to hurt you,” the driver exclaimed
impatiently. “This exdus is all nonsense anyways,” he grumbled. “I got a
mind to stop--I'm free.”
She directed upon him a beady black gaze.
“You get right into this carriage,” she commanded; “you'd be free to
starve. You are a fool!” The man reluctantly obeyed her. “I thank you
for your clemency,” she said to Elim. She fumbled among her flounces
and hoops and produced an object carefully wrapped and tied. “Here,”
she proclaimed; “I can still pay for a service. Gossard--” the carriage
moved forward, was lost in the dip in the road. Elim opened the package
in his hand and regarded, with something like consternation, a bottle of
champagne.
Beyond the wharf the great yellow flood of the river gleamed in the sun;
choirs of robins whistled in trees faintly green. Rosemary Roselle was
seated with her feet hanging over the water.
“Champagne for breakfast,” she observed, shaking her head; “only the
most habitual sports manage that.” He recounted the episode of the
“Yankee army,” delighted by her less formal tone, then the old man
returned as enigmatically as he had disappeared. The ropes were cast
off, the sloop swung out into the current, and their smooth progress was
resumed.
A few more hours and they would be at Bramant's Wharf. There, Elim knew,
he would be expected to leave Rosemary. There would be a perfunctory
gratitude from her relatives, perhaps a warmer appreciation from
herself--a moment--a momentary pressure of her hand--and then--where? He
would never again come in contact with so exquisite a girl; they were,
he realized, customarily held in a circle where men like himself,
outsiders, rarely penetrated; once more with her family and he would be
forgotten. Anyhow, he had nothing.
But in spite of these heavy reflections his irresponsible happiness
increased. In this segment of existence no qualifications from the shore
were valid. Time, himself, at the tiller, seemed drifting, unconcerned.
Rosemary Roselle regarded Elim with a franker interest. She took off
a small slipper and emptied some sand from the shore; the simple act
seemed to him burdened with gracious warmth. Now she was infinitely
easier than any girl he had known before. Those about his home met the
younger masculine world either with a blunt sarcasm or with an uneasy
voiceless propriety. Rosemary, propped on an elbow, was as unconcerned
as a boy. This made her infinitely more difficult of approach. Her
slight beautiful body, not hidden by clothes--as decency demanded in
the more primitive state--was delightfully marked, suggested. Here was
beauty admitted, lauded, even studied, in place of the fierce masking
and denouncement of his father and the fellow elders.
He remembered, from collegiate hours, the passion of the Greeks for
sheer earthly strength and loveliness--Helen and Menelaus, Sappho on
the green promontories of Lesbos. At the time of his reading he had
maintained a wry brow ... now Elim Meikeljohn could comprehend the siege
of Troy.
He said aloud, without thinking and instantly aghast at his words:
“You are like a bodied song.” He was horrified; then his newer spirit
utterly possessed him, he didn't care; he nodded his long solemn head.
Rosemary Roselle turned toward him with a cool stare that was lost in
irresistible ringing peals of laughter.
“Oh!” she gasped; “what a face for a compliment. It was just like
pouring sirup out of a vinegar cruet.”
He became annoyed and cleared his throat in an elder-like manner, but
her amusement strung out in silvery chuckles.
“It's the first I've said of the kind,” he admitted stiffly; “I've no
doubt it came awkward.”
She grew more serious, studied him with thoughtful eyes. “Do you know,”
she said slowly, “I believe you. Compliments in Virginia are like
cherries, the trees are full of them; they're nice but worth--so much.”
She measured an infinitesimal degree with a rosy nail against a finger.
“But I can see that yours are different. They almost hurt you, don't
they?”
He made no reply, struggling weakly against what, he perceived, was to
follow.
“You're like a song that to hear would draw a man about the world,” said
Elim Meikeljohn, pagan. “He would leave his sheep and byre, he'd drop
his duty and desert his old, and follow. I'm lost,” he decided, in
a last perishing flicker of early teaching; and then he smiled
inexplicably at the wrath to come.
Rosemary Roselle grew more serious.
“But that's not a compliment at all,” she discovered; “it's more, and it
makes me uncomfortable. Please stop!”
“About the world,” echoed Elim, “and everything else forgotten.”
“Please,” she repeated, holding up a prohibitory palm.
“Rose petals,” he said, regarding it. His madness increased. She
withdrew her hand and gazed at him with a small frown. She was sitting
upright, propped on her arms. Her mouth, with its slightly full
under lip, was elevated, and an outrageous desire possessed him. His
countenance slowly turned hotly red, and slowly a faint tide of color
stained Rosemary Roselle's cheeks. She looked away; Elim looked away.
He proceeded aft and learned that Bramant's Wharf lay only a few miles
ahead.
The old man cursed the wind in his stringent tones. Elim hadn't noticed
anything reprehensible in the wind. It appeared that for a
considerable time there hadn't been any. A capful was stirring now, and
humanity--ever discontented--silently cursed that.
“We're nearly there,” he said, returning to Rosemary Roselle.
He was unable to gather any intelligence from her expression.
She rose, and stood with a hand on Indy's shoulder, murmuring
affectionately in the colored woman's ear. The sloop once more headed
at a long angle for the shore. Bramant's Wharf grew visible, projecting
solidly from a verdant bank. They floated silently up to the dock, and
the youth held the sloop steady while Rosemary Roselle and Indy mounted
from its deck. Elim followed, but suddenly he stopped, and his hand
went into his pocket. A half dollar fell ringing into the boat. Elim
indicated the youth; he was now penniless.
X
“The house,” Rosemary explained, “is almost a mile in. There is a
carriage at the wharf when they expect you. And usually there is some
one about.”
Elim, carrying the cake and bottle, followed over a grassy road between
tangles of blackberry bushes. On either hand neglected fields held
a sparse tangle of last year's weeds; beyond, trees closed in the
perspective. The sun had passed the zenith, and the shadows of walnut
trees fell across the road. Elim's face was grim, a dark tide rose about
him, enveloping his heart, bothering his vision. He wanted to address
something final to the slim girl in black before him, something now,
before she was forever lost in the gabble of her relatives; but he could
think of nothing appropriate, expressive of the tumult within him. His
misery deepened with every step, grew into a bitterness of rebellion
that almost forced an incoherent reckless speech. Rosemary Roselle
didn't turn, she didn't linger, there were a great many things that she
might say. The colored woman was positively hurrying forward. A great
loneliness swept over him. He had not, he thought drearily, been made
for joy.
“It's queer there's no one about,” Rosemary Roselle observed. They
reached the imposing pillars of an entrance--the wooden gate was
chained, and they were obliged to turn aside and search for an opening
in a great mock-orange hedge. Before them a wide sweep of lawn led up
to a formal dark façade; a tanbark path was washed, the grass ragged and
uncut. Involuntarily they quickened their pace.
Elim saw that towering brown pillars rose to the roof of the dwelling
and that low wings extended on either hand. Before the portico a stiffly
formal garden lay in withered neglect.
The flower beds, circled with masoned rims and built up like wired
bouquets, held only twisted and broken stems.
A faint odor of wet plaster and dead vegetation rose to meet them. On
the towering wall of the house every window was tightly shuttered. The
place bore a silent and melancholy air of desertion.
The girl gave a dismayed gasp. Elim hastily placed his load on the steps
and, mounting, beat upon the door. Only a dull echo answered. Dust fell
from the paneling upon his head.
“Maybe they have shut up the front for protection,” he suggested. He
made his way to the rear; all was closed. Through the low limbs of apple
trees he could see a double file of small sad brick quarters for the
slaves. They, too, were empty. The place was without a living being. He
stood, undecided, when suddenly he heard Rosemary Roselle calling with
an acute note of fear.
He ran through the binding grass back to the garden.
“Elim Meikeljohn!” She stumbled forward to meet him. “Oh, Elim,” she
cried; “there's no one in the world----” A sob choked her utterance.
He fell on his knees before her:
“There's always me.”
She sank in a fragrant heap into his arms.
Elim Meikeljohn laughed over her shoulder at his entire worldly goods on
the steps--the fragmentary fruit cake and a bottle of champagne.
Here they are lost on the dimming mirror of the past.