Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 50

The cla.s.s filed out, and lifting the departing man on their shoulders bore him down to the old south dock and bade him farewell.

Penhallow looked after them. "There goes the first, Leila. There will be more-many more-to follow, unless things greatly change-and they will not. I hoped to take John home with us, but he will come in a week. I must leave to-morrow morning. John is in the dumps just now, but Beauregard has only pleasant things to say of him. I wish he were as agreeable about the polities of his own State."

"Are they so bad?"

"Don't ask me, Leila."

The capital of available energy in the young may be so exhausted by mental labour, when accompanied by anxiety, that the whole body for a time feels the effect. Muscular action becomes overconscious, and intense use of the mind seems to rob the motor centres of easy capacity to use the muscles. John Penhallow walked slowly up the rough road to where the ruined bastions of Port Putnam rose high above the Hudson. He was aware of being tired as he had not been for years. The hot close air and the long hours of concentration of mind left him discouraged as well as exhausted. He was still in the toils of the might-have-been, of that wasting process-an examination, and turning over in his mind logistics, logarithms, trajectories, equations, and a mob of disconnected questions. "Oh, by George!" he exclaimed, "what's the worth while of it?" All the pleasantly estimated a.s.sets of life and love and friends.h.i.+p became unavailable securities in the presence of a mood of depression which came of breathing air which had lost its vitalizing ozone. And now at a turn in the road nature fed her child with a freshening change of horizon.

Looking up he saw a hawk in circling flight set against the blue sky. He never saw this without thinking of Josiah, and then of prisoned things like a young hawk he had seen sitting dejected in a cage in the barracks. Did he have dreams of airy freedom? It had affected him as an image of caged energy-of useless power. With contrasted remembrance he went back to the guarded procession of boys from the lyceum in France, the flower-stalls, and the bird-market, the larks singing merrily in their small wicker cages. Yes, he had them-the two lines he wanted-a poet's condensed statement of the thought he could not fully phrase:

Ah! the lark!

He hath the heaven which he sings,- But my poor hawk hath only wings.

The success of the capture of this final perfection of statement of his own thought refreshed him in a way which is one of the mysteries of that wild charlatan imagination, who now and then administers tonics to the weary which are of inexplicable value. John Penhallow felt the sudden uplift and quickened his pace until he paused within the bastion lines of the fort. Before him, with her back to him, sat Leila. Her hat lay beside her finished sketch. She was thinking that John Penhallow, the boy friend, was to-day in its accepted sense but an acquaintance, of whom she desired, without knowing why, to know more. That he had changed was obvious. In fact, he had only developed on the lines of his inherited character, while in the revolutionary alterations of perfected womanhood she had undergone a far more radical transformation.

The young woman, whom now he watched unseen, rose and stood on the crumbling wall. A roughly caressing northwest wind blew back her skirts. She threw out her wide-sleeved arms in exultant pleasure at the magnificence of the vast river, with its forest boundaries, and the rock-ribbed heights of Crow's Nest. As she stood looking "taller than human," she reminded him of the figure of victory he had seen as a boy on the stairway of the Louvre. He stood still-again refreshed. The figure he then saw lived with him through life, strangely recurrent in moments of peril, on the march, or in the loneliness of his tent.

"Good evening," he said as he came near. She sat down on the low wall and he at her feet. "Ah, it is good to get you alone for a quiet talk, Leila."

She was aware of a wild desire to lay a hand among the curls his cadet-cropped hair still left over his forehead. "Do you really like the life here, John?"

"Oh, yes. It is so definite-its duties are so plain-nothing is left to choice. Like it? Yes, I like it."

"But, isn't it very limited?"

"All good education must be-it is only a preparation; but one's imagination is free-as to a man's future, and as to ambitions. There one can use one's wings."

She continued her investigation. "Then you have ambitions. Yes, you must have," she cried with animation. "Oh, I want you to have them-ideals too of life. We used to discuss them."

He looked up. "You think I have changed. You want to know how. It is all vague-very vague. Yet, I could put my creed of what conduct is desirable in life in a phrase-in a text."

"Do, John." She leaned over in her interest.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to G.o.d the things which are G.o.d's." The seriousness of the upturned face for a moment kept her silently reflective.

"Caesar! What of Caesar, John?"

"My country, of course; that is simple. The rest, Leila, covers all-almost all of life and needs no comment. But how serious we are.

Tell me all about home and the village and the horses and Uncle Jim.

He has some grey hairs."

"He may well have grey hairs, John. The times are bad. He is worried.

Imagine Uncle Jim economical!"

"Incredible."

"Yes. He told me that his talk with Colonel Beauregard had made him despair of a peaceful ending, and usually he is hopeful."

"Well, don't make me talk politics. We rarely do. Isn't this outlook beautiful? People rarely come here and it often gives me a chance to be alone and to think."

"And what do you think about, John?" She was again curious.

"Oh, many things, big and little. Uncle Jim, Aunt Ann, Mr. Rivers, Dixy-hornets, muskrats," he laughed. She noted the omission of Leila Grey.

"And what else?"

"Oh, the tragedy of Arnold,-the pathos of Was.h.i.+ngton's despair,-his words, 'Who is there now I can trust?'"

"It came home to me, John, this morning when Colonel Beauregard showed us the portraits of the major-generals of the Revolution. I saw a vacant place and a tablet like the rest, but with 'Major General-Born 1740' and no name! I asked what it meant. The Colonel said only, 'Arnold.' That is too pitiful-and his wife-I read somewhere that she was young, beautiful, and innocent of his horrible treason."

"Yes, what crime could be worse than his, and, too, such a gallant soldier. Let us walk around the fort. Oh, by the way, I found here last week two Continental b.u.t.tons, Third Pennsylvania Infantry. Like to have them, Leila? I thought you might."

"Would I like?" She took them eagerly. "They ought to be gilded and used as sleeve-links." But where she kept them John Penhallow never knew. They did not make the sleeve-links for which she agreed they were so suitable.

"Isn't there a walk down through the woods?" asked Leila.

"Yes, this way." Leaving the road they followed a rough trail through the woods to a more open s.p.a.ce half-way down the hill. Here he paused. "This is our last chance to talk until I am at Grey Pine."

"That will be very soon, John." She sat down amid numberless violets, adding, "There will be the hop to-night, as you call it."

"Yes, the hop. I forgot. You will give me the first dance?"

To her surprise he asked no others. "Cadets have to learn to dance, but Baltimore may have left you critical."

Still on her investigation track, she returned, "Oh, Baltimore! It seems odd to me that I should have seen so much of the world of men and women and you who are older so little in this military monastery."

He laughed outright. "We have the officers' families, and if we are allowed to visit, the Kembles and Gouverneurs and Pauldings across the river-no better social life anywhere. And as for young women-sisters, cousins-embarras de choix, Miss Grey. They come in flocks like the blackbirds. I a.s.sure you that this branch of natural history is pretty well ill.u.s.trated at the Point. We are apt to be rather over-supplied in June."

"Indeed!-all sorts, I suppose."

"Yes, a variety, and just now three charming young women from the South."

"Rather a strong adjective-charming. I might hesitate to apply it to a whole flock. I think men are more apt to use it than women."

"I stand by my adjective. Take care of your laurels, Miss Grey. I am lucky enough to have two dances with Miss Ramsay. Her brother is a cadet."

"Introduce him to me. What myriads of violets!"

"Do you remember how, when we were small, we used to fight violets?"

"How long ago it seems, John. It must have been the first June after you appeared in that amazing cap and-the cane I have it yet. Let's fight violets. It may have a charm to make me look young again-I feel so old sometimes."

Intent on her game, she was already gathering the flowers in her lap, while the young man a little puzzled and a little amused watched the face which she described for his benefit as needing to look young. She ran on gaily, "You will pick five and I will pick five. I never heard of any other children fighting violets. It is a neglected branch of education. I got it from the Westways children. Now, fair play, John Penhallow." He was carelessly taking his five violets, while Leila was testing hers, choosing them with care. The charm she sought was working-they were children again.

"That's not fair, Leila."

"Why not?"

"You are testing yours. It is a mean advantage. I would scorn to do such a thing. It is just like a woman-the way you do about dress. All women ought to dress alike-then the compet.i.tion would be fair."

Leila looked up from her lap full of violets. "I should like to see your Miss Ramsay in one of my gowns."

"My Miss Ramsay! No such luck."