CRIMSON MOUNTAIN (13 page)

She glanced at her watch as she came down the walk to the car. It was almost time to go to the filling station for Pilgrim’s call. She would drive around by her old home and get just a glimpse of it and then go straight to the garage.

It was the first time she had seen the old home since she came away from it a few weeks after her father’s death, and the casual look she allowed herself to give it as she drove slowly by now was almost too much for her. It seemed so stark and desolate and alone. Sold to strangers who hadn’t cared enough about it to keep the grounds in attractive order or to put pleasant curtains at the windows. She did her best not to see these things as she passed and, putting on speed, tried to blink back the tears that sprang to her eyes. How her longing heart had wished to see the old familiar things, how her eyes had unknowingly looked for loving faces in the window. Oh, had she been wise to come back to Carrollton? It never could be the same, of course. Would it ever grow bearable, living this way, a stone’s throw or so from the home that had been so dear, always looking for the precious mother and father who had been so much to her?

She stepped on the gas and hurried forward, turning into the next street blindly and pulling up sooner than she intended to at the garage.

She had them put gas in her car, check the oil and water, and polish up the windshield. Then, a full five minutes before three, she heard the telephone ring and Mark called her to come.

She chided herself as she heard Pilgrim’s voice for the pleasure it gave her. Now why should she feel that way for a person who was a mere stranger yesterday? But she did.

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said. “Will that give you time for what you want?”

“Oh yes,” she said with a glad ring to her own voice. “Are you sure you can spare the time?”

“I sure can!” came the answer, as glad as her own.

So she sat in her car by the side of the road and looked off at the hills, lovely in their autumn dress. Crimson Mountain! What a lovely name and a gorgeous mountain! And to think it was to be used for commercial purposes! It seemed such a shame to have the wonderful trees messed up with tall chimneys puffing smoke among the brilliant foliage, screaming whistles calling men to their labors. And yet she was glad that Pilgrim had been able to sell his land and to sell it well. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a blot on the landscape. It might be that it would be hidden from the town and that the places she knew would not even be able to see what had come to Crimson Mountain.

And then she heard the sound of his car coming, and her heart quickened. He was coming! The color sprang to her cheeks and a light to her eyes, though she had no intention of looking like the personification of joy and wouldn’t for anything have had him know how glad she was to see him.

But he saw it, and his own heart was filled with a great joy, which was quite all wrong for a soldier about to go back to camp with no knowledge of where he was to be sent or if he would ever come back again. Well, at least this joy was his to keep and remember when he had nothing else.

So he met her with the same eagerness in his own face, and like two children they started out together for a sweet adventure.

“Now, where do we go?” asked Phil Pilgrim looking down at Laurel, with no idea how his eyes were admiring her.

“Oh,” said Laurel, and she looked down, suddenly embarrassed at what she was about to say. “Oh, I hope you won’t mind. If you do, it’s all right, you know. I don’t want to do it if you don’t like it. Perhaps I hadn’t any business to butt in on your affairs, and please don’t let me do it if you would rather not—”

Pilgrim turned a puzzled look toward her. “But what is it? You haven’t told me yet what you want to do.”

“Oh!” laughed Laurel. “Excuse me! I thought I had. Yes, I told you a long time ago, didn’t I? Only I didn’t ask you whether you would like it or not. I want you to take me up to your little cemetery and let me put some flowers beside those two white stones. Do you mind? Because it’s all right if you’d rather not.”

“Oh! My
dear! Friend!”
he added, catching his breath. “Why should you think I would rather not? You could not do anything that would please me better than to put this thoughtful human touch of flowers out on those two lonely graves. I can’t thank you enough for planning it, and I am so glad you let me be in on it enough to take you up there. It is beautiful, and I’ll never forget it.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” said Laurel, relief dawning in her face. “After I got the flowers and started to meet you, I was just afraid you wouldn’t like it, that it might hurt you somehow, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that, after you have been so good to me.”

“I think a man would be a brute not to like such a thing. I am more touched than I shall ever be able to show you. It means a great deal to me.”

They said very little more as they drove up the mountain, the pleasant way, by the smooth road. They passed the trail to the picnic ground and then the old weather-beaten house where the Pilgrims had lived their dreary years, till they came to the little clearing by the roadside where stood the two white stones.

Pilgrim stopped the car, helped Laurel out, and brought her the box of flowers from the back of the car. He breathed a soft exclamation of wonder as she opened it. Such magnificence of bloom, such wealth of beauty, such soft, delicate perfume swept out to his senses. She had done it so perfectly. Not any showy flowers that could not harmonize with the thought of his little, quiet, plain grandmother, living her somber life away from the world. But those soft colors reminded one of little children around the throne of heaven where the grandmother would be feeling at home. And they brought the tears to the eyes of the grandson, who had been only a small, lonely boy when she left the earth and left her two boys, the old one and the young one, alone.

Laurel knelt on the ground where autumn leaves made a royal carpet, and took the flowers from the box, a few at a time, laying them over the bare mounds on their glossy leaves, until the whole was covered. And for once the stark place was filled with beauty, reminding one of a resurrection time when the two beneath the earth should rise with new life.

They stayed there motionless for a moment, and the light of the slowly sinking sun touched the flowers with ruby and rose and gave an unearthly beauty to the place. Laurel was kneeling, laying the last roses in place, and Pilgrim stood beside her, his head bowed reverently, his eyes on the girl who had done this lovely thing, his lips as if a prayer were forming on them.

Then Laurel spoke, shyly, softly, and the young man came nearer to hear her.

“Dear Father in heaven, we believe that these two dear ones who are lying here are in Thy tender care. Please give them peace, and if it be possible, let them know we have thought about them lovingly. And please help us, and take care of Phil Pilgrim as he goes back to camp. Amen.”

She was very still for a moment afterward, kneeling with closed eyes. And then as she opened them, there were tears on her face and tears on the face of the young man as he lifted her to her feet.

So they stood close together for a little while, his hand reaching out and holding hers softly. And suddenly she began to sing in a sweet clear voice, yet softly as an angel might have chanted, “Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away? In Jesus’ keeping we are safe and they.”

Just a moment more they stood in that quiet evening silence, with the sun sinking lower and lower and the rosy light still on the flowers and reflected in the sweet gravity of their faces. Then, hand in hand, they walked back to the car, the silence broken only by the sharp chirp of a cricket nearby and the raucous caw of a blackbird in the top of a tall tree.

“I am glad you did that,” said Pilgrim in a voice husky with feeling as they drove slowly down from Crimson Mountain. “It was like a service. And there wasn’t any service for Grandfather. There was a minister for Grandmother when she died, but he had moved away before Grandfather died, and I was only a kid. I didn’t know where to get one for Grandfather. Anyhow, the undertaker was in a hurry to get done and go. So there wasn’t any. But this would do for them both.”

“Oh,” said Laurel sorrowfully. “I’m glad you thought it was all right. I hadn’t planned that. It just came to me that we ought to say something to God about it.”

“It was beautiful!” said Pilgrim solemnly. “I kept thinking about some words Grandmother used to be saying. They began, ‘Let not your heart be troubled—’ but I couldn’t remember the rest.”

“Oh yes, I know,” said Laurel. “I learned that whole chapter once. It’s the fourteenth of John. ‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.’”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Pilgrim. “I’m glad you remembered it. Where did you say that was? I might like to read it sometimes.”

“I’ll find it for you,” said Laurel, reaching her hand for the New Testament he brought out and fluttering through the leaves skillfully.

She handed the book back, and he read the words again. “Only,” he said after an instant’s thoughtful pause, “do we believe in God? If we don’t, we haven’t any right to that comfort, have we? What does that mean, exactly, anyway?”

“I don’t think I quite know,” said Laurel thoughtfully. “I know my mother loved that verse and that chapter, and I’m sure my mother and father both believed in God. Don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” said Pilgrim. “I’m not sure. But I don’t suppose that kind of believing is enough, is it?”

“I never thought about it that way,” said Laurel. “It might be worth taking thought about.”

They were very quiet as they drove down old Crimson till they were almost at the foot of the road again, and then Pilgrim asked her, “How about going to make that call on Mrs. Gray now? Or shall we go to the tearoom first and have dinner? There won’t be many people there now, you know.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Laurel. “Let’s get dinner first and then make our call. Unless you had something else you wanted to do this evening.”

“No indeed. I’m at your service and only too glad to have company on what would otherwise be a lonely time. And by the way, I’m not going back to camp till late Monday afternoon. It develops that I’m needed to go up to Crimson and make sure about some boundary lines on Monday. Also I’m arranging to keep the cemetery lot for the present, too. I’m glad for that. I wouldn’t like to have that destroyed right away after that sacred hour we spent there with the flowers.”

She flashed a look of appreciation at him. “Oh, I’m glad you feel that way, too,” she said softly. “And now tell me about your land. Is it truly sold? and did the lawyer succeed in getting more for it than Mr. Banfield offered?”

“He certainly did. You’d be surprised. I was. And so was Mr. Banfield. Yes, the land is sold all right, and all I have left to do is to go up Crimson Monday morning with the surveyors and show them where the line fence marks are.”

“Isn’t that grand! Are you pleased, or do you feel just the least bit sorry to see it go?” asked Laurel.

“No, not even a little bit sorry,” said Pilgrim grimly. “My grandfather had to take that land over from a man who owed him a lot of money and never even tried to pay him, and it came at a time when he was too deeply in debt and worn with worry and sickness to make anything of it in profit. It came, too, when Grandmother ought to have been in a warmer climate and couldn’t go because there wasn’t money to finance a change. Nobody would buy it for even a song then, and we had no money for fertilizers to make the land a success, even if Grandfather had been able to do farmwork. I would gladly have pitched in and worked on the farm myself, but Grandfather wouldn’t let me. He insisted I must have an education, and he almost gave his life to give me one. You see, that land represents unhappiness and hardship for the people I loved, so I am glad it is sold at last. I have a feeling that if they are where they can know anything about what happens on the earth that they are glad, too.”

“I am sure they are,” said Laurel. “I never really put the idea into words, but I often felt that my mother and father knew about what I was doing and were glad for certain things that came to me.”

He watched the changing expressions on her face and wondered again how it was that he should have fallen in with a girl like this.

He watched the changing expressions on her face and wondered again how it was that he should have fallen in with a girl like this. A girl from the aristocratic walks of life who yet could talk simply and seriously of life and make it mean something besides personal gain and trifling amusement.

They talked a little about the war and the possibility of raids reaching their own land and whether the troops from America would be sent abroad. They grew serious over what would be happening to Pilgrim’s company when he got back to camp, and Laurel suddenly realized that she was talking to this young man with a feeling that somebody very near and intimate with her was a part of this great war that before had touched her but in a distant thought. Oh, there were several of the men she knew who were in the army, most of them officers and in a position of favor. They were wealthy young men who knew how to use influence to work for their favor. It had all seemed very light and unlikely that they would ever reach a real place of battle. But this young man was different. He was not seeking to evade danger nor elude duty. He was not seeking high places nor selfish gain in the affairs of the world. He took his duty seriously and was even laying aside his ambitions and surrendering his life goal to serve the cause of right in its stern crisis. It thrilled her to think of it, while it yet drew her anxiety for him and her admiration for his attitude.

The tearoom was beginning to fill up fast now for the evening meal as they loitered through their dinner. But suddenly they remembered that it was getting late and they had planned to make a call.

Reluctantly they drew their conversation to an abrupt close and arose, realizing that the time of their separation was rapidly drawing nearer. Who could tell whether there would yet be time for any more talking after this?