The Maid-At-Arms

Now, though the birds and many of the beasts and trees were familiar to me in this Northern forest, yet I was constantly at fault, as I have said. Plumage and leaf and fur puzzled me; our gray rice-bird here wore a velvet livery of black and white and sang divinely, though with us he is mute as a mullet; many squirrels were striped with black and white; no rosy lichen glimmered on the tree-trunks; no pink-stemmed pines softened sombre forest depths; no great tiger-striped butterflies told me that the wild orange was growing near at hand; no whirring, olive-tinted moth signalled the hidden presence of the oleander. But I saw everywhere unfamiliar winged things, I heard unfamiliar bird-notes; new colors perplexed me, new shapes, nay, the very soil smelled foreign, and the water tasted savorless as the mist of pine barrens in February.

Still, my Maker had set eyes in my head and given me a nose to sniff with; and I was learning every moment, tasting, smelling, touching, listening, asking questions unashamed; and my cousin Dorothy seemed never to tire in aiding me, nor did her eager delight and sympathy abate one jot.

Dressed in full deer-skin as was I, she rode her horse astride with a grace as perfect as it was unstudied and unconscious, neither affecting the slothful carriage of our Southern saddle-masters nor the dragoons' rigid seat, but sat at ease, hollow-backed, loose-thighed, free-reined and free-stirruped.

Her hair, gathered into a golden club at the nape of the neck, glittered in the sun, her eyes deepened like the violet depths of mid-heaven. Already the sun had lent her a delicate, creamy mask, golden on her temples where the hair grew paler; and I thought I had never seen such wholesome sweetness and beauty in any living being.

We now rode through a vast flat land of willows, headed due north once more, and I saw a little river which twisted a hundred times upon itself like a stricken snake, winding its shimmering coils out and in through woodland, willow-flat, and reedy marsh.

"The Kennyetto," said Dorothy, "flowing out of the great Vlaie to empty its waters close to its source after a circle of half a hundred miles. Yonder lies the Vlaie–it is that immense flat country of lake and marsh and forest which is wedged in just south of the mountain-gap where the last of the Adirondacks split into the Mayfield hills and the long, low spurs rolling away to the southeast. Sir William Johnson had a lodge there at Summer-house Point. Since his death Sir George Covert has leased it from Sir John. That is our trysting-place."

To hear Sir George's name now vaguely disturbed me, yet I could not think why, for I admired and liked him. But at the bare mention of his name a dull uneasiness came over me and I turned impatiently to my cousin as though the irritation had come from her and she must explain it.

"What is it?" she inquired, faintly smiling.

"I asked no question," I muttered.

"I thought you meant to speak, cousin."

I had meant to say something. I did not know what.

"You seem to know when I am about to speak," I said; "that is twice you have responded to my unasked questions."

"I know it," she said, surprised and a trifle perplexed. "I seem to hear you when you are mute, and I turn to find you looking at me, as though you had asked me something."

We rode on, thoughtful, silent, aware of a new and wordless intimacy.

"It is pleasant to be with you," she said at last. "I have never before found untroubled contentment save when I am alone.... Everything that you see and think of on this ride I seem to see and think of, too, and know that you are observing with the same delight that I feel.... Nor does anything in the world disturb my happiness. Nor do you vex me with silence when I would have you speak; nor with speech when I ride dreaming–as I do, cousin, for hours and hours–not sadly, but in the sweetest peace–"

Her voice died out like a June breeze; our horses, ear to ear moved on slowly in the fragrant silence.

"To ride … forever … together," she mused, "looking with perfect content on all the world.... I teaching you, or you me; … it's all one for the delight it gives to be alive and young.... And no trouble to await us, … nothing malicious to do a harm to any living thing.... I could renounce Heaven for that.... Could you?"

"Yes.... For less."

"I know I ask too much; grief makes us purer, fitting us for the company of blessed souls. They say that even war may be a holy thing–though we are commanded otherwise.... Cousin, at moments a demon rises in me and I desire some forbidden thing so ardently, so passionately, that it seems as if I could fight a path through paradise itself to gain what I desire.... Do you feel so?"

"Yes."

"Is it not consuming–terrible to be so shaken?… Yet I never gain my desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking my way. And I can never pass–never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr. Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it–mad, cousin! But Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, … and I was mad to do it–and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet, cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"

She gathered bridle nervously, and we launched our horses through a willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at every stride of our bounding horses.

"Ah!" she sighed, drawing bridle. "That clears the heart of silly troubles. Was it not glorious? Like a plunge to the throat in an icy pool!"

Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where, glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie sparkled between green reeds and rushes. Beyond, smoky blue mountains tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking the flat valley of the Vlaie.

Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings; hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden flock. Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons. Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets.

Across the distant grassy flat two deer moved, grazing. We rode to the east, skirting the marshes, following a trail made by cattle, until beyond the flats we saw the green roof of the pleasure-house which Sir William Johnson had built for himself. Our ride together was nearly ended.

As at the same thought we tightened bridle and looked at each other gravely.

"All rides end," I said.

"Ay, like happiness."

"Both may be renewed."

"Until they end again."

"Until they end forever."

She clasped her bare hands on her horse's neck, sitting with bent head as though lost in sombre memories.

"What ends forever might endure forever," I said.

"Not our rides together," she murmured. "You must return to the South one day. I must wed.... Where shall we be this day a year hence?"

"Very far apart, cousin."

"Will you remember this ride?"

"Yes," I said, troubled.

"I will, too.... And I shall wonder what you are doing."

"And I shall think of you," I said, soberly.

"Will you write?"

"Yes. Will you?"

"Yes."

Silence fell between us like a shadow; then:

"Yonder rides Sir George Covert," she said, listlessly.

I saw him dismounting before his door, but said nothing.

"Shall we move forward?" she asked, but did not stir a finger towards the bridle lying on her horse's neck.

Another silence; and, impatiently:

"I cannot bear to have you go," she said; "we are perfectly contented together–and I wish you to know all the thoughts I have touching on the world and on people. I cannot tell them to my father, nor to Ruyven–and Cecile is too young–"

"There is Sir George," I said.