第15章

"No.Why should I?" She noticed, however, that he had slightly drawn himself up a little more erect, and she smiled as he continued, "I dare say I should feel as he does if I were in his place.""But YO' wouldn't do anything underhanded," she said quietly.As he glanced at her quickly she added dryly: "Don't trust too much to people always acting in yo' fashion, co'nnle.And don't think too much nor too little of what yo' hear here.Yo' 're just the kind of man to make a good many silly enemies, and as many foolish friends.And I don't know which will give yo' the most trouble.

Only don't yo' underrate EITHER, or hold yo' head so high, yo'

don't see what's crawlin' around yo'.That's why, in a copperhead swamp, a horse is bitten oftener than a hog."She smiled, yet with knitted brows and such a pretty affectation of concern for her companion that he suddenly took heart.

"I wish I had ONE friend I could call my own," he said boldly, looking straight into her eyes."I'd care little for other friends, and fear no enemies.""Yo' 're right, co'nnle," she said, ostentatiously slanting her parasol in a marvelous simulation of hiding a purely imaginative blush on a cheek that was perfectly infantine in its unchanged pink; "company talk is much pootier than what we've been saying.

And--meaning me--for I reckon yo' wouldn't say that of any other girl but the one yo' 're walking with--what's the matter with me?"He could not help smiling, though he hesitated."Nothing! but others have been disappointed.""And that bothers YO'?"

"I mean I have as yet had no right to put your feelings to any test, while"--"Poor Chet had, yo' were going to say! Well, here we are at the cemetery! I reckoned yo' were bound to get back to the dead again before we'd gone far, and that's why I thought we might take the cemetery on our way.It may put me in a more proper frame of mind to please yo'."As he raised his eyes he could not repress a slight start.He had not noticed before that they had passed through a small gateway on diverging from the road, and was quite unprepared to find himself on the edge of a gentle slope leading to a beautiful valley, and before him a long vista of tombs, white head-stones and low crosses, edged by drooping cypress and trailing feathery vines.

Some vines had fallen and been caught in long loops from bough to bough, like funeral garlands, and here and there the tops of isolated palmettos lifted a cluster of hearse-like plumes.Yet in spite of this dominance of sombre but graceful shadow, the drooping delicacy of dark-tasseled foliage and leafy fringes, and the waving mourning veils of gray, translucent moss, a glorious vivifying Southern sun smiled and glittered everywhere as through tears.The balm of bay, southernwood, pine, and syringa breathed through the long alleys; the stimulating scent of roses moved with every zephyr, and the closer odors of jessamine, honeysuckle, and orange flowers hung heavily in the hollows.It seemed to Courtland like the mourning of beautiful and youthful widowhood, seductive even in its dissembling trappings, provocative in the contrast of its own still strong virility.Everywhere the grass grew thick and luxuriant; the quick earth was teeming with the germination of the dead below.

They moved slowly along side by side, speaking only of the beauty of the spot and the glory of that summer day, which seemed to have completed its perfection here.Perhaps from the heat, the overpowering perfume, or some unsuspected sentiment, the young lady became presently as silent and preoccupied as her companion.She began to linger and loiter behind, hovering like a butterfly over some flowering shrub or clustered sheaf of lilies, until, encountered suddenly in her floating draperies, she might have been taken for a somewhat early and far too becoming ghost.It seemed to him, also, that her bright eyes were slightly shadowed by a gentle thoughtfulness.He moved close to her side with an irresistible impulse of tenderness, but she turned suddenly, and saying, "Come!" moved at a quicker pace down a narrow side path.

Courtland followed.He had not gone far before he noticed that the graves seemed to fall into regular lines, the emblems became cheaper and more common; wooden head and foot stones of one monotonous pattern took the place of carved freestone or marble, and he knew that they had reached that part of the cemetery reserved for those who had fallen in the war.The long lines drawn with military precision stretched through the little valley, and again up the opposite hill in an odd semblance of hollow squares, ranks, and columns.A vague recollection of the fateful slope of Snake River came over him.It was intensified as Miss Sally, who was still preceding him, suddenly stopped before an isolated mound bearing a broken marble shaft and a pedestal with the inscription, "Chester Brooks." A few withered garlands and immortelles were lying at its base, but encircling the broken shaft was a perfectly fresh, unfaded wreath.

"You never told me he was buried here!" said Courtland quickly, half shocked at the unexpected revelation."Was he from this State?""No, but his regiment was," said Miss Sally, eying the wreath critically.

"And this wreath, is it from you?" continued Courtland gently.

"Yes, I thought yo' 'd like to see something fresh and pooty, instead of those stale ones.""And were they also from you?" he asked even more gently.

"Dear no! They were left over from last anniversary day by some of the veterans.That's the only one I put there--that is--I got Mr.