The House of the Black Ring: A Romance of the Seven Mountains

Chapter XIV: In the Wild Azalea

chapter XiV in the wild aZalea in the late spring and early summer the Seven Mountains burst suddenly from their sombre melancholy and bury themselves for a month in a wealth of efflorescence such as one may look for in vain elsewhere north of the tropics. The wild gaps and runs become choked with mighty masses of pink and white that fill even those long accustomed to it with wonder. First comes the miracle of the dog-wood, the spangling of the forest with spotless white; then the miracle of the azalea when the swart hillsides break suddenly into billows of fire; then the miracle of the laurel with its great masses of bloom like baskets of flowers set here and there amid the rocks; and then the miracle of miracles of the rhododendron which fills gap and tangle and scaur with great banks of unbroken snow. One might be contented to live eleven months in the dun solitudes for the sake of this one marvellous month of flowers. One visiting in mid June the mouth of Roaring Run will find it transformed almost beyond belief. The fantastic weatherings are embowered in laurel; the tangle along the Run is a bank of solid bloom; and among the cedar scrubs still smoulders the last of the azalea. It is a transformation, indeed, one that no familiarity can ever strip of its semblance of miracle. in the wild aZalea { 147 } The morning after the pow-wowing at Roaring Run broke freeskied and smokeless. By midday there was no trace of the storm. The mountains lay soft and warm in the spring sun. Under its radiance the azalea shot up its fires until it dominated ridge and bottom and gap. Along the trough of Plum Run where it flowers in greatest profusion , it rolled in billows of flame, and ever among it and around it, like a deliberate contrast, glistened the stars of the dog-wood. As Tom Farthing stood on the crest of Raccoon Ridge it seemed to him as if the mountains were in gala dress; green and brown with fringings of scarlet and spanglings of white. He was hot and restless. He had struck up into the ridges after the Sunday dinner in sheer unrest. On and on he had tramped without aim or thought. A mass of colour in the sharp of the V caught his eye and automatically he turned toward it. At one place in an angle of the rocks the efflorescence seemed to culminate. It was like a huge centrepiece or a single giant blossom. It cooled and rested him. He stood wondering a moment,drinking in the sweet reek of it,then sat down in the midst of the plot, his back against the sandstone. All was still save for the drone of the stream near by and the voice of a warbler in the heart of the tangle. Unconsciously, for the thousandth time, he began to go over the problem which was dominating him. What had become of her? Why had she left him so? What was the mystery of it all? The brook purled on; the bird sang over and over its simple note, and his thoughts became ever more vague and more vague. He awoke with a start. He was conscious of some sharp, sudden noise close by him, but all was silent when he opened his eyes. He was strangely confused. Everything seemed changed: the sun was lower; the shadows had shifted greatly; there was a different light in the atmosphere . A vague impression of some presence close at hand caused him to turn his head. “Why, Lona,” he cried in startled voice,“is it you? Is it really you?” She did not answer. For a moment she stood as on that first evening by the brook-side, when he had come suddenly upon her. If he moved she would vanish. “But how came you way up here?” He did not wait for her answer; he made a swift bound through the azalea and stood beside her.“Did you know I was here? Did you?” “No.” the house of the black ring { 148 } “Then it’s an accident? You just happened to come?” “Yes.” “You were walking and saw this bunch of honeysuckle? Is that why?” “Yes. I must go now.” She turned abruptly in the direction of Heller ’s Ridge, and began almost to run through the tangle...