The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864. Various
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voices, whistling, singing, screaming shot, thunderous drum-rolls, sharp sheet of flame and instant abyss of blackness, horses' heads vaulting into sight, spurts of warm blood upon the brow, the bullet rushing like a blast beside the ear, all the terrible tempest of attack, trampled under the flashing hoof, climbing, clinching, slashing, back-falling beneath cracking revolvers, hand to hand in the night, both bands welded in one like hot and fusing metal, a spectral struggle of shuddering horror only half guessed by lurid gleams and under the light cloud flying across the stars. Clearly and remotely over the plain the hidden east sent up a glow into the sky; its reflection lay on Ray; he fought like one possessed of a demon, scattering destruction broadcast, so fiercely his anger wrapped him, white and formidable. Fresh onset after repulse, and, like the very crest of the toppling wave, one shadowy horseman in all the dark rout, spurring forward, the fight reeling after him, the silver lone star fitfully flashing on his visor, the boy singled for his rifle;—inciting such fearless rivalry, his fall were the fall of a hundred. Something hindered; the marksman delayed an instant; he would not waste a shot; and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, and the humanity of it, back poured the ardor of his sacred devotion, all the impulsions of his passionate purpose: here was God's work! And then, with one swift bound of magnificent daring and defiance, the horseman confronted him, the fore-feet of his steed planted firmly half up the abatis, and his steel making lightnings round about him. There was a blinding flare of light full upon Ray's fiery form; in the sudden succeeding darkness horseman and rider towered rigid like a monolith of black marble. A great voice cried his name, a sabre went hurtling in one shining crescent across the white arc of the waterfall. Too late! There was another flare of light, but this time on the rider's face, a sound like the rolling of the heavens together in a scroll, and Ray, in one horrid, dizzy blaze, saw the broad gleam of the ivory brow, of the azure fire in the eyes, heard the heavy, downfalling crash, and, leaping over the abatis, deep into the midst of the slippery, raging death below, seized and drew something away, and fell upon it prostrate. There, under the tossing torrent, dragging himself up to the seal of their agony and their reproach, Ray looked into those dead eyes, which, lifted beyond the everlasting stars, felt not that he had crossed their vision.
Far away from outrage and disaster, many a weary stretch of travel, the meadow-side cottage basked in the afternoon sunlight of late Indian-summer. All the bare sprays of its shadowing limes quivered in the warmth of their purple life against a divine depth of heaven, and the woody distances swathed themselves in soft blue smoke before the sighing south-wind.
Round the girl who sat on the low door-stone, with idle hands crossed before her, puffs of ravishing resinous fragrance floated and fainted. Two butterflies, that spread their broad yellow wings like detached flakes of living sunshine stolen out of the sweet November weather, fluttered between the glossy darkness of her hair and a little posthumous rose, that, blowing beside the door, with time only half to unfold its white petals, surveyed the world in a quaint and sad surprise.
Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a listless eye: waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but its pain. It was long since there had been any letter from Ray. In all this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of Beltran. Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long strain of such suspense. Could she but have one word from him, half the term of her own life would be dust in the balance. A thousand fragmentary purposes were ever flitting through her thought. If she might know that he was simply living, if she could be sure he wanted her, she would make means to break through that dividing line, to find him, to battle by his side, to die at his feet! Her Beltran! so grave, so good, so heroic! and the thought of him in all his pride and beauty and power, in all his lofty gentleness and tender passion, in his strength tempered with genial complaisance and gracious courtesy, sent the old glad life, for a second, spinning from heart to lip.
The glassy lake began to ruffle itself below her, feeling the pulses of its interfluent springs, or sending through unseen sluices word of nightfall and evening winds to all its clustering companions that darkened their transparent depths in forest-shadows. As she saw it, and thought how soon now it would ice itself anew, the remembrance rushed over her, like a warm breath, of the winter's night after their escape from its freezing pool, when Beltran sat with them roasting chestnuts and spicing ale before the fire that so gayly crackled up the kitchen-chimney, a night of cheer. And how had it all faded! whither had they all separated? where were those brothers now? Heaven knew.
It had been a hard season, these months at the cottage. The price of labor had been high enough to exceed their means, and so the land had yielded ill, the grass was uncut on many a meadow; Ray's draft had not been honored; Vivia had of course received no dividend from her Tennessee State-bonds, and her peach-orchards were only a place of forage. Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while. Should all else fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of course secure from want. But there was a drearier want at Vivia's door, which neither that nor any other wealth would ever meet.
Little Jane came up the field with a basket of the last barberries lightly poised upon her head. A narrow wrinkle was beginning to divide the freckled fairness of her forehead. She kept it down with many an endeavor. Trying to croon to herself as she passed, and stopping only to hang one of the scarlet girandoles in Vivia's braids, she went in. The sunshine, loath to leave her pleasant little figure, followed after her, and played about her shadow on the floor.
Vivia still sat there and questioned the wide atmosphere, that, brooding palpitant between her and the lake, still withheld the desolating secret that horizon must have whispered to horizon throughout the aching distance.
"Oh that the bells in all these silent spires
Would clash their clangor on the sleeping air,
Ring their wild music out with throbbing choirs,
Ring peace in everywhere!"
she sang, and trembled as she sang. But there the burden broke, and rising, her eyes shaded by her hand, Vivia gazed down the lonely road where a stage-coach rolled along in a cloud of dust. What prescience, what instinct, it was that made her throw the shawl over her head, the shawl that Beltran liked to have her wear, and hasten down the field and away to lose herself in the wood, she alone could have told.
The slow minutes crept by, the coach had passed at length with loud wheel and resounding lash, its last dust was blowing after it, and it had left upon the door-stone a boy in army-blue, with his luggage beside him. A ghastly visage, a shrunken form, a crippled limb, were what he brought home from the war. With his one foot upon the threshold, he paused, and turned the face, gray under all its trace of weather, and furrowed, though so young, to meet the welcoming wind. He gazed upon the high sky out of which the sunshine waned, on the long champaign blending its gold and russet in one, on the melancholy forest over which the twilight was stealing; he lifted his cap with a gesture as if he bade it all farewell,—then he grasped his crutch and entered.
Without a word, Mrs. Vennard dropped the needles she was sorting upon the mat about her. Little Jane sprang forward, but checked herself in a strange awe.
"Let me go to bed, auntie," said he, with a dry sob; "and I never want to get up again!"
Midnight was winding the world without in a white glimmer of misty moonlight, when the sharp beam of a taper smote Ray's sleepless eyes, and he saw Vivia at last standing before him. Over her wrapper clung the old shawl whose snowy web was sown with broidery of linnæa-bells, green vine and rosy blossom. Round her shoulders fell her shadowy hair. Through her slender fingers the redness of the flame played, and on her cheek a hectic coming and going like the broad beat and flush of an artery left it whiter than the spectral moonlight on the pane. She took away her hand, and let the illumination fall full upon his face,—a face haggard as a dead man's.
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