Part 88 (2/2)

Only be forever sure that wherever he is, at Three Oaks or elsewhere, he loves you, loves you! No; I do not know that his is the course that I should take, but then women are different. I do not think I would ever think of pride or of the world and the world's opinion. If you cried to me I would go, and the world should not hold me back. But men have been trained to uphold that kind of pride. I did not think that Richard had it, but I see now all his father in him. Darling child, I do not think that it will last, but just now, oh, just now, you must possess your heart in patience!”

The words blurred before Judith's eyes. She sunk her head upon her knees. ”Possess my heart in patience--Possess my heart in patience--Oh, G.o.d, I am not old enough yet to do it!”

She read another letter, one of later date. ”Judith, I promised. I cannot tell you. But he is well, oh, believe that! and believe, too, that he is doing his work. He is not the kind to rest from work, he must work. And slowly, slowly that brings salvation. You are a n.o.ble woman.

Be n.o.ble still--and wait awhile--and wait awhile! It _will_ come right.

Miriam is better. The woods about Three Oaks are gorgeous.”

She read another. ”Child, he is not at Three Oaks. Now you must rest--rest and wait.”

Judith put the letters in the rosewood box. She arose, locked her hands behind her head and walked softly up and down the room. ”Rest--rest and wait. Patience--quietude--tranquillity--strength--fort.i.tude--endurance.

--Rest--patience--calm quietude--”

It worked but partially. Presently, when she lay down it was to lie still enough, but sleepless. Late in the night she slept, but it was to dream again, much as she had dreamed during the Seven Days, great and tragic visions. Dawn waked her. She lay, staring at the white ceiling; then she arose. It was not cold. The earth lay still at this season, yet wrapped and warmed and softened with the memories of summer. Judith looked out of the window. There was a glow in the eastern sky, the trees were motionless, the brown path over the hills showed like a beckoning finger. She dressed, put a cloak about her, went softly downstairs and left the house.

The path across the meadow, through the wood, up the lone tree hill--she would see the sunrise, she would get above the world. She walked quickly, lightly, through the dank stillness. There was mist in the meadow, above the little stream. The wood was shadowy; mist, like ghosts, between the trees. She pa.s.sed through it and came out on the bare hillside, rising dome-like to the one tree with the bench around it. The eastern sky was burning gold. Judith stood still. There was a man seated upon the bench, on the side that overlooked Greenwood. He sat with his head buried in his hands. She could not yet tell, but she thought he was in uniform.

With the thought she moved onward. She never remembered afterwards, whether she recognized him then, or whether she thought, ”A soldier sleeping through the night up here! Why did he not come to the house?”

She made no noise on the bare, moist earth of the path. She was within thirty feet of the bench when Cleave lifted his head from his hands, rose, stood still a moment, then with a gesture, weary and determined, turned to descend the hill--on the side away from Greenwood, toward a cross-country road. She called to him. ”Richard!”

It was rapture--all beneath the rising sun forgotten save only this gold-lit hilltop, with its tree from Eden garden! But since it was earth, and Paradise not yet real, and there were checks and bars enough in their human lot, they came back from that seraph flight. This was the lone tree hill above Greenwood, and a November day, though gold-touched, and Philip Deaderick must get back to the section of Pelham's artillery refitting at Gordonsville.--”What do you mean? You are a soldier--you are back in the army?--but you have another name? Oh, Richard, I see, I see! Oh, I might have known! A gunner with Pelham. Oh, my gunner with Pelham, why did you not come before?”

Cleave wrung her hands, clasped in his, then bent and kissed them.

”Judith, I will speak to you as to a comrade, because you would be the truest comrade ever man had! What would you do--what would you have done--in my place? What would you do now, in my place, but say--but say, 'I love you; let me go'?”

”I?” said Judith. ”What would I have done? I would have reentered the army as you have reentered it. I would serve again as you are serving again. If it were necessary--Oh, I see that it was necessary!--I would serve disguised as you are disguised. But--but--when it came to Judith Cary--”

”Judith, say that it was not you and I, but some other disgraced soldier and one of your sisters--”

”You are not a disgraced soldier. The innocent cannot be disgraced.”

”Who knows that I was innocent? My mother, and you, Judith, know it; my kinspeople and certain friends believe it; but all the rest of the country--the army, the people--they don't believe it. Let my name be known to-morrow, and by evening a rougher dismissal than before! Do you not see, do you not see, Judith?”

”I see partly. I see that you must serve. I see that you walk with dangers. I see that--that you could not even write. I see that I must possess my soul in patience. I see that we must wait--Oh, G.o.d, it is all waiting, waiting, waiting! But I do not see--and I _refuse_ to see, Richard--anything at the end of it all but love, happiness, union, home for you and me!”

He held her close. ”Judith, I do not know the right. I am not sure that I see the right, my soul is so tempest-tossed. That day at White Oak Swamp. If I could cleanse that day, bring it again into line with the other days of my life, poor and halting though they may have been, though they may be, if I could make all men say 'His life was a whole--one life, not two. He had no twin, a disobedient soldier, a liar and betrayer, as it was said he had.'--If I could do that, Judith! I do not see how I will do it, and yet it is my intention to do it. That done, then, darling, darling! I will make true love to you. If it is not done--but I will not think of that. Only--only--how to do it, how to do it! That maddens me at times--”

”Is it that? Then we must think of that. They are not all dead who could tell?--”

”Maury Stafford is not dead.”

”Maury Stafford!--What has he to do with it?”

Cleave laughed, a sound sufficiently grim. ”What has he not to do with it?--with that order which he carried from General Jackson to General Winder, and from General Winder--not, before G.o.d! to me! Winder is dead, and the courier who could have told is dead, and others whom I might have called are dead--dead, I will avow, because of my choice of action, though still--given that false order--I justify that choice! And now we hear that Major Stafford was among those taken prisoner at Sharpsburg.”

Judith stood upright, her hand at her breast, her eyes narrowed. ”Until this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask.

I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these months I have thought of it as a mistake--as one of those misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for what it was till now!”

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