CHAPTER XLVIII

THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE

Along the dark turnpike John Valiant rode with his chin sunk on his breast. He was wretchedly glad of the darkness, for it covered a thousand familiar sights he had grown to love. Yet through the dark came drifting sounds that caught at him with clutching hands--the bay of a hound from some far-off kennel, the whirring note of frogs, the impatient high whinny of a horse across pasture-bars--and his nostrils widened to the wild braided fragrance of the fields over which the mist was spinning its fairy carded wool.

The preparations for his going had been quickly made. He was leaving behind him all but a single portmanteau. Uncle Jefferson had already taken this--with Chum--to the station. The old man had now gone sorrowfully afoot to the blockhouse, a half-mile up the track, to bespeak the stopping of the express. He would go back on the horse his master was riding.

The lonely little depot flanked a siding beside a dismal stretch of yellow clay-bank gouged by rains. Its windows were dark and the weather-beaten plank platform was illuminated by a single lantern that hung on a nail beside the locked door, its sickly flame showing bruise-like through smoky streakings of lamp-black. At one side, in the shadow, was his bag, and beside it the tethered bulldog--sole spot of white against the melancholy forlornness--lying with one splinted leg, like a swaddled ramrod, sticking straight out before him.

In the saddle, Valiant struck his hand hard against his knee. Surely it was a dream! It could not be that he was leaving Virginia, leaving Damory Court, leaving _her_! But he knew that it was not a dream.

Far away, rounding Powhattan Mountain, he heard the long-drawn hoot of the coming train, flinging its sky-warning in a host of scampering echoes. Among them mixed another sound far up the desolate road, coming nearer--the sound of a horse, galloping fast and hard.

His own fidgeted, flung up wide nostrils and neighed shrilly. Who was coming along that runnelled highway at such an hour in such breakneck fashion?

The train was nearer now; he could hear its low rumbling hum, rising to a roar, and the click and spring of the rails. But though he lifted a foot from the stirrup, he did not dismount. Something in the whirlwind speed of that coming caught and held him motionless. He had a sudden curious feeling that all the world beside did not exist; there were only the sweeping rush of the nearing train--impersonal, unhuman--he, sitting his horse in the gloom, and that unknown rider whose anguish of speed outstripped the steam, riding--to whom?

The road skirted the track as it neared the station, and all at once a white glare from the opened fire-box flung itself blindingly across the dark, illuminating like a flare of summer lightning the patch of highway and the rider. Valiant, staring, had an instant's vision of a streaming cloak, of a girl's face, set in a tawny swirl of loosened hair. With a cry that was lost in the shriek of escaping steam, he dragged his plunging horse around and the white blaze swept him also, as the rider pulled down at his side.

"You!" he cried. He leaned and caught the slim hands gripped on the bridle, shaking now. "You!"

The dazzling brightness had gone by, and the air was full of the groaning of the brakes as the long line of darkened sleepers shuddered to its enforced stop. "John!"--He heard the sweet wild cry pierce through the jumble of noises, and something in it set his blood running molten through his veins. It held an agony of relief, of shame and of appeal. "John ... John!"

And knowing suddenly, though not how or why, that all barriers were swept away, his arms went out and around her, and in the shadow of the lonely little station, they two, in their saddles, clung and swayed together with clasping hands and broken words, while the train, breathing heavily for a resentful second, shrieked itself away into the night, and left only the fragrance from the misty fields, the crowding silence and the sprinkling stars.

* * * * *

The breeze had risen and was blowing the mist away as they went back along the road. A faint light was lifting, forerunner of the moon. They rode side by side, and to the slow gait of the horses, touching noses in low whinnyings of equine comradeship, by the faint glamour they gazed into each other's faces. The adorable tweedy roughness of his shoulder thrilled her cheek.

"... And you were going away. Yes, yes, I know. It was my fault. I ... misunderstood. Forgive me!"

He kissed her hand. "As if there were anything to forgive! Do you remember in the woods, sweetheart, the day it rained? What a brute I was--to fight so! And all the time I wanted to take you in my arms like a little hurt child...."

She turned toward him. "Oh, I _wanted_ you to fight! Even though it was no use. I had given up, but your strength comforted me. To have you surrender, too--"

"It was your face in the churchyard," he told her. "How pale and worn you looked! It came to me then for the first time how horribly selfish it would be to stay--how much easier going would make it for you."

"... And to think that it was Mad Anthony--Did the clock _really_ strike thirteen, do you think? Or did I fancy it?"

"Why question it?" he said. "I believe in mysteries. The greatest mystery of all is that you should love me. I doubt no miracle hereafter. Dearest, dearest!"

* * * * *

At the entrance of the cherry lane, he fastened his horse to the hedge, and noiselessly let down the pasture-bars for her golden chestnut. When he came back to where she stood waiting on the edge of the lawn, the late moon, golden-vestured, was just showing above the rim of the hills, painting the deep soft blueness of the Virginian night with a translucence as pure as prayer. Above the fallen hood of her cloak her hair shone like a nimbus, and the loveliness of her face made him catch his breath for the wonderfulness of it.

As they stood heavened in each other's arms, heart beating against heart, and the whole world throbbing to joy, the nightingale beyond the arbors began to bubble and thrill its unimaginable melody. It came to them like the voice of the magical rose-scented night itself, set to the wordless music of the silver leaves. It rose and swelled exultant to break and die in a cascade of golden notes.

But in their hearts was the song that is fadeless, immortal.

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent.

2. Words typeset as italic have been noted by an underscore (_) before and after the word; words in the advertising pages that were typeset in bold face have been noted with an equal sign (=) before and after the word.

3. The original book that this e-text is transcribed from had been bound with the advertising pages out of order; this has been corrected to place those pages in alphabetical order by title.

4. The original book's Table of Contents showed Chapter XVI as beginning on page 139; this has been corrected to show that the chapter in actual fact begins on page 138.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Valiants of Virginia, by Hallie Erminie Rives