Hand in hand they went back, until they came to the edge of the tall grass. They couldn’t miss the last of that opportunity. Out in the short grass she pulled her hand away. No one must see yet, she said. Of course not. Not yet.
No, he said to Jeannie, he couldn’t stay for tea. He had had his drink. He had indeed drunk deep.
He rode out into the loveliness of the distances, unconscious of everything but that girl in the sunlight. He was shaken through with the excitement of her lips. Her name sang itself riotously through his brain. Perhaps in a thousand miles there was not a man so surprised as that one. But he was not thinking of his emotions. He was thinking of what he had found. He was looking through vistas opened suddenly into the meaning of life. He was seeing glimpses of its space and graciousness. He laughed aloud abruptly remembering the site his father had chosen for his house. And yesterday a house had meant nothing to him! He was getting too near home. He had come to the creek. He stopped his horse, and sat still, going over again and again that supreme moment. He had never kissed a girl before in his life. Allen had kissed them whenever he had gotten a good chance—or any chance at all. Now, to-day, with Chirstie, it had been just simply the only thing to do. She was already by the significance of that caress a part of him. Oh, no wonder Stowe had come home four times! And now his holiday was all but over. He vowed rashly he would not go back! Never! If only he had come and found her the first of his twelve days! He wondered why he had left her. He might have stayed for supper. But no, not with her mother there! He was glad he had come away. To think of him, who had marched through states and territories, finding a girl like that, the very queen of beauty, right there on the prairie! He could scarcely remember how she had looked when he had seen her last. Just some kind of a little girl—no stunning queen like this. The song of her name rose and fell in his mind rhythmically. The sun grew low while he sat exulting. A chill came into the air. He couldn’t endure to take his excitement home to the light. He would wait till they would all be at supper. How glad his mother would be when sometime she heard of his love! He knew it was the very thing she would have chosen for him.
When he came into the kitchen she said, with relief:
“You’re a long time away, Wully!”
He replied without a waver:
“I stopped for a swim in the creek.”
She sat looking at him, wondering why he was pale again, and silent. He was far from well, she was thinking. And before the meal was over, he was wondering why the children’s chatter was so strangely tiresome. Wouldn’t they ever get away to bed, and leave him to his memories? Even with that babbling about, he could feel her face against his....
His Uncle Peter’s Davie came in with the mail after supper, bringing a paper with a notice for the scattered men of his regiment, and paroled prisoners. They were to have reported yesterday to headquarters. He tried to appear eager to go. His mother lifted the Psalm, when the visitors were gone, and left the children to quaver through it. And when he was lying in his bed, vowing desperately he would not go back, she came to him.
“I canna’ thole your going, Wully!” she cried to him, and her cry braced him. He remembered with shame how she had made him go back after Allen’s death, how she had signaled fiercely to him to keep the mention of anything else from the children. As if he, her son, could not do whatever he must do, and do it well! She had been ashamed of him before the children, then. He remembered that, and grew brave now. He hated to remember what a baby he had been. As if, however terrible the war might be, it hadn’t to be fought out, some way, by men! As if he must escape from the hell other men must endure! He was glad now he had occasion to strengthen the strengthener.