A milkmaid? Would they consider — I lost myself in wild and extravagant dreams. Blowsabella? Surely no one could be less like a Blowsabella. Or for the matter of that less like the Hartopps our neighbors, who talked of nothing but plaited bits, lived in riding coats, and romped through a country dance like so many Dulcineas del Toboso!
No, no one could say that she was a milkmaid. On the other hand I doubted if she had ever seen a Panache — the latest headdress — or held cards at Loo, or squalled a bar of Sacchini’s music, or chattered down players and pit at a tragedy. She belonged to no category. She was herself, and an odd, troubling, haunting self at that!
CHAPTER VII
HICKORY KNOB
For I must go where lazy peace
Will hide her drowsy head,
And for the sport of Kings increase
The number of the dead.
But first I’ll chide thy cruel theft
Can I in war delight?
Who being of my heart bereft
Can have no heart to fight?
DAVENANT.
I don’t know how long I had been lost in these musings when Wilmer’s return to the house put an end to them. As he crossed the veranda, carrying his gun and followed by a black boy trailing two wild turkeys after him, he turned as if he were going to join me. But he changed his mind at the last moment and paused some paces from me. “It’s a pity it’s that arm, Major,” he said. “There’s a glut of turkeys in the woods. But you’ve had other sport at home, I hear?”
A little offended I put a question with my eyes.
He grinned. “They’re hard to understand are women,” he said. “Beyond you and me, Major. We’ll say no more than that.”
He nodded and went on, entering the house before I could answer. But again I had that queer passing impression of another man, a jovial, easy, talkative fellow, fond of a glass and a toast. Perhaps it was his smile. A smile would naturally shorten a man’s face. Perhaps it was the sunlight. Or perhaps it was just a fancy that had taken hold of me. Wilmer, like most Southerners, had humor of a kind, but he was certainly neither jovial nor talkative, and I should not have described him as an easy companion. His wit was of the dry and caustic sort, that leaves the person addressed at a disadvantage.
He left home again three days later — to join Davy’s band I gathered; and I had seen so little of him, while he was at the Bluff, that I did not miss him. I was beginning to recover my strength and from day to day I went farther afield. Sometimes I passed the ford and wandered up the pasture, a vast park-like meadow, broken by clumps of oaks and chestnuts, trees that in that country mark good soil as poplars indicate a poor site. Or I might venture into the forest and amid the undergrowth of sweet-scented myrtle and dog-wood and honeysuckle — and other shrubs less healthy — I would put up a deer or come oh the tracks of a bear; or in the sombre twilight of the pine woods, with their melancholy festoons of gray moss, I would hear the tapping of the Southern woodpecker. Aunt Lyddy made friends with me and talked of Braddock and Washington and Wolfe and the heroes of the last war; and at times would betray by a look of distress and a tremor of the hands that she was conscious that something was amiss in her world and that things did not consort with reality as they should. On these occasions the girl, if she were present, would humor her and reassure her with incredible tact and kindness; and at the same time she would dare me with stormy eyes to come within so much as a mile of explanation. Her patience with Aunt Lyddy was indeed the measure of her impatience with me. And set me far from her.
Yet at a distance we were better friends now. She never joined me where I sat on the veranda, but she would sometimes of an afternoon take her seat at the spinning-wheel at the farther end by the old blood hound; and I would, though timidly, wander that way and draw her into unwilling talk; at any rate it seemed to be unwilling on her side and it was certainly jejune. She never asked me to be seated, and seldom, while I was there, looked up from her task; but she would answer, and bit by bit I learned something of her family story. On her mother’s side she was of French blood; it was on that side that she was akin to Marion, and the result was that she spoke French in a way that put me to shame. When she named her mother, “You were greatly attached to her?” I ventured.
“She was my mother,” she answered.
“And your father?”
“He is more to me than anything in the world,” she replied with the same simplicity. “He was my mother’s last charge to me.”
“And no doubt you are often anxious about him?”
“Anxious?” For once she looked at me. And then in a tone of feeling, too tragic, as it seemed to me, for the occasion, “God knows how anxious!” she said. “God knows what is the weight I have to bear!”
I thought her answer over-strained. I thought her anxiety more than the occasion required; and I felt about for an explanation. “You are so near the fighting,” I said lamely, for I felt that I was making excuse for her. “Doubtless it is more trying to you.”
“I am so near,” she answered with the same depth of feeling. “And so helpless! So helpless! I sit and wait! And wait!”
“That is too often the woman’s part, I fear.”
“God forbid,” she replied with extraordinary bitterness, “that my part should fall to the lot of many women. He cannot be so cruel!”
I drew away after that. I did not dare to press her farther, for I thought that she was overwrought and hardly herself. The note of tragedy seemed to be out of place in face of this calm country-side, of the still woods, of the lowing cattle, of the smiling negroes going about their tasks under our eyes.
But all our talks were not of this nature, and stoutly as she guarded the approaches to intimacy, there were times when I caught her in a gentler mood or by sheer meekness broke down the barrier of her reserve; so that perforce she grew more kind. At such times she listened while I talked of my home and my people and the England, which she knew only through the pages of Addison and Goldsmith and Richardson; or I described the long voyage with its stale water and sour beef which had brought me hither; or she spoke herself, not willingly, of the old plantation on the Ashapoo, of society on the French Santee, where she had visited the Marions, of her boarding school at Charles Town, of the Cecilia Society with its concerts, and the old Provincial Library. It was clear that Wilmer had been in better circumstances, but when I ventured to sympathize with her on her isolation her only answer was, “Give us peace! Only give us peace!”
“Peace?” I echoed. “Yes.”
And I knew that I was losing my own peace. I knew that the pose of her small head, as it bent over the wheel or the needle, the slender grace of her figure, the proud sadness of her eyes were coming between me and the rest of the world; and that beside a kind look from those eyes, that now dwelt absently on things unseen by me, and now viewed me with a cold attention, hardly anything in life had any value for me, or any sweetness. Had I met her elsewhere and in ordinary conditions, I believe that I should have succumbed to her charm. But here, where she was the one woman, set in this lonely place as in a frame, encircled by the peace of green glades and scented hemlocks, by myrtle and reddening sumach, and where, besides, she walked a perplexing puzzle, a sphinx, a figure for vain imaginings — was any other issue possible?
A rebel? The daughter of a planter? I thought no more of such things. Here, where every morning I looked across the valley to the far-off mountains, where the endless spaces of the air smiled beneath my eyes, here, within touch of the primitive forest and the wide prairies, such distinctions lost their meaning. The busy life of the camp, the Norfolk Discipline — how often had I cursed it! — the jovial dinner, the ride, the foray, faded into a dream; and even the quarrel which had brought us — a mere handful of pigmies, over the boundless ocean to this land, seemed no longer of moment, but a mere trifle, the play of children quarreling in some squalid alley of a distant town.
And whether in this, love opened my eyes or closed them, whether I no
w saw things by the light of truth or duped myself for a season, what matter? In a month from my coming I had waded in over shoes, over boots. For me the die was cast and I knew that I dreaded nothing so much as the day that should see my back turned on the Bluff. The old life had lost its savour and seemed, as I looked back, an impossible procession of dull routine and distasteful days.
Doubtless had I been French I must have spoken. But there is in us a vast force of silence. Where the Frenchman is proud we, until a certain day comes, are ashamed of passion. And apart from the distance which she maintained between us, there was a dignity about Constantia as she moved in the midst of her household, and governed her slaves, that set all thought of love at defiance. I could not bring myself to believe that she regarded me as anything but an unlucky encumbrance, one of the evils of war. Indeed, as my arm improved and my strength returned, and I stood in less need of help or pity, I fancied that her intolerance of my presence grew and increased. She noted when the month that Marion had named came to an end. She showed trouble at his non-appearance, and fretted without disguise at the delay. At times she was ice to me. And then I, who would have given the world for a kind word from her lips, could have cursed her for her unconsciousness!
Not that I had not once or twice intoxicating moments. Once I looked up from my book as I sat on the porch and I found her eyes brooding upon me. For a few seconds mine held them — it seemed as if she could not drag hers away! Then, as she at last turned her head, I saw the blood dye the whiteness of her neck and cheek to the very hair; and for a delicious minute my heart rioted madly. Again I was standing over her one day and I had fallen silent, gazing at and worshipping her slender neck and high-braided head. I suppose she felt my eyes upon her, for slowly I saw the same blush spread over the white — slowly and irresistibly; and to stay the foolish words that rose to my lips I had to go away and hide myself in my room, where I sat gripping the cold fingers of my bandaged arm until the blood burned in them. Why, why had she blushed, I asked myself? For when I met her next, she was cold as Diana and distant as a star. And as if she were not satisfied with that, but must punish me farther, she presently sent to me to ask if I would be good enough to leave the veranda free next day, as she wished to examine a small parcel of a new staple of cotton. As the veranda was the only place where I had the chance of seeing her, this was enough to vex me; but I had no choice except to obey, and I spent the greater part of the morrow in my own room and in a bad temper. I was there about three in the afternoon fretting and fuming and trying to read when I heard the patter of naked feet crossing the porch, a sound that was quickly followed by a stir in the house. A moment later the commotion grew to something like an alarm. Voices rose here and there in various keys, I caught cries of affright, a door was slammed hurriedly, silence followed. And on that, to tell the truth, my heart sank.
“Marion is here,” I thought. “He has come for me.” And if Marion’s return had meant release and freedom instead of a prison hospital at Hillsboro’ I do not know that I should have been much better pleased!
I did not go out or make inquiry. I considered that I had been cast on my own company with little thought and small ceremony; and pride bade me wait until I was summoned. I clung, too, to hope as long as it was possible to do so. It might not be Marion. The stir might have nothing to do with me. And so some minutes, five perhaps, passed. Then with no warning there came a sharp knock at my door, and Mammy Jacks entered. The woman looked flustered and alarmed.
“Marse Craven,” she said, “Missie, she up’n sond fer you. She des tarryin’ fer you de no’th aidge uv Hick’ry Knob, en I ‘low de sooner’n you go de better. A little mo’ en you miss er en de kindlin’ll be in de fier. You gwine?” —
I stared at the woman. I fancied at first that I had not understood her. “Hickory Knob?” I said. “Why it is two miles from here! Madam Constantia cannot have walked there! I heard her voice less than—”
“Go ‘long! Aint I done tell you she ridin’ Injun Belle?” Mammy Jacks replied scornfully. “She tuck’n sond piccaninny fer you. You gwine ter go? Co’se,” — she turned away with great dignity— “ef you hev udder fish ter fry, it’s notin ter Mammy Jacks. She done tell you.”
“Stop!” I said, my mind a jumble of impossible conjectures, “Don’t be in such a hurry. I’ll go, of course, if I can be of use. But I don’t understand—”
“Dat’s needer yer nor dar,” Mammy Jacks answered. “Ef you ‘er too bigitty ter go, Marse, dar’s an eend. Eh? You gwine? Clar to goodness den, sooner’n you skip de better! Ef you not fine Missie no’th aidge uv de Knob you ter wait an hour twel she come. Bimeby she trompin’ round. She sholy boun’ ter come.”
I followed the woman from the room, still marvelling, still questioning,’ my head in a whirl. She hurried me through the living-room to the door at the rear of the house which looked towards the negroes’ cabins — low huts of shingle, vine-clad, mushroom-like, dwarfed by the giant shade-trees that rose above them. Beside the house-door stood a black boy with a single cloth about him, who still panted from the speed at which he had come. His face was strange to me, and I asked if he were coming with me.
“Look like you know de track widout him!” the woman rejoined. “Aint you bin ter de Knob de las’ week uz ever wuz? You better run ‘long er Missie’ll be dar befo’ you! Den you’ll hear mo’ en you pleez’d ter like. Dat’s w’at I’m thinking, Marse Craven.”
I strode off without waiting for more, passed beside the cabins and skirted the negroes’ patches of corn and vegetables. Beyond these I plunged into the woods, following a fairly-marked track. The Knob was a rocky point, rising well over a hundred feet above the forest roof, some two miles southwest of the Bluff. I had visited it for the sake of the view which I was told its summit afforded; and I should have gone a second time if about the same distance northwest of the Knob, there had not risen above the trees another hill — King’s Mountain. Its slopes were greener, it was more pleasant to the eye. But I knew that on those slopes, above which vultures and crows hovered in the air, the bodies of my fellows lay unburied. And that thought had been too much for me. I had not gone again.
But to-day that and all kindred thoughts were far from my mind as I pushed my way along the narrow track, now thrusting aside the scented plants that form in Carolina so large a part of the undergrowth, and now traversing the gloom of a pinewood where the feet sank without a sound in the rotting leaves. Even the heat and flies, even the scurry of a doe and fawn across my path were little heeded. My mind was in a tumult of wonder and conjecture. I thought only of Constantia, of her summons, of her possible need. I strove to imagine what had happened, what had, or could have, happened, to lead her to send for me; above all, I wondered what she could want with me at Hickory Knob, a place distant and solitary — she who had never offered me her company abroad, never gone farther with me than to that sliprail?
Wondering, I sought the answer to these questions and sought it fruitlessly. I could find no answer that consorted with her character or was at one with her treatment of me. Had she met with an accident? She would not send for me. Had she fallen into hostile hands? I could do nothing, maimed and unarmed as I was. Was Marion with her? Then, why did he not come to the house? No conjecture that presented itself agreed with the facts, and I could only hasten my pace as much as my arm permitted, and look forward to seeing her.
Where should I find her? At the foot of the rock? Or at the summit? Or would she perhaps be waiting for me at a certain flat stone on a level with the tree-tops, which formed a convenient seat, and which a carpet of nutshells and broken corncobs pointed out as a favorite resort of the negroes? I could not tell. The tangle of forest vines about me was not more blind or more confused than were my thoughts.
I came at last, sweating at every pore, and fighting the swarms of flies that accompanied me to the foot of the little hill. She was not there; I could hear nothing. The stillness of afternoon lay heavy on the woods. Impatient of delay, I paus
ed for a moment only, then I started to scale the hill and in less than a minute I stood beside the flat stone I have mentioned. She was not there, and I did not tarry, I climbed on, now slipping on the shale, and now clutching at branches of the myriad azaleas that earlier in the year clothed the bare hill with flame. At length I reached the summit which was no bigger than the floor of a barn.
She was not there and I stood awhile, glad to take breath and to cool my heated face. I looked abroad over the silent trees, over the carpet of forest which autumn was beginning to dye to its pattern. I viewed for a moment the smooth green head of King’s Mountain, that to the westward rose above the trees. Then I turned to mark, in the direction whence I came, the cleft in the woods which marked the clearing about the Bluff. Beyond it the forest sank and was replaced by the more distant view of the mountains.
I waited, expecting, with each moment that passed, to hear the movements of her mare on the path. How would she look? What countenance would she put on? What would she, what could she have to say to me? I lost myself in a fever of anticipation. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, at last the full half hour! And still she did not come. Still there was no sign of her, no sound of her approach.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 621
