The Choir Invisible [52]
of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, without generals, without commands, without help or pay, or reward of any kind, but fighting of their own free will and dyeing every step of their advance with their blood, had entered and conquered the great neutral game-park of the Northern and the Southern Indians, and were holding it against all plots: in the teeth of all comers and against the frantic Indians themselves; against England, France, Spain,--a new land as good as the best of old England--Kentucky! Into which already thousands upon thousands were hurrying in search of homes --a new movement of the race--its first spreading-out over the mighty continent upon its mightier destiny.
So had come about her hasty marriage with her young officer, whom Virginia rewarded for his service with land; so had followed the breaking of all ties, to journey by his side into the wilderness, there to undergo hardship, perhaps death itself after captivity and torture such that no man who has ever loved a woman can even look another man in the face and name.
Thus ever on and on unwittingly he wove the fibres of her life about him as his shirt of destiny: following the threads nearer, always nearer, toward the present, until he reached the day on which he had first met her on his in the wilderness. From that time, he no longer relied upon hearsay, but drew from his own knowledge of her to fill out and so far to end all these fond tapestries of his memory and imagination.
But as one who has traversed a long gallery of pictures, and, turning to look back upon all that he has passed, sees a straight track narrowing away into the dimming distance, and only the last few life scenes standing out lustrous and clear, so the school-master, gazing down this long vista, beheld at the far end of it a little girl, whom he did not know, playing on the silvery ancestral lawns of the James; at the near end, watching by his bedside on this rude border of the West, a woman who had become indispensable to his friendship.
More days passed, and still she did not return. His eagerness for her rose and followed, and sorrowfully set with every sun.
Meantime he read the book, beginning it with an effort through finding it hard to withdraw his mind from his present. But soon he was clutching it with a forgotten hand and lay on his bed for hours joined fast to it with unreleasing eyes; draining its last words into his heart, with a thirst newly begotten and growing always the more quenchless as it was always being quenched. So that having finished it, he read it again, now seeing the high end of it all from the low beginning. And then a third time, more clingingly, more yearningly yet, thrice lighting the fire in his blood with the same straw. Like a vital fire it was left in him at last, a red and white of flame; the two flames forever hostile, and seeking each to burn the other out. And while it stayed in him thus as a fire, it had also filled all tissues of his being as water fills a sponge--not dead water a dead sponge--but as a living sap runs through the living sponges of a young oak on the edge of its summer. So that never should he be able to forget it; never henceforth be the same in knowledge or heart or conscience; and nevermore was the lone spiritual battle of his life, if haply waged at all, to be fought out by him with the earlier, simpler weapons of his innocence and his youth, but with all the might of a tempted man's high faith in the beauty and the right and the divine supremacy of goodness.
One morning his wounds had begun to require attention. No one had yet come to him: it was hardly the customary hour: and moreover, by rising in bed he could see that something unusual had drawn the people into the streets. The news of a massacre on the western frontier, perhaps; the arrival of the post-rider with angry despatches from the East; or the torch of revolution thrown far northward from New Orleans. His face had flushed with feverish waiting and he lay with his eyes turned restlessly toward the door.
It was Mrs. Falconer who stepped
So had come about her hasty marriage with her young officer, whom Virginia rewarded for his service with land; so had followed the breaking of all ties, to journey by his side into the wilderness, there to undergo hardship, perhaps death itself after captivity and torture such that no man who has ever loved a woman can even look another man in the face and name.
Thus ever on and on unwittingly he wove the fibres of her life about him as his shirt of destiny: following the threads nearer, always nearer, toward the present, until he reached the day on which he had first met her on his in the wilderness. From that time, he no longer relied upon hearsay, but drew from his own knowledge of her to fill out and so far to end all these fond tapestries of his memory and imagination.
But as one who has traversed a long gallery of pictures, and, turning to look back upon all that he has passed, sees a straight track narrowing away into the dimming distance, and only the last few life scenes standing out lustrous and clear, so the school-master, gazing down this long vista, beheld at the far end of it a little girl, whom he did not know, playing on the silvery ancestral lawns of the James; at the near end, watching by his bedside on this rude border of the West, a woman who had become indispensable to his friendship.
More days passed, and still she did not return. His eagerness for her rose and followed, and sorrowfully set with every sun.
Meantime he read the book, beginning it with an effort through finding it hard to withdraw his mind from his present. But soon he was clutching it with a forgotten hand and lay on his bed for hours joined fast to it with unreleasing eyes; draining its last words into his heart, with a thirst newly begotten and growing always the more quenchless as it was always being quenched. So that having finished it, he read it again, now seeing the high end of it all from the low beginning. And then a third time, more clingingly, more yearningly yet, thrice lighting the fire in his blood with the same straw. Like a vital fire it was left in him at last, a red and white of flame; the two flames forever hostile, and seeking each to burn the other out. And while it stayed in him thus as a fire, it had also filled all tissues of his being as water fills a sponge--not dead water a dead sponge--but as a living sap runs through the living sponges of a young oak on the edge of its summer. So that never should he be able to forget it; never henceforth be the same in knowledge or heart or conscience; and nevermore was the lone spiritual battle of his life, if haply waged at all, to be fought out by him with the earlier, simpler weapons of his innocence and his youth, but with all the might of a tempted man's high faith in the beauty and the right and the divine supremacy of goodness.
One morning his wounds had begun to require attention. No one had yet come to him: it was hardly the customary hour: and moreover, by rising in bed he could see that something unusual had drawn the people into the streets. The news of a massacre on the western frontier, perhaps; the arrival of the post-rider with angry despatches from the East; or the torch of revolution thrown far northward from New Orleans. His face had flushed with feverish waiting and he lay with his eyes turned restlessly toward the door.
It was Mrs. Falconer who stepped