``If it blossoms first up there--I'll get it where it blooms first.'' In a moment I was angry and half sick with suspicion, for I knew his obstinacy; and then began what I am half ashamed to tell.
Every day thereafter Grayson took that glass with him, and I went along to humor him. I watched Bee Rock, and he that one bush at the throat of the peak--neither of us talking over the matter again. It was uncanny, that rivalry--sun and wind in one spot, sun and wind in another--Nature herself casting the fate of a half-crazed fool with a flower. It was utterly absurd, but I got nervous over it--apprehensive, dismal.
A week later it rained for two days, and the water was high. The next day the sun shone, and that afternoon Grayson smiled, looking through the glass, and handed it to me. I knew what I should see. One purple cluster, full blown, was shaking in the wind.
Grayson was leaning back in a dream when I let the glass down. A cool breath from the woods behind us brought the odor of roots and of black earth; up in the leaves and sunlight somewhere a wood-thrush was singing, and I saw in Grayson's face what I had not seen for a long time, and that was peace--the peace of stubborn purpose. He did not come for me the next day, nor the next;but the next he did, earlier than usual.
``I am going to get that rhododendron,''
he said. ``I have been half-way up--it can be reached.'' So had I been half-way up. With nerve and agility the flower could be got, and both these Grayson had. If he had wanted to climb up there and drop, he could have done it alone, and he would have known that I should have found him. Grayson was testing himself again, and, angry with him for the absurdity of the thing and with myself for humoring it, but still not sure of him, I picked up my hat and went. I swore to myself silently that it was the last time I should pay any heed to his whims. I believed this would be the last. The affair with the girl was over. The flower sent, I knew Grayson would never mention her name again.
Nature was radiant that afternoon.
The mountains had the leafy luxuriance of June, and a rich, sunlit haze drowsed on them between the shadows starting out over the valley and the clouds so white that the blue of the sky looked dark. Two eagles shot across the mouth of the Gap as we neared it, and high beyond buzzards were sailing over Grayson's rhododendron.
I went up the ravine with him and I climbed up behind him--Grayson going very deliberately and whistling softly. He called down to me when he reached the shelf that looked half-way.
``You mustn't come any farther than this,'' he said. ``Get out on that rock and I'll drop them down to you.''
Then he jumped from the ledge and caught the body of a small tree close to the roots, and my heart sank at such recklessness and all my fears rose again.
I scrambled hastily to the ledge, but I
could get no farther. I might possibly make the jump he had made--but how should I ever get back? How would he? I called angrily after him now, and he wouldn't answer me. I called him a fool, a coward; I stamped the ledge like a child--but Grayson kept on, foot after hand, with stealthy caution, and the purple cluster nodding down at him made my head whirl. Ihad to lie down to keep from tumbling from the ledge; and there on my side, gripping a pine bush, I lay looking up at him. He was close to the flowers now, and just before he took the last upward step he turned and looked down that awful height with as calm a face as though he could have dropped and floated unhurt to the ravine beneath.
Then with his left hand he caught the ledge to the left, strained up, and, holding thus, reached out with his right.
The hand closed about the cluster, and the twig was broken. Grayson gave a great shout then. He turned his head as though to drop them, and, that far away, I heard the sibilant whir of rattles. I saw a snake's crest within a yard of his face, and, my God! I saw Grayson loose his left hand to guard it!
The snake struck at his arm, and Grayson reeled and caught back once at the ledge with his left hand. He caught once, I say, to do him full justice; then, without a word, he dropped--and Iswear there was a smile on his face when he shot down past me into the trees.
I found him down there in the ravine with nearly every bone in his body crushed. His left arm was under him, and outstretched in his right hand was the shattered cluster, with every blossom gone but one. One white half of his face was unmarked, and on it was still the shadow of a smile. I think it meant more than that Grayson believed that he was near peace at last. It meant that Fate had done the deed for him and that he was glad. Whether he would have done it himself, I do not know; and that is why I say that though Grayson brought the flower down--smiling from peak to ravine--I do not know that he was not, after all, a coward.
That night I wrote to the woman in Kentucky. I told her that Grayson had fallen from a cliff while climbing for flowers; and that he was dead.
Along with these words, I sent a purple rhododendron.
End
