Читать книгу The Choir Invisible - Allen James Lane - Страница 4

JOHN GRAY did not return to town by his straight course through the forest, but followed the winding wagon-road at a slow, meditative gait. He was always thoughtful after he had been with Mrs. Falconer; he was unusually thoughtful now; and the gathering hush of night, the holy expectancy of stars, a flock of white clouds lying at rest low on the green sky like sheep in some far uplifted meadow, the freshness of the woods soon to be hung with dew,—all these melted into his mood as notes from many instruments blend in the ear. But he was soon aroused in an unexpected way. When he reached the place where the wagon-road passed out into the broader public road leading from Lexington to Frankfort, he came near stumbling over a large, loose bundle, tied in a blue and white neckerchief. Plainly it had been lost and plainly it was his duty to discover if possible to whom it belonged. He carried it to one side of the road and began to examine its contents: a wide, white lace tucker, two fine cambric handkerchiefs, two pairs of India cotton hose, two pairs of silk hose, two thin muslin handkerchiefs, a pair of long kid gloves,—straw colour,—a pair of white kid shoes, a pale-blue silk coat, a thin, white striped muslin dress.The articles were not marked. Whose could they be? Not Amy's: Mrs. Falconer had expressly said that the major was to bring her finery to town in the gig the next day. They might have been dropped by some girl or by some family servant, riding into town; he knew several young ladies, to any one of whom they might belong. He would inquire in the morning; and meantime, he would leave the bundle at the office of the printer, where lost articles were commonly kept until they could be advertised in the paper, and called for by their owners. He replaced the things, and carefully retied the ends of the kerchief. It was dark when he reached town, and he went straight to his room and locked the bundle in his closet. Then he hurried to his tavern, where his supper had to be especially cooked for him, it being past the early hour of the pioneer evening meal. While he sat out under the tree at the door, waiting and impatiently thinking that he would go to see Amy as soon as he could despatch it, the tavern-keeper came out to say that some members of the Democratic Society had been looking for him. Later on, these returned. A meeting of the Society had been called for that night, to consider news brought by the postrider the day previous and to prepare advices for the Philadelphia Society against the postrider's return: as secretary, he was wanted at the proceedings. He begged hard to be excused, but he was the scholar, the scribe; no one would take his place. When the meeting ended, the hour was past for seeing Amy. He went to his room and read law with flickering concentration of mind till near midnight. Then he snuffed out his candle, undressed, and stretched himself along the edge of his bed.

It was hard and coarse. The room itself was the single one that formed the ruder sort of pioneer cabin. The floor was the earth itself, covered here and there with the skins of wild animals; the walls but logs, poorly plastered. From a row of pegs driven into one of these hung his clothes—not many. The antlers of a stag over the doorway held his rifle, his hunting-belt, and his hat. A swinging shelf displayed a few books, being eagerly added to as he could bitterly afford it—with a copy of Paley, lent by the Reverend James Moore, the dreamy, saintlike, flute-playing Episcopal parson of the town. In the middle of the room a round table of his own vigorous carpentry stood on a panther skin; and on this lay some copy books in which he had just set new copies for his children; a handful of goosequills to be fashioned into pens for them; the proceedings of the Democratic Society, freshly added to this evening; copies of the Kentucky Gazette containing essays by the political leaders of the day on the separation of Kentucky from the Union and the opening of the Mississippi to its growing commerce—among them some of his own, stately and academic, signed "Cato the Younger." Lying open on the table lay his Bible; after law, he always read a little in that; and to-night he had reread one of his favourite chapters of St.Paul: that wherein the great, calm, victorious soldier of the spirit surveys the history of his trials, imprisonments, beatings. In one corner was set a three-cornered cupboard containing his underwear, his new cossack boots, and a few precious things that had been his mother's: her teacup and saucer, her prayer-book. It was in this closet that he had put the lost bundle.

He had hardly stretched himself along the edge of his bed before he began to think of this. Every complete man embraces some of the qualities of a woman, for Nature does not mean that sex shall be more than a partial separation of one common humanity; otherwise we should be too much divided to be companionable. And it is these womanly qualities that not only endow a man with his insight into the other sex, but that enable him to bestow a certain feminine supervision upon his own affairs when no actual female has them in charge. If he marries, this inner helpmeet behaves in unlike ways toward the newly reigning usurper; sometimes giving up peaceably, at others remaining her life-long critic—reluctant but irremovable. If many a wife did but realize that she is perpetually observed not only by the eyes of a pardoning husband but by the eyes of another woman hidden away in the depths of his being, she would do many things differently and not do some things at all.

The invisible slip of a woman in Gray now began to question him regarding the bundle. Would not those delicate, beautiful things be ruined, thus put away in his closet? He got up, took the bundle out, laid it on his table, untied the kerchief, lifted carefully off the white muslin dress and the blue silk coat, and started with them toward two empty pegs on the wall. He never closed the door of his cabin if the night was fine. It stood open now and a light wind blew the soft fabrics against his body and limbs, so that they seemed to fold themselves about him, to cling to him. He disengaged them reluctantly—apologetically.

Then he lay down again. But now the dress on the wall fascinated him. The moonlight bathed it, the wind swayed it. This was the first time that a woman's garments had ever hung in his room. He welcomed the mere accident of their presence as though it possessed a forerunning intelligence, as though it were the annunciation of his approaching change of life. And so laughing to himself, and under the spell of a growing fancy, he got up again and took the little white shoes and set them on the table in the moonlight—on the open Bible and the speech of St.Paul—and then went back, and lay looking at them and dreaming—looking at them and dreaming.

His thoughts passed meantime like a shining flock of white doves to Amy, hovering about her. They stole onward to the time when she would be his wife; when lying thus, he would wake in the night and see her dress on the wall and feel her head on his bosom; when her little shoes might stand on his open Bible, if they chose, and the satin instep of her bare foot be folded in the hard hollow of his.

He uttered a deep, voiceless, impassioned outcry that she might not die young nor he die young; that the struggles and hardships of life, now seeming to be ended, might never begirt him or her so closely again; that they might grow peacefully old together. To-morrow then, he would see her; no, not tomorrow; it was long past midnight now. He got down on his bare knees beside the bed with his face buried in his hands and said his prayers.

And then lying outstretched with his head resting on his folded hands, the moonlight streaming through the window and lighting up his dark-red curls and falling on his face and neck and chest, the cool south wind blowing down his warm limbs, his eyes opening and closing in religious purity on the dress, and his mind opening and closing on the visions of his future, he fell asleep.