The negro went, and Rand arose from the rock, crossed the road, and stood looking down toward the hidden water.  From somewhere out of the green gloom sounded the bird’s throbbing note, then all again was quiet, dank, and still.  He raised his arms, resting them and his face upon them against the red bark of a giant pine.  The thought of death in the pool below came to him, but he shook his head.  The door was open, truly, but it led nowhere.  His soul looked at the chasm it must cross, shuddered, and crossed it.  His arms dropped from the tree and he raised his eyes to the blue above.  He was yet in a land of effort and anguish, but the god within him saw the light.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

M. DE PINCORNET

Malplaquet was a Cary place, leagued in friendship as in blood with Greenwood.  For seven months it had esteemed itself in mourning for the kinsman who had ridden from its gates to a violent death.  But there were young girls in the house, and now, in the bright May weather, it was hard not to put forth leaf and bud and be gay once more.  Actual gayety would not do, the place felt that, and very heartily; but pleasure that was also education, pleasure well within bounds, and education insisted upon, this might now be temperately indulged in.  There seemed no good reason why, in mid-spring, the dancing class should not be held at Malplaquet, since it was the most convenient house to a large neighbourhood, and there were in the family three young girls.

The age esteemed dancing a highly necessary accomplishment, and its acquisition meant work, and hard work, no less than delightful play.  Half a dozen young people came to stay three days at the house; half a score more drove or rode over in the afternoons, going home after ten by moonlight or by starlight Their elders came with them, it was a business of minuets and contra-dances, painstakingly performed and solicitously watched A large old parlour gave its waxed floor, Mr Pincornet’s violin furnished the music, and Mr Pincornet himself, lately returned to Albemarle from his season in Richmond, imparted instruction and directed the dance.  The house was full from garret to cellar, neighbours’ horses in the stables, neighbours’ servants in the quarter.  The long, low brick office standing under the big oaks in the yard made, according to custom, a barracks for the young men who, high of mettle, bold, and gay, rode in from twenty miles around, ready to dance from dusk till dawn, and then, in a bright garden and May weather, to pursue some bits of muslin throughout a morning.  Malplaquet was in a state of sober glee when, inconveniently enough, the one Cary whose mourning had not lightened chanced, in ignorance of the dancing class, to ride through the gates and up the hill.

It was his intention, it appeared, to spend the night which was fast falling, and to ride back to Charlottesville in the morning.  The head of the Malplaquet Carys met him with affection and apology.  “Young people will be young, Fair, and Molly and I thought it best to humour them in this no great thing!  It’s a mere lesson they’re having.  But I’m sorry, cousin—­”