Part 33 (1/2)
”What fortune, brother?” he asked, and his teeth chattered.
”The Tidewater is safe. This day they march westwards to look for their new country.”
”Thy magic is as the magic of Heaven,” he said reverently. ”My heart all night has been like water, for I know no charm which hath prevailed against the mystery of the Panther.”
”'Twas no magic of mine,” said I. ”G.o.d spoke to him through my lips in the night watches.”
We took our way unchallenged through the sleeping host till we had climbed the scarp of the hills.
”What brought you to the tent door?” I asked.
”I abode there through the night, I heard the strife with the devils, and my joints were loosened. Also I heard thy voice, brother, but I knew not thy words.”
”But what did you mean to do?” I asked again.
”It was in my mind to do my little best to see that no harm befell thee. And if harm came, I had the thought of trying my knife on the ribs of yonder magician.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HOW THREE SOULS FOUND THEIR HERITAGE.
In that hour I had none of the exhilaration of success. So strangely are we mortals made that, though I had won safety for myself and my people, I could not get the savour of it. I had pa.s.sed too far beyond the limits of my strength. Now that the tension of peril was gone, my legs were like touchwood, which a stroke would shatter, and my foolish head swam like a merry-go-round. Shalah's arm was round me, and he lifted me up the steep bits till we came to the crown of the ridge.
There we halted, and he fed me with sops of bread dipped in eau-de-vie, for he had brought Ringan's flask with him. The only result was to make me deadly sick. I saw his eyes look gravely at me, and the next I knew I was on his back. I begged him to set me down and leave me, and I think I must have wept like a bairn. All pride of manhood had flown in that sharp revulsion, and I had the mind of a lost child.
As the light grew some strength came back to me, and presently I was able to hobble a little on my rickety shanks. We kept the very crest of the range, and came by and by to a promontory of clear ground, the same, I fancy, from which I had first seen the vale of the Shenandoah.
There we rested in a nook of rock, while the early sun warmed us, and the little vapours showed, us in glimpses the green depths and the far-s.h.i.+ning meadows.
Shalah nudged my shoulder, and pointed to the south, where a glen debouched from the hills. A stream of mounted figures was pouring out of it, heading for the upper waters of the river where the valley broadened again. For all my sickness my eyes were sharp enough to perceive what manner of procession it was. All were on horseback, riding in clouds and companies without the discipline of a march, but moving as swift as a flight of wildfowl at twilight. Before the others rode a little cl.u.s.ter of pathfinders, and among them I thought I could recognize one taller than the rest.
”Your magic hath prevailed, brother,” Shalah said. ”In an hour's time they will have crossed the Shenandoah, and at nightfall they will camp on the farther mountains.”
That sight gave me my first a.s.surance of success. At any rate, I had fulfilled my trust, and if I died in the hills Virginia would yet bless her deliverer.
And yet my strongest feeling was a wild regret. These folk were making for the untravelled lands of the sunset. You would have said I had got my bellyful of adventure, and should now have sought only a quiet life.
But in that moment of bodily weakness and mental confusion I was shaken with a longing to follow them, to find what lay beyond the farthest cloud-topped mountain, to cross the wide rivers, and haply to come to the infinite and mystic Ocean of the West.
”Would to G.o.d I were with them!” I sighed.
”Will you come, brother?” Shalah whispered, a strange light in his eyes. ”If we twain joined the venture, I think we should not be the last in it. Shalah would make you a king. What is your life in the muddy Tidewater but a thing of little rivalries and petty wrangles and moping over paper? The hearth will soon grow cold, and the bright eyes of the fairest woman will dull with age, and the years will find you heavy and slow, with a coward's shrinking from death. What say you, brother? While the blood is strong in the veins shall we ride westward on the path of a king?”
His eyes were staring like a hawk's over the hills, and, light-headed as I was, I caught the infection of his ardour. For, remember, I was so low in spirit that all my hopes and memories were forgotten, and I was in that blank apathy which is mastered by another's pa.s.sion. For a little the life of Virginia seemed unspeakably barren, and I quickened at the wild vista which Shalah offered. I might be a king over a proud people, carving a fair kingdom out of the wilderness, and ruling it justly in the fear of G.o.d. These western Indians were the stuff of a great nation. I, Andrew Garvald, might yet find that empire of which the old adventurers dreamed.
With shame I set down my boyish folly. It did not last, long, for to my dizzy brain there came the air which Elspeth had sung, that song of Montrose's which had been, as it were, the star of all my wanderings.
”For, if Confusion have a part, Which virtuous souls abhor--”
Surely it was confusion that had now overtaken me. Elspeth's clear voice, her dark, kind eyes, her young and joyous grace, filled again my memory. Was not such a lady better than any savage kingdom? Was not the service of my own folk n.o.bler than any princ.i.p.ate among strangers?
Could the rivers of Damascus vie with the waters of Israel?