Part 46 (1/2)
”How--how is that? Don't you think so?” he persisted kindly.
”I reckon you can't feel what I feel, Doctor. Why should I make his heart troubled when he must stay there? David knows I hate it to bide so long without him. He--he knows. If he could get to come back, don't you guess he'd come right quick, anyway? Would he come any sooner for his son than for me?” It was the doctor's turn for silence. She asked again, this time with a tremor in her voice. ”You reckon he would, Doctor?”
”No! Of--of course not,” he cried.
”Then what would be the use of telling him, only to trouble him?”
”He--he might like to think about him--you know--might like it.”
”He said he must go to Africa in May, so now he must have started--and our wedding was on May-day. Now it's the last of May; he must be there.
He might be obliged to bide in that country a whole month--maybe two.
It's so far away, and his letters take so long to come! Doctor, are they fighting there now? Sometimes I wake in the night and think what if he should die away off there in that far place--”
”No, no. That's done. Not fighting, thank G.o.d. Rest your heart in peace.
Now, after I'm gone, don't stay up here alone too much. I'm a physician, and I know what's best for you.”
She took the now soundly sleeping child from the doctor's arms and laid him on the bed in the canvas room. The day had been warm, and the fire was out in the great fireplace; the evening wind, light and cool, laden with sweet odors, swept through the cabin.
They talked late that night of Hoyle and his future, but never a word more of David. The old man thought he now understood her feeling, and respected it. She certainly had a right to one small weakness, this strong fair creature of the hills. Her husband must release himself from his absorbing cares and return simply for love of her--not at the call of his baby's wail.
So the doctor and his diminutive namesake drove contentedly away next morning in the great covered wagon, and Ca.s.sandra, standing by her mother's door, smiled and lifted her baby for one last embrace from his loving little uncle.
”I'm goin' to grow a big man, an' I'll teach him to make pictures--big ones,” he called back.
”Yas, you'll do a heap. You bettah watch out to be right good and peart; that's what you bettah do.”
David, not unmindful of affairs on the far-away mountain side, made it quite worth the while of the two cousins to stay on with the widow and run the small farm under Ca.s.sandra's directions, and she found herself fully occupied. She wrote David all the details: when and where things were planted--how the vines he had set on the hill slope were growing--how the pink rose he had brought from Hoke Belew's and planted by their threshold had grown to the top of the door, and had three sweet blossoms. She had shaken the petals of one between the pages of her letter on May-day, and sent it to remind him, she said.
Nearly a month later than he had intended to sail, David left England, overwhelmed with many small matters which seemed so great to his mother and sister, and burdened with duties imposed upon him by the realization that he had come into the possession of enormous wealth, more than he could comprehendingly estimate; and that he was now setting out to secure and prevent the loss of possibly double what he already possessed.
People gathered about him and presented him with worthy and unworthy opportunities for its disposal. They flocked to him in herds, with importunities and flatteries. The tower which he had built up with his ideals, and in which he had intrenched himself, was in danger of being undermined and toppled into ruins, burying his soul beneath the debris.
When seated on the deck, the rose petals dropped into his hand as he tore open Ca.s.sandra's letter. Some, ere he could catch them, were caught up and blown away into the sea.
He held them and inhaled their sweetness, and everything seemed to find its true value and proportion and to fall into its right place. Again on the mountain top, with Ca.s.sandra at his side, he viewed in a perspective of varying gradations his life, his aims, and his possessions.
The personality of his young wife, of late a vague thing to him, distant and fair, and haloed about with sweet memories dimly discerned like a dream that is past, presented itself to him all at once vivid and clear, as if he held her in his arms with her head on his breast.
He heard again her voice with its quaint inflections and lingering tones. Their love for each other loomed large, and became for him at once the one truly vital thing in all his share of the universe. Had his body been endowed with the wings of his soul, he would have left all and gone to her; but, alas for the restrictions of matter! he was gliding rapidly away and away, farther from the immediate attainment. Yet was his tower strengthened wherein he had intrenched himself with his ideals. The withered rose petals had brought him exaltation of purpose.
In the mountains, July came with unusually sultry heat, yet the rich pocket of soil, watered by its never failing stream, suffered little from the drought. Weeds grew apace, and Ca.s.sandra had much ado to hold her cousin Cotton Caswell, easy-going and thriftless, to his task of keeping the small farm in order.
For a long time now, Ca.s.sandra had avoided those moments of far-seeing and brooding. Had not David said he feared them for her? In these days of waiting, she dreaded lest they show her something to which she would rather remain blind. In the evenings, looking over the hilltops from her rock, visions came to her out of the changing mists, but she put them from her and calmed her breast with the babe on her bosom, and solaced her longing by keeping all in readiness for David's return. Perhaps at any moment, with wind-lifted hair and buoyant smile, he might come up the laurel path.
For this reason she preferred living in her own cabin home, and, that she might not be alone at night, Martha Caswell or her brother slept on a cot in the large cabin room, but Ca.s.sandra cared little for their company. They might come or not as they chose. She was never afraid now that she was strong again and baby was well.
One evening sitting thus, her babe lying asleep on her knees and her heart over the sea, something caused her to start from her revery and look away from the blue distance, toward the cabin. There, a few paces away, regarding her intently, stalwart and dark, handsome and eager, stood Frale. Much older he seemed, more reckless he appeared, yet still a youth in his undisciplined impulse. She sat pale as death, unable to move, in breathless amazement.
He smiled upon her out of the gathering dusk. For some minutes he had been regarding her, and the tumult within him had become riotous with long restraint. He came swiftly forward and, ere she could turn her head, his arms were about her, and his lips upon hers, and she felt herself pinioned in her chair--nor, for guarding her baby unhurt by his vehemence, could she use her hands to hold him from her; nor for the suffocating beating of her heart could she cry out; neither would her cry have availed, for there were none near to hear her.
”Stop, Frale! I am not yours; stop, Frale,” she implored.