The Maid-At-Arms Part 25

"I know I ask too much; grief makes us purer, fitting us for the company of blessed souls. They say that even war may be a holy thing--though we are commanded otherwise.... Cousin, at moments a demon rises in me and I desire some forbidden thing so ardently, so pa.s.sionately, that it seems as if I could fight a path through paradise itself to gain what I desire.... Do you feel so?"

"Yes."

"Is it not consuming--terrible to be so shaken?... Yet I never gain my desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking my way. And I can never pa.s.s--never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr.

Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it--mad, cousin! But Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, ... and I was mad to do it--and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet, cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"

She gathered bridle nervously, and we launched our horses through a willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at every stride of our bounding horses.

"Ah!" she sighed, drawing bridle. "That clears the heart of silly troubles. Was it not glorious? Like a plunge to the throat in an icy pool!"

Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where, glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie sparkled between green reeds and rushes. Beyond, smoky blue mountains tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking the flat valley of the Vlaie.

Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings; hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden flock. Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons.

Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets.

Across the distant gra.s.sy flat two deer moved, grazing. We rode to the east, skirting the marshes, following a trail made by cattle, until beyond the flats we saw the green roof of the pleasure-house which Sir William Johnson had built for himself. Our ride together was nearly ended.

As at the same thought we tightened bridle and looked at each other gravely.

"All rides end," I said.

"Ay, like happiness."

"Both may be renewed."

"Until they end again."

"Until they end forever."

She clasped her bare hands on her horse's neck, sitting with bent head as though lost in sombre memories.

"What ends forever might endure forever," I said.

"Not our rides together," she murmured. "You must return to the South one day. I must wed.... Where shall we be this day a year hence?"

"Very far apart, cousin."

"Will you remember this ride?"

"Yes," I said, troubled.

"I will, too.... And I shall wonder what you are doing."

"And I shall think of you," I said, soberly.

"Will you write?"

"Yes. Will you?"

"Yes."

Silence fell between us like a shadow; then:

"Yonder rides Sir George Covert," she said, listlessly.

I saw him dismounting before his door, but said nothing.

"Shall we move forward?" she asked, but did not stir a finger towards the bridle lying on her horse's neck.

Another silence; and, impatiently:

"I cannot bear to have you go," she said; "we are perfectly contented together--and I wish you to know all the thoughts I have touching on the world and on people. I cannot tell them to my father, nor to Ruyven--and Cecile is too young--"

"There is Sir George," I said.

"He! Why, I should never think of telling him of these thoughts that please or trouble or torment me!" she said, in frank surprise. "He neither cares for the things you care for nor thinks about them at all."

"Perhaps he does. Ask him."

"I have. He smiles and says nothing. I am afraid to tax his courtesy with babble of beast and bird and leaf and flower; and why one man is rich and another poor; and whether it is right that men should hold slaves; and why our Lord permits evil, having the power to end it for all time. I should like to know all these things," she said, earnestly.

"But I do not know them, Dorothy."

"Still, you think about them, and so do I. Sir Lupus says you have liberated your Greeks and sent them back. I want to know why. Then, too, though neither you nor I can know our Lord's purpose in enduring the evil that Satan plans, it is pleasant, I think, to ask each other."

"To think together," I said, sadly.

"Yes; that is it. Is it not a pleasure?"

"Yes, Dorothy."

"It does not matter that we fail to learn; it is the happiness in knowing that the other also cares to know, the delight in seaching for reason together. Cousin, I have so longed to say this to somebody; and until you came I never believed it possible.... I wish we were brother and sister! I wish you were Cecile, and I could be with you all day and all night.... At night, half asleep, I think of wonderful things to talk about, but I forget them by morning. Do you?"

"Yes, cousin."

"It is strange we are so alike!" she said, staring at me thoughtfully.

IX

HIDDEN FIRE

After a few moments' silence we moved forward towards the pleasure-house, and we had scarcely started when down the road, from the north, came the patroon riding a powerful black horse, attended by old Cato mounted on a raw-boned hunter, and by one Peter Van Horn, the district Brandt-Meester, or fire-warden. As they halted at Sir George Covert's door, we rode up to join them at a gallop, and the patroon, seeing us far off, waved his hat at us in evident good humor.

"Not a landmark missing!" he shouted, "and my signs all witnessed for record by Peter and Cato! How do the southwest landmarks stand?"

"The tenth pine is blasted by lightning," said Dorothy, walking her beautiful gray to Sir Lupus's side.