“But I would like to see a ghost, just to be assured that there are such things.”
“As if there could be any doubt!”
“You understand, then,” he said, as she went in under the low woodbine-curtained door, “that at some time—when time shall be no more—I will cast my shadow at your feet!”
It was an hour later that, while he still strolled in the short, wet grass and enjoyed the rich, half-dusky atmosphere, he heard Orient singing gently from her window, as she leaned out upon the cool, star-sown air, and the song seemed to belong to her, like a natural expression, as to the night the night-wind, or to the dark the dew:—
“In the evening over me leaning,
Often I fancy a waving wing,
And with the warning of blushing morning
Softly glimmers the same fair thing.
“O bright being, beyond the seeing
Of aught but the spirit that feels you near,
Your white star leaving, and earthward cleaving,
You break the murk of this mortal sphere.
“Still, sweet stranger, in peace or danger,
Out of the air above me bloom,
And heaven’s own sweetness in such completeness
Drop on my head from your shining plume!”
Even while he heard her singing, the sense of her remoteness gave Reymund a slight shudder. If she had been one shade more human; if he had ever seen her moved by any sparkle of wit, any drollery of humor, into a frolicking outburst of laughter, by any mischievous vexation into a flash of anger, a season of pettishness,—but no, such little incidents affected her no more than thistle-down affects the wind; and, recognizing it, Reymund knew that he loved her, yet felt somehow as he felt who had pledged a bridal ring upon the finger of a ghost; as that youth felt, perchance, whose beautiful mistress was after all a ghoul. He need not have concerned himself; Orient had no especial care for him; he passed before her, busy in her world of dreams, like a shadow; if she smiled upon him, it was as she smiled on everything else about her, as she smiled on the pink-wreathed peach-bough, on the urchin tumbling in grass, on the sunbeam overlaying both, on blue sky or on rainy weather; though, indeed, for the latter, Orient had superfluous smiles; she was always sunny herself upon a stormy day; she used to say that it seemed as if Nature had grown so familiar with her that she could afford to receive her and show herself to her in undress. Perhaps, had Reymund been more free himself from the soil and stain of earth, Orient would not have been so intangible.
They were going one day up the mountain, Orient, her mother, the guide, and Reymund, the first two riding, Reymund and the guide on foot. The air was so clear that it seemed like living in the inside of a crystal; everything stood with sharp outlines, as if drawn with a burin upon the deep substance of the blue: far away tender gauzes took up the distance, but that was merely on the outside edges of the world. After they had exhausted the view from the wide-reaching summit, where the eye seemed to wrest from the Creator more than had ever been given to it, they went below into the shelter of the great rocks and lunched. It was late in the afternoon ere they remounted and sought their way down the long descent. The path which had been slight with difficulties in climbing was now full of downward terrors. Orient bent far back in her seat, unable to see where her horse would plant his feet. It seemed to her that he was stepping over sheer abysses, and just as she herself went sliding and slipping forward over his head and down, a strong arm from an unseen form behind the cliff, round which she had just wound, would grasp her, and Reymund would hold her firm till the beast stood four-square again. It was to her a thing like the arm of Providence made visible to faith. Suddenly the girth broke, and but for that strong arm on the instant outstretched, Providence itself alone knows what would have become of her. Reymund caught her then as she reeled from the saddle, and placed her on the ground. The horse, startled by the unexpectedness of the affair, fled forward; the guide left the bridle he had held behind and pursued him. Catching the rein with a jerk and oath, he dealt such a blow with his boot that the animal lost his balance and fell, and would have rolled over the precipice but for a prostrate tree. In a moment what Reymund had wanted to see was granted him. Orient sprang forward, her face aflame, her eyes like balefires. The guide, amazed, as one might be at the sight of an avenger in his path, obeyed her single word, her vehement gesture, and plunged down the way and left them.
“Orient! what have you done?” cried her mother.