Читать книгу The Soldier from Virginia - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 10

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As it was beginning to grow light in the wood, Christopher Gist and an Indian came upon them.

The settler found his way through the isolated groups of men, some sleeping, some digging, and some guarded by others armed and ready, to where Mr. Washington sat with his back against a huge white oak.

"Good-morning," said Christopher Gist.

The young man looked up; he was bareheaded and his hair waved free on his shoulders; his hands were busy with something, the light was too uncertain for the settler, at the first glance, to see what.

"Ah, Mr. Gist, Christopher Gist," he said gravely. "So you have come to join us—"

Mr. Gist seated himself near by. "So the first shot has been fired, Captain Washington?"

"Yes," came the answer; "and I think it will echo through all Europe."

"And your name, too," said the other quietly. "Your name, sir."

As he spoke he looked curiously and closely at Mr. Washington's hands and saw that he was occupied in cutting and binding two boughs of wood into the form of a cross; the leaves he had stripped away lay in a little pile on the mossy ground, and the peculiar aromatic odour of them crept into the nostrils of Christopher Gist; they were the leaves of the black walnut.

"Are you returning to Great Meadows?" he asked.

"I must; to await the orders of Mr. Fry. I fear he will be too sick a man to leave Alexandria for some while yet."

Mr. Gist kept his enthusiastic, quiet eyes on the-dark outlines of the still figure with the busy hands; the dawn, slipping round the trunk of the great oak, showed palely luminous behind the noble lines of wide shoulders, bent head, and the loose locks of falling hair.

"They will be proud of you in Virginia," said the older man; then he added: "Have you had news from Richmond?"

"Not since I left. I expected none."

"Perhaps you will be sorry to return," suggested Christopher Gist, "sorry to leave the woods."

"I was sorry to leave Virginia," was the slow answer. "No—I shall not regret returning—if I may do so with honour."

Mr. Washington put down the cross, which he appeared to have finished, and clasped his hands round his raised knees.

"I could never endure a town again," said Christopher Gist simply.

The younger man made no answer; the sacred silence of the woodland dawn was broken by the tremulous stir of waking birds and the noise of the men with the spaces concealed in the recesses of the forest.

The shadows were lifting, like a veil, from all the fragrant, softly quivering life of tree and plant; a swimming haze of gold-flecked opal began to float between the fine boughs and clustering leaves, and to rest hesitatingly, as if half afraid, on the stretches of grass and moss and flowers.

Elusive scents rose and faded, the honeysuckle, the jasmine, the fine breath of the lilies, the pungent perfume of the mint, and that strong aroma of the bruised walnut leaves.

The great square leaves of a catalpa tree near by began to be outlined against a sky turning rosy silver, and a bird darting through the undergrowth took on a magic colour of indescribable blue, vivid as sunlight on a sword.

Mr. Washington turned to his companion; the light was quivering over his shoulder and showed his handsome face, startling in its earnestness, in its pallor and look of arrested passion.

"Twelve men died yesterday," he said, with what seemed to Christopher Gist curious irrelevancy.

"The French officer in command among them?"

"Yes. A young man—not above my age."

"Well, he died in a pleasant way."

Mr. Washington unclasped his right hand from his knee and drew his fingers through the little pile of green walnut leaves.

"Where is he now. Mr. Gist? It is a strange thing—death. He was splendid, too. Coulon de Jumonville they called him."

He looked on the ground a while, then added in a low and extraordinarily gentle voice:

"I wonder if there is a lady somewhere who will weep for him, Mr. Gist?"

"Maybe. All these things—all the great things are hard on the women."

"On us, too, perhaps."

"No—we get the glory. That youth wished to die in that fashion—we all do; to be young and fearless and to die finely in the open, a free thing, is very magnificent—but I doubt if 'tis so magnificent for the women who wait at home for news."

He laughed a little.

"There is no woman waiting for news of me; and that is sorrow and joy too. I'm free as the red fox."

The dawn was now so strong that Mr. Washington's face was clearly to be seen, though he sat with his back to the east; it was utterly pale, and his eyes were dark and had a shrouded look of pain.

"There is a lady in Williamsburg—" he said, putting back the hair from his brow—"a creature of such beauty that I cannot help thinking of her night and day—yea, she rides at my side, this woman, and follows me into the remotest places of the forest, sits in my tent with me, grows with the dawn and with the dusk—yet the last look I saw on her face was a scornful one, and she hath no manner of regard for me; so I am not free and yet have not the delights of love's captivity—for I languish in the bonds of a jailer who knows not she holds me."

He looked away gravely, down the long slopes filled with a light that was steadily turning into a deeper and more fiery hue of gold.

"You wonder that I should speak of this—and now," he continued. "But there is an intolerable anguish, Mr. Gist, in long separation from one so dear and so indifferent; and sometimes I wish I had been even as this young foreigner, left cold and alone in the forest before ever I had seen her lovely face!"

"This is a rare mood for you," said Christopher Gist. "I did not think any lovely face could have disturbed your peace."

He smiled and looked round him at the great trees. "There is so much else in the world," he added wisely.

"All those things," replied Mr. Washington, "I can get for myself—not this. It seems as if this came straight from God and that He withheld it—"

Mr. Gist looked at him curiously.

"What can you get for yourself?" he asked.

"The—other things. All there is in the world. Achievement—you know"—he touched his breast lightly—"it is here, the power to do—what I will." He spoke with extraordinary power and extraordinary modesty. "Sometimes I feel as if I could make a nation—and control it when it is made. And there are so many chances, here—in the new world—so much to do—so much that might be done. And I have had already great opportunities."

"Yes," answered Christopher Gist grimly. "And you took one yesterday when you made war inevitable."

"America will not regret that action of mine, no, nor England," said Mr. Washington quietly.

Mr. Gist glanced at his pale handsomeness, over which the sun was sparkling now in the first radiance of its glory.

"And to go back to the lovely face," he said. "Who is the lady?"

Mr. Washington flushed swiftly.

"A little creature, very fair, who lives at Baltimore," he said, with a kind of lightness. "I only saw her twice and have forgot her name."

Mr. Gist glanced at him keenly, suspecting subterfuge.

"Well, you can win and wear her if you wish to," he answered. "'Tis no more difficult, after all," he smiled dryly, "than making nations and ruling them, or even than making wars and conducting them, Mr. Washington."

"Have you ever tried it?" asked the young man abruptly.

"I have not tried making a nation," evaded Mr. Gist.

George Washington rose to his great height and stretched himself, drawing a deep breath that was not quite like a sigh.

"Nor have I, yet," he said simply. "Nor have I attempted the lady, neither, Mr. Gist, for at present I am nothing; but when I am armed with some success, some achievement, I will essay that enterprise."

He picked up the cross, and with a thoughtful face straightened the arms of it, which he had skilfully bound together with long twists of grass.

With his slow, graceful step and a grave air he crossed to where his men were eating their breakfasts and making ready their horses.

In a sleepy voice he asked one to point out Coulon de Jumonville's grave. The man sprang up and showed him a row of rough hillocks in a little space between two rows of beech trees.

All the dead had been laid facing east, ready for the resurrection.

"God," said Mr. Washington, "give them patience till then; 'tis a long time for brave men to lie inactive."

He bent over the spot where they told him the French officer slept in his war paint, and thrust the walnut-wood cross deep into the soft, upturned soil.

"It must be strange," he said, half to himself, and half to Christopher Gist, who had followed him, "to lie there quiet, shut away from the sun. How many will lie so before this war is ended? Next spring they will be hid in flowers, but one travelling this way may see the cross and know a Christian lieth here albeit not in consecrated ground."

Mr. Gist looked in a kind of amaze at the marvel of this young man, with his unconscious beauty, his unconscious strength and pride, his limitless ambitions, his ardent resolves, his tenderness and his dreams.

Coulon de Jumonville had been such as he yesterday, and the young Virginian might be as Coulon de Jumonville was now, fallen asleep till the Judgment Day, with virgin earth on his cold heart, to-morrow.

Or the seeds of greatness in him might be cherished, might spread and grow into wonderful fruition; after all, as he had said, there were chances in this magnificent new world that the old world hardly yet knew of nor reckoned with: there was a nation to be formed in this great continent—the youngest nation, perhaps the strongest, the most splendid and most glorious.

And perhaps the man to make and guide this fresh and vigorous nation might be the beautiful young Virginian who was standing in the full rays of early morning, holding the rich, heavy hair back from his brow and gazing with unfathomable eyes at his enemy's grave.

Christopher Gist, from the experience of his difficult, adventurous life, that had taken him often out into the wilderness, never into great places, felt a strange yearning over this youth whom he had learned to love last winter on that long journey to Fort le Boeuf, this youth who stood so calmly and serenely at the beginning of life and spoke so gravely of making, shaping and guiding nations...

Mr. Washington seemed to have been deeply musing, too; he turned with a start, as if suddenly aware of the scrutiny of Christopher Gist, coloured and moved abruptly away to his little army.

An officer of the Maryland Free Company with a couple of Indian guides had just come up.

He had, it seemed, started directly after Mr. Washington had left Great Meadows, but had lost track of him, and the Indians had only with difficulty found the trail.

He carried letters that had been brought from the camp of the Lower Potomac to Great Meadows-and unexpected news.

Joshua Fry was dead at Alexandria, and George Washington was now commander of the entire Colonial forces, at this moment marching up to Great Meadows to put themselves under his orders.