Behind the house, at the foot of the sloping hill, there was a spring such
as every pioneer sought to have near his home; and a little lower down, in
one corner of the yard, the water from this had broadened out into a small
pond. Dark-green sedgy cane grew thick around half the margin.
One March day some seasons before, Major Falconer had brought down with his
rifle from out the turquoise sky a young lone-wandering swan. In those early
days the rivers and ponds of the wilderness served as resting places and
feeding-grounds for these unnumbered birds in their long flights between the
Southern waters and the Northern lakes. A wing of this one had been broken,
and out of her wide heaven of freedom and light she had floated down his
captive but with all her far-sweeping instincts throbbing on unabated. This
pool had been the only thing to remind her since of the blue-breasted waves
and the glad fellowship of her kind. On this she had passed her existence,
with a cry in the night now and then that no one heard, a lifting of the
wings that would never rise, an eye turned upward toward the turquoise sky
across which familiar voices called to each other, called down, and were
lost in the distance.
As he followed down the hill, she was standing on the edge of the pond,
watching the swan feeding in the edge of the cane. He took her hand without
a word, and looked with clear unfaltering eyes down into her face, now
swanlike in whiteness.
She withdrew her hand and gave him the gloves which she was holding in the
other.
"I'm glad you thought enough of them to come for them."
"I couldn't come! Don't blame me!"
"I understand! Only I might have helped you in your trouble. If a friend
can't do that--may not do that! But it is too late now! You start for
Virginia tomorrow?"
"To-morrow."
"And to-morrow Amy marries, I lose you both the same day! You are going
straight to Mount Vernon?"
"Straight to Mount Vernon."
"Ah, to think that you will see Virginia so soon! I've been recalling a
great deal about Virginia during these days when you would not come to see
me. Now I've forgotten everything I meant to say!"
They climbed the hill slowly. Two or three times she stopped and pressed her
hand over her heart. She tried to hide the sound of her quivering breath and
glanced up once to see whether he were observing. He was not. With his old
habit of sending his thoughts on into the future, fighting its distant
battles, feeling its far-off pain, he was less conscious of their parting
than of the years during which he might not see her again. It is the woman
who bursts the whole grape of sorrow against the irrepressible palate at
such a moment; to a man like him the same grape distils a vintage of
yearning that will brim the cup of memory many a time beside his lamp in the
final years.