"Your soul is still an undiscovered country to me, Ca.s.sandra."

"I should think you'd like that. Don't men love to go discovering? And if you could get into the secret chambers, as you call them, you wouldn't find much. Then you'd be sorry."

"Ca.s.sandra, what are you covering and holding back?"

"I don't know, David. It's like it was when I couldn't understand the message of the 'Voices'! When it comes clear and strong, I'll tell you."

"Then there is something?"

"Yes."

With a little sigh, she rose and entered the cabin. He sat in silence as she had left him, but soon she returned. Standing behind him in the darkness, she put her interlaced fingers under his chin and drew his face backward until she could see it, white in the dusk, beneath her eyes.

"You have come back to explain?"

"If I can, David. It's hard for me to put in words what is so dim--what I see. It's all just love for you, David. The love burns and blazes up in me like the fire when it's fiercest on the hearth, when the day is cold outside. You've seen it so. In the little books my father used to read, there was a tale of a woman who had my name. She foretold the sorrows to come. Perhaps she saw as I see things in the dim pictures, only more clearly, and wisdom was given her to interpret them.

"Often and often I've felt that in me--that strange seeing and knowing before, and I don't like it. Only once it made me feel glad--when it led me to you and Frale that terrible moment. But it wasn't a picture that time; it was a feeling that pulled me and made me go. I would have gone that time if I had died for it."

He took her two hands and covered them with kisses, there in the darkness. "I told you you were my priestess of all that is good."

"But I don't want to be always seeing the shadows and foreboding. I want to be all happy--happy--the way you are."

"I believe you are one of the blessed ones of G.o.d who have 'the gift'; but you are right to feel as you do. Your life will be more normal and wholesome not to try to probe into the future. I'll not attempt to take my coa.r.s.er humanity into your holy places, dear."

He led her into their canvas sleeping chamber, and there she was soon calmly slumbering at his side; but he lay long pondering and trying to see his way out of a certain dilemma of unrest that had been creeping into his veins and prodding him forward ever since his reestablished health had become an a.s.sured fact. He recognized it as no more than the proper impulse of his manhood not to stagnate and slumber in a lotus dream, even as delicious a dream as this. Ah, it was inevitable. His world must become her world.

Herein lay the dilemma. This unsullied, beautiful being must enter that sordid old world, that had so pressed upon him and broken him down. This idyl might go on for perhaps a year longer--but not for always--not for always.

He slept at last, and dreamed that they were being driven along a dark, cold river, wide and swift; that they had entered it where it was only a narrow, rushing stream, sparkling and tumbling over rocks, and winding in intricate turnings on itself; that they had laughed as they followed it, plashing among the stones where she led him by the hand, until it grew wider and deeper and colder, and they were lifted from their feet and were tossed and swirled about, and she cried and clung to him, and even as he clasped her and held her, he knew her to be slipping from him. Then in terror he awoke, and, reaching out in the darkness, drew her into his embrace and slept again.

CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH DAVID TAKES LITTLE HOYLE TO CANADA

"David," said his wife next day, as he came whistling up to his cabin from the farm below, "do you mind if I give mother a little help with the weaving? Mattie can't do it. She's right nigh spoiled the counterpane we had on when she came, and since mother's hurt, she can't work the treadles, so now the hotel's open Miss Mayhew may come and find them not half done."

"Do I mind? Why should I mind, if you don't 'right nigh' spoil your back and wear yourself out?"

"Then I'll go down with you after dinner and see can I patch up Mattie's mistakes. It takes so much patience--a loom does, to understand it."

Mattie was the cousin David had imported from the low country to relieve Ca.s.sandra from the burden of the work in the home below. Although a disappointment to them, she still did her work after her own fashion, clumsily and slowly, but her Aunt 'Marthy' was never at rest, prodding the dull nature forward, trying to make her take the interest Ca.s.sandra had done.

David had wisely persuaded his wife to leave them to themselves, to work out the problem of adjustment to the new conditions as best they might, and his persuasions had been of a more peremptory nature than he realized. To Ca.s.sandra they had been as commands, but now--when the weaving on which the widow had counted so much was likely to be ruined by Mattie's unskilled hands--the old mother had declared she could not bear to see her niece around and should "pack her off whar she come from."

Therefore Ca.s.sandra had made her timid request--the first evidence of shrinking from her husband she had ever given. Why was it? he asked himself. What had he ever said or done to make her prefer a request in that way? But it was over in an instant, and her own poised manner returned as they ate and chatted together.

Little Hoyle came running up to eat with them. He had conceived a dislike to the home below since the inc.u.mbent had come to take his sister's place, and evaded thus, as often as possible, his mother's vigilance. David did not mind the intrusion, but suffered the adoring little chap to sit at his side, ever twisting his small body about to fix his great eyes on David's face, while he plied him with questions and hung on his words too intent to attend to his own eating unless admonished thereto by his sister.

"If you don't eat, son, I'll send you back to mother," she threatened.

"I won't go," he rebelled joyously. "I'll jes' set here 'longside brothah David."

"No, you won't, young man. You'll do whatever sister says. That's what I do." He put his hand on the boy's tousled head and turned him about to his plate, well filled with food still untouched, but he noticed that the child ate listlessly, more as an act of obedience than from a normal desire. He glanced up at his wife and saw that she also noticed Hoyle's languor. They finished the meal in a silence only broken by Hoyle's questions and David's replies, now serious, now teasing and bantering.

"You are so full of interrogation points you have no room for your dinner. Here--drink this milk--slowly; don't gulp it."

"I know what they be. They go this-a-way." The boy set down his gla.s.s to ill.u.s.trate with his slender little hand the form of the question mark.

Then he laughed out gayly. "You know hu' come I got filled up with them things? I done swallered that thar catechism Ca.s.s b'en teachin' me Sundays."

"No, I'm thinking you just are one yourself."

"'Cause I'm crooked like this-a-way?" He twisted about and looked up at David gravely.

"No, no, son. Doctor didn't mean that," said his sister.

"Finish your milk," said David. "We'll have some fun with the microscope." And once again the child essayed to eat and drink a little.

But the languor and pallor grew in spite of all David could do for him, and as the weeks pa.s.sed his large eyes burned more brilliantly and his thin form grew more meagre. Ca.s.sandra got in the way of keeping him up at the cabin with her, and when she went down to weave, he went also and used to lie on the bundles of cotton, poring over the books which David procured for him from time to time.

"What he gets in that way won't hurt him. It's not like having set tasks to learn, and he's not burdened with any 'ought' or 'ought not' about it. Let him vegetate until cooler weather. Then, if he doesn't improve, we'll see what can be done. Something radical, I imagine."

The fall arrived in a splendor that was truly oriental in its gorgeousness. The changing colors of the foliage surpa.s.sed in brilliancy anything David had ever seen or imagined possible. The mantle of deepest green which had clothed the mountain sides all summer, became trans.m.u.ted, until all the world was glorified and glowing as if the heat of the summer sun had been stored up during the drowsy days to burst forth thus in warmest reds and golds.

"The hills look as if they had clothed themselves in Turkish rugs, ancient and fine," said David one evening, as he sat on his rock, watching them burn in the afterglow of the setting sun.

"How much there is for me to learn and know," Ca.s.sandra replied in a low voice. "I never saw a Turkish rug. You often speak of things I know nothing about."

David laughed and turned upon her happy eyes. "Why so sad for that? Did you think I loved you and married you for your worldly knowledge?" She smiled back at him and was silent. Presently he continued. "Now, while Hoyle is not here, I wish to talk to you a little about him."

"Yes, David." Her heart fluttered with a nameless fear, but she betrayed no sign of emotion.

"You've seen, of course. It's not necessary to tell you."

"No, David--only--does it mean death?" She put her hand out to him, and he took it in his and stroked it.

"Not surely. We'll make a fight for him, won't we, dear?"

"Oh, David! What can we do?" she moaned.

"There's a thing to do that I've been reserving as a last resort. I think the time has come to try it. This curvature presses on some vital part, and the action of his heart is uncertain. He needs the tonic of the cold,--the ice and snow. Would you trust him to me, dear? I'll take him to Doctor Hoyle. You know very well everything kindness and skill can do will be done for him there."

"Yes, yes, David. You are so good to him always! Would--would you go--alone with him?" She drew closer to him, her head on his shoulder and her hand in his, but he could not see her face.