One March day some seasons before, Major Falconer had brought down with his rifle from out the turquoise sky a young lone-wandering swan.In those early days the rivers and ponds of the wilderness served as resting places and feeding-grounds for these unnumbered birds in their long flights between the Southern waters and the Northern lakes.A wing of this one had been broken, and out of her wide heaven of freedom and light she had floated down his captive but with all her far-sweeping instincts throbbing on unabated.This pool had been the only thing to remind her since of the blue-breasted waves and the glad fellowship of her kind.On this she had passed her existence, with a cry in the night now and then that no one heard, a lifting of the wings that would never rise, an eye turned upward toward the turquoise sky across which familiar voices called to each other, called down, and were lost in the distance.
As he followed down the hill, she was standing on the edge of the pond, watching the swan feeding in the edge of the cane.He took her hand without a word, and looked with clear unfaltering eyes down into her face, now swanlike in whiteness.
She withdrew her hand and gave him the gloves which she was holding in the other.
"I'm glad you thought enough of them to come for them.""I couldn't come! Don't blame me!"
"I understand! Only I might have helped you in your trouble.If a friend can't do that--may not do that! But it is too late now! You start for Virginia tomorrow?""To-morrow."
"And to-morrow Amy marries, I lose you both the same day! You are going straight to Mount Vernon?""Straight to Mount Vernon."
"Ah, to think that you will see Virginia so soon! I've been recalling a great deal about Virginia during these days when you would not come to see me.Now I've forgotten everything I meant to say!"They climbed the hill slowly.Two or three times she stopped and pressed her hand over her heart.She tried to hide the sound of her quivering breath and glanced up once to see whether he were observing.He was not.With his old habit of sending his thoughts on into the future, fighting its distant battles, feeling its far-off pain, he was less conscious of their parting than of the years during which he might not see her again.It is the woman who bursts the whole grape of sorrow against the irrepressible palate at such a moment; to a man like him the same grape distils a vintage of yearning that will brim the cup of memory many a time beside his lamp in the final years.
He would have passed the house, supposing they were to go to the familiar seat in the garden; but a bench had been placed under a forest tree near the door and she led the way to this.The significance of the action was lost on him.
"Yes," she continued, returning to a subject which furnished both an escape and a concealment of her feelings, "I have been revisiting my girlhood.You love Kentucky but I cannot make myself over."Her face grew full of the finest memories and all the fibres of her nature were becoming more unstrung.He had made sure of his strength before he had ever dared see her this day, had pitted his self-control against every possible temptation to betray himself that could arise throughout their parting; and it was this very composure, so unlocked for, that unconsciously drove her to the opposite extreme.Shades of colour swept over her neck and brow, as though she were setting under wind-tossed blossoming peach boughs.
Her lustrous, excited eyes seemed never able to withdraw themselves from his whitened solemn face.Its mute repressed suffering touched her; its calmness filled her with vague pain that at such a time he could be so calm.
And the current of her words ran swift, as a stream loosened at last from some steep height."Sometime you might be in that part of Virginia.I should like you to know the country there and the place where my father's house stood.And when you see the Resident, I wish you would recall my father to him.And you remember that one of my brothers was a favourite young officer of his.I should like you to hear him speak of them both: he has not forgotten.Ah! My father! He had his faults, but they were all the faults of a gentleman.And the faults of my brothers were the faults of gentlemen.Inever saw my mother; but I know how genuine she was by the books she liked and her dresses and her jewels, and the manner in which she had things put away in the closets.One's childhood is everything! If I had not felt I was all there was in the world to speak for my father and my mother and my brothers! Ah, sometimes pride is the greatest of virtues!"He bowed his head in assent.
With a swift transition she changed her voice and manner and the conversation:
"That is enough about me.Have you thought that you will soon be talking to the greatest man in the world--you who love ideals?""I have not thought of it lately."
"You will think of it soon! And that reminds me: why did you go away as you did the last time you were here--when I wanted to talk with you about the book?"Her eyes questioned him imperiously.
"I cannot tell you: that is one of the things you'd better not wish to understand.
She continued to look at him, and when she spoke, her voice was full of relief:
"It was the first time you ever did anything that I could not understand: Icould not read your face that day."
"Can you read it now?" he asked, smiling at her sorrowfully.
"Perfectly!"
"What do you read?"
"Everything that I have always liked you for most.Memories are a great deal to me.Ah, if you had ever done anything to spoil yours!"Do you think that if I loved a woman she would know it by looking at my face?""You would tell her: that is your nature.""Would I? Should I?"
"Why not?"
There was silence.
"Let me talk to you about the book," he cried suddenly.He closed his eyes and passed one hand several times slowly across his forehead; then facing her but with his arm resting on the back of the seat and his eyes shaded by his hand he began:
