Part 2 (1/2)
The bell rang again, the rose suffused the sky to the zenith. The young man drew a long breath, and, turning, began to descend the hill.
Before him, at a turn of the road and overhanging a precipitous hollow, in the spring carpeted with bloodroot, but now thick with dead leaves, lay a giant oak, long ago struck down by lightning. The branches had been cut away, but the blackened trunk remained, and from it as vantage point one received another great view of the rolling mountains and the valleys between. Allan Gold, coming down the hill, became aware, first of a horse fastened to a wayside sapling, then of a man seated upon the fallen oak, his back to the road, his face to the darkening prospect.
Below him the winter wind made a rustling in the dead leaves. Evidently another had paused to admire the view, or to collect and mould between the hands of the soul the crowding impressions of a decisive day. It was, apparently, the latter purpose; for as Allan approached the ravine there came to him out of the dusk, in a controlled but vibrant voice, the following statement, repeated three times: ”We are going to have war.--We are going to have war.--We are going to have war.”
Allan sent his own voice before him. ”I trust in G.o.d that's not true!--It's Richard Cleave, there, isn't it?”
The figure on the oak, swinging itself around, sat outlined against the violet sky. ”Yes, Richard Cleave. It's a night to make one think, Allan--to make one think--to make one think!” Laying his hand on the trunk beside him, he sprang lightly down to the roadside, where he proceeded to brush dead leaf and bark from his clothing with an old gauntlet. When he spoke it was still in the same moved, vibrating voice.
”War's my _metier_. That's a curious thing to be said by a country lawyer in peaceful old Virginia in this year of grace! But like many another curious thing, it's true! I was never on a field of battle, but I know all about a field of battle.”
He shook his head, lifted his hand, and flung it out toward the mountains. ”I don't want war, mind you, Allan! That is, the great stream at the bottom doesn't want it. War is a word that means agony to many and a set-back to all. Reason tells me that, and my heart wishes the world neither agony nor set-back, and I give my word for peace.
Only--only--before this life I must have fought all along the line!”
His eyes lightened. Against the paling sky, in the wintry air, his powerful frame, not tall, but deep-chested, broad-shouldered, looked larger than life. ”I don't talk this way often--as you'll grant!” he said, and laughed. ”But I suppose to-day loosed all our tongues, lifted every man out of himself!”
”If war came,” said Allan, ”it couldn't be a long war, could it? After the first battle we'd come to an understanding.”
”Would we?” answered the other. ”Would we?--G.o.d knows! In the past it has been that the more equal the tinge of blood, the fiercer was the war.”
As he spoke he moved across to the sapling where was fastened his horse, loosed him, and sprang into the saddle. The horse, a magnificent bay, took the road, and the three began the long descent. It was very cold and still, a crescent moon in the sky, and lights beginning to s.h.i.+ne from the farmhouses in the valley.
”Though I teach school,” said Allan, ”I like the open. I like to do things with my hands, and I like to go in and out of the woods. Perhaps, all the way behind us, I was a hunter, with a taste for books! My grandfather was a scout in the Revolution, and his father was a ranger.... G.o.d knows, _I_ don't want war! But if it comes I'll go. We'll all go, I reckon.”
”Yes, we'll all go,” said Cleave. ”We'll need to go.”
The one rode, the other walked in silence for a time; then said the first, ”I shall ride to Lauderdale after supper and talk to Fauquier Cary.”
”You and he are cousins, aren't you?”
”Third cousins. His mother was a Dandridge--Unity Dandridge.”
”I like him. It's like old wine and blue steel and a cavalier poet--that type.”
”Yes, it is old and fine, in men and in women.”
”He does not want war.”
”No.”
”Hairston Breckinridge says that he won't discuss the possibility at all--he'll only say what he said to-day, that every one should work for peace, and that war between brothers is horrible.”
”It is. No. He wears a uniform. He cannot talk.”
They went on in silence for a time, over the winter road, through the crystal air. Between the branches of the trees the sky showed intense and cold, the crescent moon, above a black ma.s.s of mountains, golden and sharp, the lights in the valley near enough to be gathered.
”If there should be war,” asked Allan, ”what will they do, all the Virginians in the army--Lee and Johnston and Stuart, Maury and Thomas and the rest?”
”They'll come home.”