He selected a gentle horse for their use and five days later, when the sun rose with unusual warmth, they took their first mountain drive.
Along the banks of crystal brooks that dashed their sparkling waters over the rocks, up and up winding, narrow roads until the town became a mottled white spot in the valley below, and higher still until the shining clouds they had seen from the valley rolled silently into their faces, melting into the gray mists of fog!
In the midst of one of these clouds, the little wife leaned close and whispered:
"We"re in heaven now, Dan--we"re pa.s.sing through the opal gates! I shouldn"t be a bit surprised to see Him at any moment up here----"
A lump suddenly rose in his throat. Her voice sounded unreal. He bent close and saw the strange bright light again in her eyes. And the awful thought slowly shaped itself that the light he saw was the shining image of the angel of Death reflected there.
He tried to laugh off his morbid fancy now that she had begun to find the world so beautiful, but the idea haunted him with increasing terror. He couldn"t shake off the impression.
An hour later he asked abruptly:
"You have felt no return of the pain in your throat, dear?"
"Just a little last night, but not to-day--I"ve been happy to-day."
He made up his mind to telegraph to New York at once for the specialist to examine her throat.
The fine weather continued unbroken. Every day for a week she sat by his side and drifted over sunlit valleys, lingered beside beautiful waters and climbed a new peak to bathe in sun-kissed clouds. On the top of one of these peaks they found a farmhouse where lodgers were allowed for the night. They stayed to see the sunrise next morning. Mammy would not worry, they had told her they might spend the night on these mountain trips.
The farmer called them in time--just as the first birds were waking in the trees by their window.
It was a climb of only two hundred yards to reach the top of a great boulder that gave an entrancing view in four directions. To the west lay the still sleeping town of Asheville half hidden among its hills and trees.
Eastward towered the giant peaks of the Blue Ridge, over whose ragged crests the sun was climbing.
The young husband took the light form in his strong arms and carried her to the summit. He placed his coat on the rocky ledge, seated her on it, and slipped his arm around the slim waist. There in silence they watched the changing glory of the sky and saw the shadows wake and flee from the valleys at the kiss of the sun.
He felt the moment had come that he might say some things he had waited with patience to speak:
"You are sure, dear, that you have utterly forgiven the great wrong I did you?"
"Yes, Dan," she answered simply, "why do you ask?"
"I just want to be sure, my Jean," he said tenderly, "that there"s not a single dark corner of your heart in which the old shadows lurk. I want to drive them all out with my love just as we see the sun now lighting with glory every nook and corner of the world. You are sure?"
The thin lips quivered uncertainly and her blue eyes wavered as he searched their depths.
"There"s one thing, Dan, that I"ll never quite face, I think"--she paused and turned away.
"What, dear?"
"How any man who had ever bent over a baby"s cradle with the tenderness and love I"ve seen in your face for Tom, could forget the mother who gave the life at his command!"
"I didn"t forget, dearest," he said sadly. "I fought as a wounded man, alone and unarmed, fights a beast in the jungle. With her sweet spiritual ideal of love a sheltered, innocent woman can"t remember that man is still an animal, with tooth and claw and unbridled pa.s.sions, that when put to the test his religion and his civilization often are only a thin veneer, that if he becomes a civilized human being in his relations to women it is not by inheritance, for he is yet in the zoological period of development--but that it is by the divine achievement of character through struggle. Try, dearest, if you can, to imagine such a struggle. This primeval man, in the shadows with desires inflamed by hunger, meets this free primeval woman who is unafraid, who laughs at the laws of Society because she has nothing to lose. Both are for the moment animals pure and simple. The universal in him finds its counterpart in the universal in her. And whether she be fair or dark, her face, her form, her body, her desires are his--and, above all, she is near--and in that moment with a nearness that overwhelms by its enfolding animal magnetism all powers of the mind to think or reflect. Two such beings are atoms tossed by a storm of forces beyond their control. A man of refinement wakes from such a crash of elemental powers dazed and humiliated. Your lips can speak no word as vile, no curse as bitter as I have hurled against myself----"
The voice broke and he was silent. A little hand pressed his, and her words were the merest tender whisper as she leaned close:
"I"ve forgiven you, my love, and I"m going to let you teach me again to live. I"ll be a very docile little scholar in your school. But you know I can"t forget in a moment the greatest single hour that is given a woman to know--the hour she feels the breath of her first born on her breast. It"s the memory of that hour that hurts. I won"t try to deceive you. I"ll get over it in the years to come if G.o.d sends them----"
"He will send them--he will send them!" the man broke in with desperate emotion.
Both were silent for several minutes and a smile began to play about the blue eyes when she spoke at last:
"You remember how angry you were that morning when you found a doctor and a nurse in charge of your home? And the great fear that gripped your heart at the first mad cry of pain I gave? I laughed at myself the next moment. And then how I found your hand and wouldn"t let you go. The doctor stormed and ordered you out, and I just held on and shook my head, and you stayed. And when the doctor turned his back I whispered in your ear:
"""You won"t leave me, Dan, darling, for a single moment--promise me--swear it!"
"And you answered:
""Yes, I swear it, honey--but you must be very brave--braver than I am, you know"----
"And you begged me to take an anesthetic and I wouldn"t, like a little fool. I wanted to know all and feel all if it killed me. And the anguish of your face became so terrible, dear--I was sorrier for you than for myself.
And when I saw your lips murmuring in an agony of prayer, I somehow didn"t mind it then----"
She paused, looked far out over the hills and continued:
"What a funny cry he gave--that first one--not a real baby cry--just a funny little grunt like a good-natured pig! And how awfully disappointed you were at the shapeless bundle of red flesh that hardly looked human! But I could see the lines of your dear face in his, I knew that he would be even handsomer than his big, brave father and pressed him close and laughed for joy----"
She stopped and sighed:
"You see, Dan, what I couldn"t understand is how any man who has felt the pain and the glory of this, with his hand clasped in the hand of the woman he loves, their two souls mirrored in that first pair of mysterious little eyes G.o.d sent from eternity--how he could forget the tie that binds----"
He made no effort to interrupt her until the last bitter thought that had been rankling in her heart was out. He was looking thoughtfully over the valley. An eagle poised above the field in the foreground, darted to the stubble with lightning swiftness and rose with a fluttering brown quail in his talons. His shrill cry of triumph rang pitilessly in the stillness of the heights.
The little figure gave an unconscious shiver and she added in low tones:
"I"m never going to speak of this nameless thing again, Dan, but you asked me this morning and I"ve told you what was in my heart. I just couldn"t understand how you could forget----"
"Only a beast could, dearest," he answered with a curl of the lip. "I"m something more than that now, taught by the bitterness of experience.
You"re just a sweet, innocent girl who has never looked the world as it is in the face. Reared as you were, you can"t understand that there"s a difference as deep as the gulf between heaven and h.e.l.l, in the divine love that binds my soul and body and life to you and the sudden pa.s.sing of a storm of pa.s.sion. Won"t you try to remember this?"
"Yes, dear, I will----"
She looked into his eyes with a smile of tenderness:
"A curious change is coming over you, Dan. I can begin to see it. There used to be a line of cruelty sometimes about your mouth and a flash of it in your eyes. They"re gone. There"s something strong and tender, wise and sweet, in their place. If I were an artist I could paint it but I can"t just tell you what it is. I used to think the cruel thing I saw in you was the memory of the war. Your eyes saw so much of blood and death and pain and cruelty----"
"Perhaps it was," he said slowly. "War does make men cruel--unconsciously cruel. We lose all sense of the value of human life----"
"No, it wasn"t that," she protested, "it was the other thing--the--the--Beast you"ve been talking about. It"s not there any more, Dan--and I"m going to be happy now. I know it, dear----"
He bent and kissed the slender fingers.
"If this old throat of mine just won"t bother me again," she added.
He looked at her and turned pale: