The Choir Invisible

Behind the house, at the foot of the sloping hill, there was a spring such

as every pioneer sought to have near his home; and a little lower down, in

one corner of the yard, the water from this had broadened out into a small

pond. Dark-green sedgy cane grew thick around half the margin.

One March day some seasons before, Major Falconer had brought down with his

rifle from out the turquoise sky a young lone-wandering swan. In those early

days the rivers and ponds of the wilderness served as resting places and

feeding-grounds for these unnumbered birds in their long flights between the

Southern waters and the Northern lakes. A wing of this one had been broken,

and out of her wide heaven of freedom and light she had floated down his

captive but with all her far-sweeping instincts throbbing on unabated. This

pool had been the only thing to remind her since of the blue-breasted waves

and the glad fellowship of her kind. On this she had passed her existence,

with a cry in the night now and then that no one heard, a lifting of the

wings that would never rise, an eye turned upward toward the turquoise sky

across which familiar voices called to each other, called down, and were

lost in the distance.

As he followed down the hill, she was standing on the edge of the pond,

watching the swan feeding in the edge of the cane. He took her hand without

a word, and looked with clear unfaltering eyes down into her face, now

swanlike in whiteness.

She withdrew her hand and gave him the gloves which she was holding in the

other.

"I'm glad you thought enough of them to come for them."

"I couldn't come! Don't blame me!"

"I understand! Only I might have helped you in your trouble. If a friend

can't do that--may not do that! But it is too late now! You start for

Virginia tomorrow?"

"To-morrow."

"And to-morrow Amy marries, I lose you both the same day! You are going

straight to Mount Vernon?"

"Straight to Mount Vernon."

"Ah, to think that you will see Virginia so soon! I've been recalling a

great deal about Virginia during these days when you would not come to see

me. Now I've forgotten everything I meant to say!"

They climbed the hill slowly. Two or three times she stopped and pressed her

hand over her heart. She tried to hide the sound of her quivering breath and

glanced up once to see whether he were observing. He was not. With his old

habit of sending his thoughts on into the future, fighting its distant

battles, feeling its far-off pain, he was less conscious of their parting

than of the years during which he might not see her again. It is the woman

who bursts the whole grape of sorrow against the irrepressible palate at

such a moment; to a man like him the same grape distils a vintage of

yearning that will brim the cup of memory many a time beside his lamp in the

final years.