IT was fine “growing weather” for the cotton, and in these hot days
the Midas-touch of the sun had turned the wheat-fields to gold. From
their midst the verdure-crowned earthworks rose like some gigantic
basso-rilievo in green enamel. A fierce thunder-shower one afternoon
had laid the dust and beaten the soft dirt-road, that swept in
serpentine curves through the peaceful battle-field, into the ideal
road for equestrians. Marcia, with one of her brothers, found a
wonderful exhilaration in a smooth, swift dash through the freshness
and perfume of the red sunset. They drew rein only when they had
reached the boundary of their father’s land and were about to turn
their horses’ heads homeward. She made some haste to do this, for where
the plantation road struck into the turnpike she saw Estwicke riding
along in the direction of the barracks. He had evidently not intended
to call at General Vayne’s on the way--but now his hand hesitated on
the rein, and she indignantly deprecated that a chance meeting should
force him into an attention which he had not contemplated. He had
been there only once since the fishing excursion, making a short and
formal call. She had not understood his stiff manner, and it induced a
responsive constraint.
“Oh, no, Dick,” she said urgently to her urchin escort, who at this
moment expressed an inopportune desire to ride down to the river to
see whether a boy who was fishing on the bank had caught anything, “I
can’t wait, and you must take me home.”
Estwicke had put the whip to his horse and galloped up in time to hear
Dick’s protest. “Let me take your place,” he said agreeably. Then to
Marcia--“I suppose you will grant me the right of way through these
fields with you.”
She assented with an effort at smiling ease. But she was so habitually
sincere that the slightest duplicity was deeply marked by contrast
on her face and loudly advertised itself a fraud. This evident
artificiality furnished Estwicke with a subject of meditation, and for
a few moments both were silent as they rode on together, leaving Dick
far behind on the bank of the river.
Estwicke was summarily roused from his preoccupation.
“Isn’t that a dangerous horse for you to ride?” he asked, with the
vicarious fright of a lover, as Hotspur shied suddenly.
Now, if any other lady had been mounted upon this animal, Estwicke
would doubtless have considered him sufficiently gentle, for although
young and a trifle freakish, he was evidently of a mild and tractable
disposition, and well enough trained. Horse and rider each embellished
the other. Estwicke had a vivid realization that in her black habit and
hat she was handsomer than ever, and he was forced to admit that she
rode with consummate grace and skill. Nevertheless he fully expected to
see her thrown; his heart was in his mouth; a cold chill shot through
every fibre; his hand was ready to catch the rein. He was irritated to
observe that she was flattered by what he had said, and he divined that
she thought it augured special virtues of horsewomanship to hold in
subjection so insurgent and dangerous a spirit.
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, with her wonted tone and manner, “Hotspur
is w-i-i-ld as he can be! You ought just to see him in one of his
tantrums! He threw me last week, but it isn’t often that he can get me
out of the saddle.”
Estwicke was aghast at this “often.” He could not altogether restrain
his feeling.
“It surprises me,” he said, with more truth than tact, “that General
Vayne should allow his only daughter to risk herself on a vicious brute
like that.”
She flushed with some anger. She was half disposed to retort that
General Vayne was popularly supposed to be able to manage his family
affairs without assistance--only by an effort she withheld this thrust.
“His only daughter,” she quoted, laughing. “If he had five or six I
suppose you would think him justifiable in letting some of them break
their necks. It never occurred to me before that the reason papa thinks
so much of me is because there are so few of me.”
“I wish he wouldn’t let you ride that horse,” persisted Estwicke
gravely.
“Oh, if you think Hotspur is wild now, I don’t know what you would
have said about him last summer. He had been out to pasture--he hadn’t
_seen_ a saddle for months. Papa wouldn’t let me mount him then.
He was so frisky I didn’t see how I should ever get him quiet. The men
wouldn’t plough with him, for he was so fretful; papa was away most of
the time, and therefore couldn’t ride him. So Mr. Percy took him home
and rode him every day for two weeks.”
This turn to the conversation touched other feelings. Their
sensitiveness was manifested in the rejoinder. “Obliging Mr. Percy!”
uttered with unmistakable sarcasm.
Again her flush deepened to an angry glow. “He is always obliging,” she
said--“and--amiable.”
Estwicke was minded to turn his horse and gallop away, leaving Hotspur
to kill her if he would. Somehow he could not go; he remained, but he
remained to retort.
“No doubt!” he exclaimed bitterly. “And in recognition of his grace of
character, I suppose, you named your horse--‘Hotspur.’”
He was a soldier and a brave man. But he was flinching with abject
terror the moment after he spoke. She wheeled her horse, and as she
faced him suddenly, her beautiful eyes full of surprise, she demanded
aggressively--
“Now what was that?”
“Nothing--nothing. Don’t ask me to repeat it,” Estwicke pleaded.
“I must know,” she rejoined. “I think I understood you, but I am not
certain. May I ask you to do me the favor of repeating and explaining.”
This was said with an elaborate show of politeness, but it savored
rather of the punctilio of the duello than of kindly Christian courtesy.
He hesitated and quailed before his formidable adversary. Now that he
was called upon to put into words the theory over which he had brooded
through the dark hours of sleepless nights, he began to realize how
fantastic it was. Somehow he could find no words foolish enough to fit
it. But he must answer.
“Miss Vayne,” he said helplessly, laying his hand upon Hotspur’s
forelock, “let me off. Let me off--just this time.”
“I want to know what you said,” she replied sternly.
Estwicke felt that it was futile to temporize.
“Well,” he began in great abasement, “the horse is named Hotspur, you
know.”
A pause ensued. Her eyes widened. “Yes, I know,” she interpolated by
way of giving his confession a much needed impetus.
“And Percy’s name is Percy,” continued Estwicke, painfully aware of
seeming to drivel. The astonishment in her face nerved him to try to
brace this impalpable fabric of the imagination with an historical
back-bone.
“And you know there’s that fellow from Northumberland--Percy--don’t you
know?--Harry Percy--Hotspur.”
Her softly scornful laughter cut him as cruelly as a knife might have
done. The color in her cheeks mounted to the roots of her hair. “I do
homage to your ingenuity,” she exclaimed with a sarcasm intended to be
withering. “It is equally creditable to your heart and head! I have the
pleasure of hoping that your speculations about me, and my horse, and
my motives have served to amuse you for an idle half hour or so.”
She looked him full in the eyes as she spoke, with her head erect, and
a proud resentment eloquently expressed in her face. Then she shook the
reins, and her horse sprang away like an unleashed hound.
She evidently wished to be rid of Estwicke. But he could not let
her go now. He kept his horse side by side with hers, and as they
came with a rush past Fort Despair he laid his hand upon Hotspur’s
rein, and checked the impetuous gallop. She turned her head with an
angry impatience. There were hot tears in her eyes. They should not
fall--they would never fall. But there they were--and he had seen them.
“I must speak to you,” he said beseechingly. “If you are angry it will
break my heart. Tell me you are not. Forgive me if you were.”
A moment ago she was vowing that he should never hear her speak
another word. Now she determined to throw off the whole affair lightly;
she would not allow him and Percy, and her horse’s name as connected
with them, to seem matters of such importance. But she could not tell
him she was not angry; she would not say she forgave him.
“You certainly stand in wholesome awe of my displeasure,” she returned,
with a forced laugh. “It is a fearful thing, I know, but it has killed
no one as yet.”
“It will kill me,” Estwicke protested, with inopportune fervor; “for no
one loves you--no one can ever love you--as I do.”
Her eyes flashed. “Captain Estwicke,” she exclaimed hotly, “let my
horse go.”
“One moment--just hear me for one moment. You will do me a cruel
injustice if you refuse to listen now. Since Percy came, even long
before he came, that fancy about the horse’s name has tortured me night
and day. I have loved you all my life, it seems to me, for I never
lived until I loved you. I have given you all my heart. It’s nothing to
give, since you don’t care for it; but it’s all I have. And I want, in
return, one word of forgiveness--one word.”
Her face was turned away; he could only see the downward sweep of
her eyelashes and the delicate curve of her crimson cheek. He leaned
forward wistfully, with his hand still on her horse’s rein, and all
his fiery heart in his eyes. She slowly turned her head yet further,
and still he saw only those gentle suggestions of the beauty of that
averted face.
“It is hard on me!” he broke out despairingly, after a moment. “I have
so sedulously repressed my feelings. I have stood guard over every word
I uttered--so afraid of speaking too soon or at an inopportune moment.
I have eaten out my heart by slow degrees; and now--now--I have
angered you beyond endurance, and you cannot forgive me.”
Still not a word.
“I’ve got what I deserve, though,” he continued bitterly, after
another pause, in which there were quick changes of expression on
his face. “It is a sort of stern justice that I should find you
unrelenting--_you_, on whom I have no claim; for I have been hard,
and cruel, and unresponsive when there was the strongest claim upon me.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said suddenly.
“Oh, God bless you for that,” he exclaimed, clasping one of the little
gauntleted hands.
She had not intended to speak; she had not intended to forgive him at
all. She drew her hand from his grasp, but slowly and gently.
“Don’t you forgive me now?” he persisted. “You couldn’t have said that,
if you didn’t forgive me.”
Her face was still averted. “Well--perhaps.”
“Then look at me--just once.”
She did not turn her head; she still sat motionless.
“Tell me,” he said, retaining his grasp upon her horse’s rein, “is
there some one whom you like better than me? Does he keep us apart?”
“I don’t want to stand here any longer,” she exclaimed suddenly,
turning her flushed and embarrassed face toward the great, grim house
in the midst of the plain, the reflected sunset gorgeously emblazoned
on its shattered windows.
He still held the horse. “Is it Percy?” She made a gesture of
impatience.
“Then don’t you care for me a little--just a little, you know?”
“That’s just what I don’t know.” She laughed, but the next moment she
was flushing, and trembling, and ready to cry.
“Then, some day--some day, soon, may I tell you again that I love you,
and hear what you have to say to me then?”
“I can’t stay here any longer,” she declared evasively.
As they rode slowly along, Estwicke looked at her and sighed. “That
day,” he said, “you know the day I mean, I must tell you something
more--the great trouble and haunting sorrow of my life. Something
painful and cruel to tell.”
“Then don’t tell it to me,” she replied gently.
“I was in fault throughout,” he continued. “I was hard, and cowardly,
and ungenerous, and petty-minded. Oh, I don’t know anybody who would
have done as I did.”
She said nothing, but there was a stony incredulity expressed in her
face.
“I am afraid to tell you--to jeopardize every hope. Yet I cannot endure
that you should think me different from what I am. Sometimes, when
fellows are friendly and make much of me, I feel like a fraud. I wonder
what they would have done in my place, and I wonder what they would
think of me if they knew all. But I don’t care for them. With you it’s
different. I can’t deceive you. You ought to know how I might come out
if anything should happen to try me hard. I will tell you, and let you
judge.”
“You need tell me nothing!” she cried impetuously. “I can trust you
without it.”
“If I only deserved this!” he exclaimed. “But if you can believe in me
against my own word, can’t you care for me--even a little?”
She rode on silently.
He leaned forward and once more clasped her hand.
“Or rather, dearest, let me take it for granted.”
“For the sake of argument,” she assented doubtfully.
And the sun went down over Fort Despair, and in all the east there was
no moon. The long-waning brightness had fled from the battle-field; it
lay now dim, and drear, and colorless, beneath the vast, vague sky.
The fort was beleaguered by a multitude of shadows. The wind brought
strange voices from out the haunted thickets. A shiver ran through
the flowers and grasses that hung above the yawning, empty graves.
A bugle’s resonance was thrilling along the air. The still evening
palpitated with the throb of the drum. The tread of martial feet shook
the ground. And all unheeding--here where the battle was fought--youth,
and love, and life rode bravely through the spectred twilight.