Neither of these worshippers, who forgot to worship, was in a mood for talking as they came out and rode slowly home along the lane. Its evening peace seemed to be a continuance of the chapel"s calm. The sun was low--balancing, as a red ball, on the hazy, distant hilltops. In three and a half minutes it would be down, leaving them in an afterglow of exquisite softness and touching the partially clouded western sky with a wealth of glory.
Plaintively across the fields could be heard the call of sheep, mellowed by the tinkle of their leader"s bell. She could see them--little moving mushrooms on the pasture slope--and to her ears came the sound of someone letting down the stable bars. It suggested someone watching for her coming; someone letting down the bars and calling her into a place where she might be for all time safe.
"The days are getting short," he murmured, watching the last red segment slip from sight. "It won"t be so very long before these old oaks are as red as that sky."
"I don"t like to think of winter," she, too, spoke dreamily. "And see!
It"s sunset! Don"t you think we should be getting home?"
"I suppose we should," he gloomily answered, though his heart was beating madly. "And in a few days I must think of hurrying home, too--of leaving this, all this," his hand waved toward the crimson west. "It will be as if I were emerging from a wonderful dream--from a crystal palace which will fall in little pieces; and I"ll search and search for the rest of my life and never find it again! I shall miss my crystal palace!"
For a moment neither dared to speak. It was very still in the fragrant lane and their horses, which all this while had been walking slower, now stopped as though in obedience to some whispered voice. Leaning gently toward her, trembling before a depth of feeling which had never until this time been so stirred, he said hoa.r.s.ely:
"I won"t lose it! I can"t lose it, Jane!"
Distantly--yet almost out of the air about them, as if it were the spirit of Kentucky speaking with ineffable gentleness through the gathering twilight--a quintette of negroes, somewhere across the valley, sang in mellow, minor harmonies:
"Weep no moh, mah lady; Oh, weep no moh, today!"
He could see that her eyes were swimming in an adorable moisture, and her face, touched by the dying day, seemed to be whispering out to him through a glorified mist.
"I can"t live without it--now!" he was pleading desperately.
"Neither can I," she whispered.
Half an hour later, Mac was still sitting in the road, his head tilted inquiringly up at them: while the horses, still shoulder to shoulder, stood patiently champing their bits.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
TRIUMPH
When Dale had parted with Jess the westering sun was still half an hour from setting. As he strode powerfully on, his heart bounded with the thought of reopened opportunity--much as it did after Jane left him one other sunset evening when he had been looking into this same sort of sky.
The little stream he followed soon crossed a narrow, tangled lane, and this he knew would lead out toward Flat Rock; but, as he turned into it, far down its shadowy aisle he saw Mac, tail up, smelling under a ledge of rock for chipmunks.
There was no reason why the mountaineer should have sought a hiding-place, except for the wildness in his being which pointed cautionward; or, perhaps, feeling that Jane, not unattended, would be soon in sight, he may have preferred a more auspicious moment to deliver his gladsome tidings. At any rate, without giving much thought to whys or wherefores, he gained the bank overlooking the road and nestled securely in its foliage. Slowly, then, Mac came on, neither seeing nor suspecting; and slowly after him two riders came into view, at the very instant that the red sun dropped from sight.
When they were almost below him, when he suddenly realized the indisputable truth that in Brent was an enemy to his ambitions more formidable than poor Tusk had been, a blinding rage swept through his brain which turned all things fiery as the west. Stealthily his hand felt over the ground for a stone large enough to crush this importunate engineer--this thief, who would steal his teacher and leave him stranded in a barren school! One was there, and his fingers, feverishly yet with caution, began to scratch away the loam which held it down. But then he hesitated. Had he not told her that the greatest call of all calls, whether it came from mountain peak or lowland, did not mean fight--it meant surrender? Had he not told her this himself? And so his fingers drew away from the rock. As he peered again through the bushes Brent was saying something about losing a crystal palace--Brent, who had so recently offered to take his place in jail! And then the horses stopped, shoulder to shoulder.
Was it a new glory which illumined the mountaineer"s soul at this picture which followed there in the twilight? Was it something that had been reflected from the face and closed eyes of Jane, as Brent drew her into his arms? Had this glimpse of happiness, as he had never dreamed of happiness--this ineffable sweetness of first confessions--this heat of a kiss as pure as G.o.d"s white crucible which would forever blend them into one being for His service;--had these drawn the scales from the mountaineer"s eyes, as Saul"s had been blinded at the roadside, and let him see all that had been one-sided, mean and narrow in his life?
It was dusk, and the horses, still shoulder to shoulder, had pa.s.sed slowly on, when Dale left his place above the road. For a long time he watched where the shadows had closed behind them--now to be always behind them.
Thoughtfully, with steps of meditation, he crossed the fields and came within sight of the twinkling lights at Arden; then for a long while leaned his elbows on a fence and pondered over many things. When he started on there was a great understanding in his soul.
At a pasture near the house he stopped again, and sent a low, trembling call into the night. Listening, he heard the irregular galloping of aged Lucy, whinnying hopefully as she came, and finally rubbing her muzzle against him in unaffected delight. He must have surprised her then, for gently his arms went around her neck and more gently he said:
"Lucy, d"ye reckon ye kin tote me back ter Sunlight Patch?--me, "n" a book "r two? I got school larnin" enough ter help "em for a good long time ter come; but thar"s a new larnin", Lucy, I jest now larned--the greatest larnin" of hit all! D"ye reckon ye kin tote me back ter Sunlight Patch?--me, "n" a book "r two?"