FullReads

As he came within sound of the sunset bugles, he struck a narrower trail which led to the fort, through an oasis of oaks and cottonwoods and a small stream or “branch,” which afterwards lost itself in the dusty plain. He had already passed a few settler’s cabins, a sutler’s shop, and other buildings that had sprung up around this armed nucleus of civilization–which, in due season, was to become a frontier town. But as yet the brief wood was wild and secluded; frequented only by the women and children of the fort, within whose protecting bounds it stood, and to whose formal “parade,” and trim white and green cottage “quarters,” it afforded an agreeable relief. As he rode abstractedly forward under the low cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence stealing over him, an influence that was not only a present experience but at the same time a far-off memory. The concave vault above deepened; the sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped across his pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke with the disturbance and sense of unreality of a dream. For he saw Lady Elfrida standing before him!

It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although the figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain changes of costume which the eye of recollection noticed. In place of the smart narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was wearing a slouched cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown, that, with all its becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to become characteristic and respectable, as a crest to her refined head, and as historic as a Lely canvas. She wore a flannel shirt, belted in at her slight waist with a band of yellow leather, defining her small hips, and short straight pleatless skirts that fell to her trim ankles and buckled leather shoes. She was fresh and cool, wholesome and clean, free and unfettered; indeed, her beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident. So much so that when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy, gauzy, and challenging graces of the officer’s wives, who were dressed in their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who seemed to defy it. She was clearly not an idealized memory, a spirit or a ghost, but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle rosier, as she laughingly addressed him:–

“I suppose it isn’t quite fair to surprise you like that,” she said, with an honest girlish hand-shake, “for you see I know all about you now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were expected; and I dare say you thought we were still in England, if you remembered us at all. And we haven’t met since that day at Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,–or rather on your pet protege’s, the Indian’s: you remember Major Atherly’s tomb? And to think that all the while we didn’t know that you were a public man and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this. Why, we’d have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,–he’s always fond of doing these things,–and we’d have passed resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel shirts, and revolvers–but I believe you draw the line at that. My brother was saying only the other day that you weren’t half praised enough for going in for this sort of thing when you were so rich, and needn’t care. And so that’s why you rushed away from Ashley Grange,–just to come here and work out your mission?”

His whole life, his first wild Californian dream, his English visit, the revelation of Gray Eagle, the final collapse of his old beliefs, were whirling through his brain to the music of this clear young voice. And by some cruel irony of circumstance it seemed now to even mock his later dreams of expiation as it also called back his unhappy experience of the last week.