THE FALL OF THE LEAF
Days passed, and the forest put on a beauty, austere, yet fantastic,
bizarre. Above it hung a pale blue sky; within it, a perpetual, pale
blue haze, through which blazed the scarlet and gold of the trees--great
bonfires which did not warm, flaming pyres which were never consumed.
Morning and evening a shroud of chill, white mist fell upon them, or
they would have mocked the sunrise and the sunset. Along the summit of
low hills ran a comb of fire--the scarlet of the sumach, leaf and berry;
underfoot were crimson vines like trails and splashes of blood; into the
streams from which the wanderers stooped to drink, fell the gold of the
sycamore. From the hills they looked down upon a red and yellow world, a
gorgeous bourgeoning and blossoming that put the spring to shame, a sea
of splendor with here and there a dark-green isle of cedar or of pine.
Day after day saw the same calm blue sky, the same blue haze, the same
slow drifting of crimson and gold to earth. The winds did not blow, and
the murmur of the forest was hushed. All sound seemed muffled and
remote. The deer passed noiseless down the long aisles, the beaver and
the otter slipped noiseless into the stream, the bear rolled its
shambling bulk away from human neighborhood like a shapeless shadow. At
times vast flocks of wild pigeons darkened the air, but they passed like
a cloud. The singing birds were gone. Only at night did sound awake,
for then the wolves howled, and the infrequent scream of the panther
chilled the blood, and the fires which the wanderers must needs build
roared and crackled through the darkness. In the daytime beauty, vast
and melancholy; in the night, shadows and mysteries, the voice of wild
beasts and the stillness of the stars; at all times an enemy, they knew
not how far away or how near at hand, behind them.
Through this world which seemed more a phantasm than a reality, Landless
and Patricia fared, and were happy. All passion, all fear, all mistrust
and anger slept in that enchanted calm. They never spoke of the past,
they had well-nigh ceased to think of it. When they knelt upon the turf
beside some crystal brook, and drank of the water which seemed red wine
or molten gold according to the nature of the trees above it, it might
have been the water of Lethe.
In the illimitable forest, too, in the monotony of sunshine and shade,
of glade and dell, of crystal streams and tiny valleys, each the
counterpart of the other, in dense woods and grassy savannahs; in the
yesterday so like to-day, and the to-day so like to-morrow, there was no
hint of the future. It was enchanted ground, where to-morrow must always
be like to-day. They kept their faces to the east, and they walked each
day as many leagues as her strength would permit, and Landless,
imitating as best he could the dead Susquehannock, took all precautions
to cover their trail; but that done all was done, and they put care
behind them. Landless, walking in a dream, knew that it was a dream, and
said to himself, "I must awaken, but not yet. I will dream and be happy
yet a little while." But Patricia dreamt and knew it not. She kept her
wonted state, or, rather, with a quiet insistence he kept it for her. He
never addressed her save as "Madam," and he cared for her comfort, and
in all things bore himself towards her with the formal courtesy he would
have shown a queen. He said to himself, "Godfrey Landless, Godfrey
Landless, thou mayst forget much, perhaps, for a little while; but not
this! If thou dost, thou art no honorable man."
Master of himself, he walked beside her, cared for her, tended her,
guarded her, served her as if he had been a knight-errant out of a
romance, and she a distressed princess. And she rewarded him with a
delicate kindliness, and a perfectly trustful, childlike dependence upon
his strength, wisdom, and resource. All her bearing towards him was
marked by an inexpressible charm, half-playful, wholly gracious and
womanly. The lady of the manor was gone, and in her place moved the
Patricia Verney of the enchanted forest--a very different creature.
Thus they fared through the dying summer, and were happy in the present
of soft sunshine, tender haze, fantastic beauty. Sometimes they walked
in silence, too truly companions to feel the need of words; at other
times they talked, and the hours flew past, for they both had wit,
intelligence, quick fancy, high imagination. Sometimes their laughter
rang through the glades of the forest, and set the squirrels in the oaks
to chattering; sometimes in the melancholy grace of the evening when the
purple twilight sank through the trees, and the large stars came out one
by one, they spoke of grave things, of the mysteries of life and death,
of the soul and its hereafter. She had early noticed that he never lay
down at night without having first silently prayed. There had been a
time when she would have laughed at this as Puritan hypocrisy, but now,
one dark night, when the noises of the forest were loud about them, and
the wind rushed through the trees, she came close to him and knelt
beside him. Thenceforward each night, before they lay down beside their
fire, and when from out the darkness came all weird and mournful sounds,
when the owl hooted, and the catamount screamed, and the long howl of
the wolf was answered by its fellow, he stood with bared head, and in a
few short, simple words commended them both to God. "I will both lay me
down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in
safety."
There came a day when they sat down to rest upon the dark, smooth ground
in a belt of pines, and looked between rows of stately columns to where,
in the distance, the arcade was closed by a broken and confused glory of
crimson oak and yellow maple. Landless told her that it was like gazing
at a rose window down the long nave of a cathedral.
"I have never seen a cathedral," she said; "I have dreamed of them,
though, of your Milton's 'dim religious light,' and of the rolling
music."
"I have seen many," he answered. "But none of them are to me what the
abbey at Westminster is. If you should ever see it--"
Something in her face stopped him; there was a silence, and then he said
quietly:--
"When you shall see it, is perhaps better, madam?"
"Yes," she answered, gazing before her with wide fixed eyes.
He did not finish his sentence, and neither spoke again until they had
left the pines and were forcing their way through the tall grass and
reeds of a wide savannah. They came to a small, clear stream, dotted
with wild fowl and mirroring the pale blue sky, and he lifted her in his
arms as was his wont and bore her through the shallow water. As he set
her gently down upon the other side, she said in a low voice, "I thought
you knew. Had it not been for that night, that night which sets us here,
you and me,--I should be now in London, at Whitehall, at some masque or
pageant perhaps. I should be all clad in brocade and jewels, not like
this--" She touched her ragged gown as she spoke, then burst into
strange laughter. "But God disposes! And you--"
"I should be in a place which is never mentioned at Court, madam," said
Landless grimly. "The grave, to wit. Unless indeed his Excellency
proposed hanging me in chains."
She cried out as though she had been struck. "Don't!" she said
passionately. "Don't speak to me so! I will not bear it!" and ran past
him into the woods beyond the savannah.
When he came up with her he found her lying on a mossy bank with her
face hidden.
"Madam," he said, kneeling beside her, "forgive me."
She lifted a colorless face from her hands. "How far are we from the
Settlements?" she demanded.
"I do not know, madam. Some twenty leagues, probably, from the frontier
posts."
"How far from the friendly tribes?"
"Something less than that distance."
"Then when we reach them, sir," she said imperiously, "you are to leave
me with them at one of the villages above the falls."
"To leave you there!"
"Yes. You will tell them that I am the daughter of one of the paleface
chiefs, of one whom the great white chief calls 'brother,' and then they
will not dare to harm me or to detain me. They will send me down the
river to the nearest post, and the men there will bring me on to
Jamestown, and so home."
"And why may not I bring you on to Jamestown--and so home?" demanded
Landless with a smile.
"Because--because--you _know_ that you are lost if you return to the
Settlements."
"And nevertheless I shall return," he said with another smile.
She struck her hands together. "You will be mad--mad! If you had not
been their leader!--but as it is, there is no hope. Leave me with the
friendly Indians, then go yourself to the northward. Make for New
Amsterdam. God will carry you through the Indians as he has done so far.
I will pray to him that he do so. Ah, promise me that you will go!"
Landless took her hand and kissed it. "Were you in absolute safety,
madam," he said gently, "and if it were not for one other thing, I would
go, because you wish it, and because I would save you any pang, however
slight, that you might feel for the fate of one who was, who is, your
servant--your slave. I would go from you, and because it else might
grieve you, I would strive to keep my life through the forest, through
the winter--"
"Ah, the winter!" she cried. "I had forgotten that winter will come."
"But to do that which you propose," he continued, "to leave you to the
mercy of fierce and treacherous Indians, but half subdued, friends to
the whites only because they must--it is out of the question. To leave
you at a frontier post among rude trappers and traders, or at some half
savage pioneer's, is equally impossible. What tale would you have to
tell Colonel Verney? 'The Ricahecrians carried me into the Blue
Mountains. There your servant Landless found me and brought me a long
distance towards my home. But at the last, to save his own neck, forfeit
to the State, he left me, still in the wilderness and in danger, and
went his way.' My honor, madam, is my own, and I choose not so to stain
it. Again: I must be the witness to your story. You have wandered for
many weeks in a wilderness, far beyond the ken of your friends. To your
world, madam, I am a rebel, traitor and convict, a wretch capable of any
baseness, of any crime. If I go back with you, throwing myself into the
power of Governor and Council, at least I shall be credited with having
so borne myself towards my master's daughter as to fear nothing from
their hands on that score. The idle and censorious cannot choose but
believe when you say, 'I am come scatheless through weeks of daily and
hourly companionship with this man. Rebel and traitor and gaol-bird
though he be, he never injured me in word, thought, or deed....' For all
these reasons, madam, we must be companions still."
She had covered her face while he was speaking, and she kept it hidden
when he had finished. The slowly lengthening shadows of the trees had
barred the little glade with black when he spoke again. It was only to
ask in his usual voice if she were rested and ready to continue their
journey.
She raised her head and looked at him with swimming eyes, then held out
two trembling hands. He took them, helped her to her feet, and before
releasing them, bent and touched them with his lips. Then side by side
and in silence they traveled on through the halcyon calm of the world
around them.