That night, lying sleepless after the music was hushed and the wheels had done rolling away from the door, as if material enough for all fever fancies had not been given, backward and forward through the corridor a woman's garments trailed with light rustle, and a low voice hummed brokenly the waltz he had heard. Ceasing by and by in a murmur of girls' voices, and the old-remembered air, sung softly:
'For men must work and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden and waters deep.'
After that many days went by unmarked. His wound, aggravated by fatigue, racked him with renewed pain; and when that was over, vitality was at too low an ebb for anything but the most passive quiet. Before listless, unnoting eyes drifted the crystal mornings, the golden hours steeped deep in summer languors, the miracles of sun-settings and star-filled holy nights. From his window he saw and heard always the ocean, blue and calm, lapping the shore with dreamy ripple in bright days—driving ghostly swirls of spray and fog clown the beach in stormy, gray ones. The house itself seemed set in the deepest haunt of summertime. Great trees, draped in the fullest growth of the year, rippled waves of green high about it. All day long the leaf sounds and leaf shadows came drifting in at the windows. Perfectest hush and quiet wrapped its occasional faint strains of music, or chime of voices came up to him, but did not break the silence. A place for a well soul to find its full stature, for a tired or sick one to gather again its lost forces. And by slow degrees the life held at first with so feeble a grasp came back to him.
By and by there came a day when, from his balcony, he witnessed a departure, full of girls' profuse adieux, and then the hush of vacancy fell on the wide halls and airy rooms of the great house. That evening, with slow steps, he came down the staircase. In the twilight of the parlors showed dimly outlined a drift of woman's drapery, and the piano was murmuring inarticulately. Outside, on the broad stone doorstep, showed another drift, resolving itself into the muslins of Miss Nelly Morris, springing up with glad words of welcome as his unsteady frame came into view. Before half the protracted and vehement hand shaking was over, Moore turned at a soft rustle behind him, and Nelly found her introduction forestalled. Moore hoped, with his courtliest reverence, that Miss Berkeley had not forgotten him.
She made two noiseless steps forward, and put out a small, brown band. He took it in his left, with a smiling glance of apology at the sling-fettered right arm. It was not often that Miss Berkeley's broad lids found it worth their while to raise themselves for such a wide, clear look as they allowed with the clasp. And then Nelly broke in:
'Then you two people know each other. Grand! And I've been wondering these two weeks what to do with you! Why didn't you tell me, Leu?'
'How was I to identify Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'? Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground last summer.'
Her soft, slow speech fell on his hearing like the silver ripple of water, clear and fine cut, but without a bit of the New England incisiveness of tone that filled his delicate Southern ear with slight, perpetual irritation.
'But I've made my calling and election sure at last. I was transformed into a mudsill and Northern hireling last spring.'
'In spite of the transformation, I recognized you as soon as you spoke. I was not quite willing to be forgotten, you see, by any one who wore the glorifying army cloth.'
They were out on the veranda now. Nelly was gazing with pitiful eyes at the sleeve fastened away, while the wasted left hand drew forward a great wicker chair into the circle of the moonlight. He caught the look:
'Not so very bad, Miss Nelly; not off, you see, only useless for the present;' and he took a lowly seat at her side, near the princess's feet.
'You are guiltless of shoulder straps. You might have obtained a commission, I think. Why didn't you, I wonder,' she said speculatively.
'Because I knew nothing of military matters, for one thing, and hadn't the assurance to take my first lesson as lieutenant or captain.'
Miss Berkeley's white lids lifted themselves again.
'More nice then wise, sir. Others do it,' was Nelly's comment.
'Yes, but I haven't forgotten the old copy-book instructions, 'Learn to obey before you command,' and began at the beginning. I've taken the first step toward the starred shoulder straps'—he wore the corporal's stripes—' and am hopeful.'
'You'll never attain to them, you lazy Southron. Tell as about your camp life.'
'There's very little to tell. Drill, smoke, loaf—begging your pardon for the rough expression of a rough fact—drill again. As one day is, so is another; they're all alike.'
'Well, tell us about your getting wounded, then, and the fight. George will not get wounded himself, in spite of my repeated requests to that effect.'
And so Moore fought his battle over again, in the midst of which Miss Berkeley dropped out of the talk, folded some soft brilliant net over her light dress, and went down the walk leading to the shore, and he did not see her again that night.
After that he spent much of his time below stairs. Much alone; there were walks and rides in which he could take no part. Despite of George's prediction, he had peace and quiet, and gathered strength hourly. Whatever of graciousness he had seen or fancied in Miss Berkeley's manner in that first unexpected meeting had all vanished. A subtile, unconquerable something shut her out from all friendliness of speech or action. She went about the house in her slow, abstracted way, or in her other mood, with sudden darting motions like a swallow, or dreamed all day beside the summer sea, coming back browner and with mistier looks in her gray eyes, but always alone and unapproachable. So that in half a dozen days he had not received as many voluntary sentences from her.
But one morning the clouds had gathered black and heavy. The sea fogs had pitched their tents to landward, and their misty battalions were driving gray across the landscape. Dim reaches of blank water—lay beyond, weltering with an uneasy, rocking motion against the low, dark sky. White, ghostly sea birds wheeled low, a fretful wind grieved about the house, and a New England northeast storm was in progress. She was standing at the window, looking out with eyes farther away than ever over the haze-draped sea. Some fine, heavy material, the same indistinct hue as the day outside, fell about her in large, sweeping folds. A breath of sudden, penetrating perfume struck across his senses as he approached her. 'And gray heliotrope!' he said; but the heliotrope vanished as she turned and displayed the blaze of carnations at her throat, and the gleam of crimson silk under the jaunty zouave.
'Lois Pearl Berkeley,' he read from the golden thimble he had nearly crushed under foot. He half wondered if she would know what it was. He never saw her do anything. She was never 'engaged,' nor in haste about any occupation. The perfect freedom from the universal Yankee necessity of motion, with which the brown, small hands fell before her, was as thoroughly a part of her as the strange Indian scent which clung to everything she touched, and sphered her like the atmosphere of another world. He never could associate the idea of any kind of personal care-taking with her dainty leisure, more than with the lilies of the field, though they never appeared in as many graceful arrays as she.
'Yes, mine, thank you,' she said, and composedly dropped it into its place in the most orderly of useless conglomerations of silken pockets and puzzling pigeon holes. He watched her fingers, and then looked back at her.
'Lois—such an odd name for you—such a quaint, staid Puritan name.'
'And I am neither quaint nor staid nor Puritan. Thank you. Yes, my mother must have had recollections of her New England home strong on her when she gave it me, down on the Louisiana shores. It always sounded even to me a little strange and frigid among such half-tropical surroundings.'
As she spoke a sudden pang of utter weariness and longing seized him. A rush of the boyish malady of homesickness, concentrated from all the dreary months of his long absence, and none the less poignant because it was involuntary. The wide, cool, shadowy halls of his mother's house, always aglow with blossoms and haunted with their odors, all the superficial lotus-charm of Southern life—and he had lived it superficially enough to catch all its poetry rose before him. It caught away his breath and choked sudden tears into his eyes. Came and went like a flash—for before she had done speaking a sudden new bond of sympathy put away the stranger forevermore, and he was no longer alone.
'Then you are Southern born too,' he said, with a quick step forward, and involuntarily outstretched hand. Hers dropped into it.
'Yes, I am hardly acclimated yet. I shiver under these pale Northern skies from August till June. O my Louisiana, you never made 'life a burden' with such dark, chill days, and sobbing, cruel winds!' She turned to the windows. A sudden uncontrollable quaver of impatience and longing ran through her speech and hurried the words with unusual vehemence.
'I thought you must have liked the day, since you robed yourself in its haze and mist.' He laid his hand lightly on her gray drapery with reverent touch.
'And I thought my carnations would redeem that. Since they didn't—'and she tossed the whole bright, spicy handful on the table.
In a vase on the mantle, gray, passionate, odorous blooms were massed loosely about a cluster of fragile, intense day lilies, and a dash of purple and crimson trailed with the fuchsias over its edge, and gleamed up from the white marble ledge. He went to the vase, shook out the fuchsias, and laid the residue in her lap.
'Heliotrope, finally,' he said.
She brushed it lightly away with a half shudder.
'Not that. I don't like heliotrope. Its perfume is heart-breaking, hopeless. It belongs in coffins, about still, dead faces. If it had a voice, we should hear continual moans. It would be no worse than this, though.'
'You will wear the lilies then, unless the heliotrope scent clings to them too,' he said, gathering up the obnoxious flowers.
'Yes, if it doesn't jar your ideal to see them worn against such a stormy day dress. To me they are the perfection of summer. No color could be more intense than this spotless whiteness. There!' Fastening them, the brittle stems snapped, and the flowers fell at her feet. 'No flowers for me to-day, of your choosing at least. Practically, lilies have such an uncomfortable way of breaking short off.'
A broad, bright ribbon lay drawn through 'Charles Anchester' on the table. She knotted it carelessly at her throat.
'That will do for the now; but, O my carnations, how your mission failed!' hovering over them a minute.
'Then you are not satisfied with the New England mean of perfection, in everything, mentally, morally, and meteorologically?' going back to the weather again.
'Satisfied! I'd exchange this whole pale summer for one hour of broad, torrid noonlight. Deep, far-off tropical skies, great fronds of tropical foliage, drawing their sustenance from the slowest, richest juices of nature, gorgeous depths of color blazing with the very heart of the sun, deep, intoxicating odors poured from creamy white or flaming flower chalices, and always the silver-sprayed wash of the blue sea. I remember that of my home. It is months and months since I have seen a magnolia or jasmine.'
Fate sent Miss Morris to the parlor just then, luckily enough, perhaps, and the first dash of rain from the coming storm struck the windows sharply. Miss Berkeley shivered; a gray shadow swept up over her face, and absorbed all the gleam and unrest. She moved off with her book to a window; shut herself out from the room, and into the storm, with a heavy fall of curtains; and Nelly's voice rippled through a tripping, Venetian barcarole.
It stormed all the next day, and when twilight came, it rained still with desperation. A narrow sphere of light from the flame low down in its alabaster shade held the piano, and through the warm scented gloom that filled the rest of the parlor thrilled echoing chords. Moore, coming in, stopped in the dimness to listen. A troubled uncertainty made itself felt through the strains, a sudden discordant crash jarred through the room, and the performer rose abruptly. He came forward.
'O my prophetic soul, magnolias!' said Nelly, from her lounge, just outside the lighted circle.
It had just come from him, the light, exquisite basket he held filled with great, pink, flushed magnolia blooms. Nelly raved in most fashionably extravagant adjectives. Lois looked at it with hungry eyes, but motionless and speechless. He laid it before her on the table, and turned away. She stood for a moment looking gravely down on it, then buried her face among the cool petals with a sudden caressing motion. Looking up again shortly, 'Thank you,' she said simply to the giver chatting carelessly.
A broad illumination flooded the other end of the parlor a minute after, and the chess board came into requisition. If Miss Morris found little skill necessary to discomfit her opponent, and wondered thereat, she could not see, as he saw, a dark face, bowed on tropic blooms, flushed with unwonted glad color, lips apart and aquiver, wide eyes lustrous with purple light, shining through the tears that gathered in them.
Then the piano began, played dreamily, irregularly, with slender, single threads of tune, and frequent pauses, as if the preoccupied mind let the listless fingers fall away from the keys. They gathered up finally all the broken strains into a low, slow-moving harmony. Through it Moore heard the soft lap of waves, the slow rock of Pacific tidal swells, flowing and ebbing and flowing again through flaming noons, about half-submerged bits of world, palm-shaded, sun-drenched, or swaying white with moonlight under purple midnights, holy with the clear burning stars: heard the gurgle and ripple of falling streams, deepening into the wide flow of mighty rivers, bearing in their calm sweep the secrets of a zone—of ice-choked springs, of the dead stillness of Northern forests, and the overgrowth, and passionate life of endless summers.
The red and white combatants now held truce over a queen check, while the players sat silent, listening.
Suddenly, through the murmur and rhythmic flow of water sounds, struck shrill and sharp the opening strains of a march—not such marches as mark time for dainty figures crowding ballroom floors, but triumphant, cruel, proud, with throbbing drum-beat—steadying the tramp of weary feet over red battle fields. Its unswerving hurry, its terrible, calm excitement, brought before his vision long blue lines—the fixed faces sterner than death, with steady eyes and quickened breath—the nervous clutch of muskets, as the rattle of small arms and boom of cannon came nearer and nearer, the fluttering silken banners, the calm sunshine, and sweet May breath—and the quick, questioning note of a meadow lark dropped down through the silence of the advancing column. As the maddening music stormed and beat about him, his heart throbbed audibly, and the rushing currents of his fiery Southern blood sounded in his ears. Honor, prudence, resolution, everything was swept away in the lava tide of excitement. Before him he saw the crown of his life. All heaven and all earth should not stop him short of it. He rose and began crossing the room, with heavy, resolute tread. In the dimness, the player was hardly visible; he would assure himself of her mortality at least. A sudden, fierce hunger for sight and touch thrilled him.
Midway he stopped. The music dropped with a shock from its fiery enthusiasm. Was it only an echo, or an army of ghosts crossing a dim field, long since fought over—the steady tramp, tramp, the pendulum of time? Unutterably wailing, pitiful, it sent plaintive, piercing cries up to the calm, dead heavens. All the fearful sights he had seen rose before him. Upturned lay faces calm in death as in a child's sleep, with all camp roughnesses swept away in that still whiteness; strong men's, with that terrible scowl of battle or the distortion of agonized death on them—mangled and crushed forms—all the wreck of a fought battle, terrible in its suggestive pathos. It sank away into the minor of water voices, soft, monotonous, agonizing in its utter passivity, a brilliant arpeggio flashed up the keys like a shower of gold, and Miss Berkeley rose with white face and trembling breath, and Nelly was alone in the room, sobbing nervously in her armchair.
The storm passed that night, with great swayings of trees, and dash of broad raindrops, and piled up broken masses of fleecy white clouds, tossed about by the rough, exultant September wind. Bright days followed, mellowing with each one to sunnier, calmer perfection. Moore passed them in his own room. That night had torn away all the disguises that he had put upon his heart. He knew now that he loved this woman—knew it with such a bitter sense of humiliation as such proud spirits writhe under when honor turns traitor and betrays them to the enemy. 'Lead us not into temptation.' If it meant anything in the old habit of child's prayer which clung to him yet, it meant that he should put himself out of its way, since he had proved himself too weak to meet it. His inborn honesty let him build no excuses for his failure. He saw, and acknowledged with a flush of scorn and curling lip, his own treachery to himself in his hour of need. That he had not committed himself—that his self-betrayal was only known to self—was no merit of his—simply a circumstance. And circumstances seemed mighty in their influence upon him, he thought, with a feeling of deepest contempt. All pride and self-reliance were taken out of him. Absence, at least, would be a safeguard, since it would render harmless such impulses as those of that night. However much he might sin in yearning, she; should never know, never be exposed to the risk of being drawn into his guilt and pain. He had come at last to the place where all the old delicate pride was merged in the one anxious fear that she should suffer. He would go away the next day; he would not see her again—never see her voluntarily—putting away fiercely the sudden pang of yearning: not that he came at once to such a conclusion.
Honor, pride, self-respect, having failed him once, were not easily recalled to their allegiance. His was no feeble nature, to sin and repent in an hour. He fought over every inch of his way, and came out at last conqueror, but scarred and weary and very weak in heart, and distrustful of himself.
They had gone to ride that afternoon—he had seen them drive away. He would go down and make the necessary arrangements for his departure. And so it happened that he stood an hour before sunset in the parlor. A sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the outside world seemed pressing nearer these two strangers in a strange land.
'How pale you are! You have been ill again.'
'No,' he said, almost harshly. 'You like tiger lilies,' lifting a stem crowded with the flaming whirls.
'Like them? yes—don't you? As I like the fiery, deafening drum-roll and screaming fife, and silver, sweet bugle-calls. Think where they found these wide, free curves of outline—that flaming contrast of color. Indian skies have rounded over them, Indian suns poured their fervor into their hearts. In the depth of forest jungles the velvet-coated tiger has shaken off their petals—glittering, deadly cobras crushed them in their slow coils; gorgeous-winged birds and insects swept them in their flight.'
Some new mental impulse sent a rare, faint flush to the olive cheeks, and filled the uplooking clear eyes with light. This purple-clad shape, with fiery nasturtiums burning on the breast and filling the air with their peculiar odor, with the barbaric splendor of tiger lilies reflecting their lurid glare about her as she stood, bore no more likeness to the ordinary haughty woman than fire to snow. He would have liked to have crowned her with pomegranate blossoms—have dropped the silvery sheen of ermine under her feet, and have knelt there to worship.
She moved away impatiently, trailed her noiseless drapery through the room once or twice, and came back to the window, where he stood looking out. Before them lay the sea, calm in a sheen of blue, gathering faint amethystine vapors, that the sunset would light up in a miracle of bronze and purple and rose.
'You should have been with us last night! A soft, rushing south wind filled all the air with whispers, and drew up a veil of lace round the horizon, very high up in the east. Stars were few; the new moon dropped tender, faint beams down into the gray mist and grayer water that broke in ripples of white fire against the dark in the west, and mingled with the mystery in the east. I want to go again. Mr. Moore, I can manage a boat; will you go with me?'
With every minute he saw his hard-earned victory slipping away. With every minute his reeling sense lost foothold in the strange, new fascination of her excited presence. Will rallied to a last effort; he muttered some broken excuse, that she must have thought an assent, for she dropped a soft, white, clinging shawl over her shoulders, slipped the tie of the jaunty hat beneath her chin, and he could only follow her as she slid through the flicker of shade and sunshine down to the beach, where the summer sea washed lazily.
Low in the west and northwest lay piled ominous clouds; white, angry thunder heads began showing themselves.
'A grand sunset for to-night, and a shower perhaps. We shall be back before it breaks.'
A small boat—a frail thing of white and gilding—floated at anchor. Lois shook out the sail in her character of manager, seated herself at the helm, and they drifted out. No word was spoken; the light in her eyes grew brighter and brighter; the scarlet curves of her mouth more and more intense. Sitting with face turned away from the west, she did not see, as he did, the rising blackness. The wind freshened, skimming in fitful gusts over the waves, and the little craft flung off the spray like rain. Away off in the shadow of the cloud the water was black as death, a faint line of white defining its edge. Was she infatuated? As for him, he grew very calm, with a kind of desperation. Better to die so, with her face the last sight on earth—his last consciousness her clinging arms, sinking down to the dark, still caverns beneath—than to live out the life that lay before him. He leaned forward and looked over into the green depths of the sea. Sunshine still struck down in rippling lines, a golden network. Soft emerald shadows hung far down, breaking up into surface rifts of cool dimness as the waves swung over them.
Her hat had fallen back; her whole face was alive with a proud, exultant delight in the exhilarating motion. Higher and higher rose the veil of cloud, and the blackness in the water was creeping toward them. Sea birds wheeled low about them, with their peculiar quavering cry, and a low swell made itself felt. Miss Berkeley turned her head; a sudden look of affright blanched her face to deadliest whiteness. A hand's breadth of clear sky lay beneath the sun, and down after them, with the speed of a racer, came that great black wave. Before it the blue ripples shivered brightly; behind it the angry water tossed and seethed. In its bosom, lurid, phosphorescent lights seemed to flit to and fro. Its crest was ragged and white with dashes of foam. She took in the whole in a second's glance, and made a movement to bring the boat's head up to the wind. As the white face turned toward him, a quick instinct of self-preservation seized him, and he sprang up to lower the sail. Something caught the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision cleared itself, he saw Lois, unimpeded by her light drapery, striking out for the sunken ledge, half a dozen yards away, over which the spray was flying furiously. He ground his teeth with impatience as his nerveless arm fell helpless; but he reached her side at last. A narrow shelf, with barely sufficient standing room for two. Great, dark waves, with strange lights flashing through them, whirled blinding deluges high above their heads, as he held her close. With the instinct of the weaker toward the stronger, she grasped and clung to him; and the fierce exultation that thrilled through his veins with actual contact, made him strong as a giant. And then, close on the gale, came the rain, beating down the waves with its heavy pour. In the thunder and tramp of the storm no human voice could have made itself audible, if speech had been needed.
The storm passed as suddenly as it had risen. Through a rift in the clouds a dash of blood-red light burst over the troubled waters, and with it a sudden quiet fell about them. They were to have their 'grand sunset' finally.
'We are too far from the mainland to reach it without help; no boats are likely to pass this way after this storm; the tide is at its lowest now; it rises high over this ledge.'
In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all claims of that world that lay behind him—shut out everything but their own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were swept away.
Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the present—this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through the future would run the memory of a caress in which—she was not a woman who measured her gifts—she had dissolved all the hope and promise of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl. Only into the eternities could he carry the now pure and loyal. It had nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had he attained to it.
The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'
She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A rested, loving smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.
'My darling!'
'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither thought—the life currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full, disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.
Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head, listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so hopelessly. His voice was hoarse—broken up with the heart wrench.
'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life that will separate us?'
She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he her? and what could come between them? For her a future burst suddenly into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources of happiness.
Another breathless kiss—this time crowded with the agony of a parting for him—and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.
They lifted her into the rescuing boat shortly, white and breathless, and wrapped her in heavy shawls. Not senseless, lying against his breast, the dark eyes opened once to meet his, and the pallid face nestled a little closer to its resting place. He could not tell if the time were long or short, before Nelly's voice broke on his ear.
'Only a comedy, instead of the tragedy which mother is arranging up at the house!'
The half-hysterical quaver broke into the woman's refuge of tears, and sobs with that; and Moore gave up his burden to stronger arms.
'Up at the house,' Mrs. Morris, busied with her blazing fires and multitudinous appliances for any stage of disaster, met them with the quiet tears that mothers learn to shed, and the reverent 'Thank God!' that comes oftenest from mothers' lips.