“I never talked with anyone about this,” she said. “It seemed to me always as if it was impossible that anything could separate us at Harrowby. Yet you see what has come—a frightful separation for Neville, and Richard gone we know not where or how or even why.”
Both fell silent and remained so for a long time.
They had left Harrowby before seven o’clock and Isabey had thought they would be able to make the whole distance, including an hour’s rest for the horses, before midnight. But when at nine o’clock they had still half the distance before them, he noticed how pale and tired Angela looked. They stopped their horses to drink of a little brook that ran silvery in the moonlight and then rippled darkling under a rude bridge and into a thicket beyond where the autumn leaves still hung withered upon the overhanging branches. Beyond lay a belt of pine woods, and when they came to a little clear space within it Isabey said: “Here is a spot where you may rest in safety and unseen. You can scarcely sit your horse.”
“It is true,” replied Angela, wearily.
Isabey’s horse picked his way, followed by Angela’s, under the odorous feathery branches of the pine trees where the ground was softly carpeted with brown pine needles. When they were out of sight of the road and well in the heart of the woods, Isabey dismounted and took Angela from her horse. Her young strength had given out and she was so fatigued that she sank, rather than sat, upon a fallen tree. Isabey quickly tied the horses and unsaddled them; then with the saddles and blankets he made a kind of rude couch for Angela. She lay down upon it, and Isabey, after arranging her, began to walk up and down among the tree trunks close by.
“Don’t leave me,” Angela called softly, in a voice like a frightened child.
“I shan’t leave you,” replied Isabey, coming back and standing before her, “nor even take my eyes off you. Hear the horses blowing and snorting. Listen to them a little while. They are exactly like tired human creatures in their complaining.”
“And I can listen also to the water under the bridge. Hear it as it ripples past.” Angela listened a while, about five minutes, and then Isabey, coming up softly to her again, found that the little stream to which she had listened had become the river of forgetfulness and she had fallen into a sudden sweet sleep.
The air was sharp, and Isabey, taking off his military cape, wrapped it around her. Angela was so worn out with the fatigues and agitations of the day that she slept as soundly as if she were in her own great four-posted bed at Harrowby. Isabey, sitting on the fallen tree trunk, kept watch over her. There were still tears upon her cheeks, and, taking out his white handkerchief, he gently wiped them away without waking her. Her face was pale at first, but as she felt the warmth of the cape the blood returned to her cheeks, which in a little while were overspread with a rosy glow like that of a sleeping child. Her long braided hair had become loosened, and Isabey, lifting it gently from where it had fallen against a half-bare bush, carefully disengaged it. The silky locks fell over his hands, and he held them in his clasp for a minute or two, then involuntarily pressed his lips upon them and laid them upon Angela’s breast, covered with his cloak.
It seemed to Isabey the most solemn hour of his life when he found himself alone with Angela in the darkness of the heart of the forest. It was as if a kindly fate had given him this last farewell. He never expected, or even desired, to see her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. He could not disguise from himself what Angela, in her simplicity, had not been able to disguise from him—that her soul answered to his as the echo answers to the voice and a lake reflects the sky. She was so little sophisticated, so frank, so fearless, that she betrayed herself in every word and glance to his practiced eye. But not to others did she betray herself. Though innocent she was not ignorant, and Isabey felt a lofty pride in the same discretion of which Lyddon had spoken. He remembered with a smile how she always brought in Neville’s name, as if it were a talisman, when they found themselves on dangerous ground. Isabey himself had been enough on his guard to escape a rebuff from her or even a rebuking glance. He could look Neville Tremaine in the eye without fear or reproach. Then, not being a man to dwell wholly upon his own sufferings, his mind turned to Richard Tremaine. Ah, there again was loss without repair! In war men grow not only familiar with but contemptuous of death. Isabey had, however, but one Richard Tremaine to lose, and when he remembered this he stopped in his halting and stealthy walk up and down upon the pine needles and felt as if a bolt had entered his heart. It was not meant, he thought, that he should ever have wife or friend.