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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Virginia of Virginia, by Amélie Rives
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Virginia of Virginia
-       A Story
-
-Author: Amélie Rives
-
-Release Date: December 30, 2016 [EBook #53838]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA OF VIRGINIA ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading
-Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
-images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
-
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-
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: “I--I--I LOOK A AWFUL FOOL--DON’T I?”--_page 125._]
-
-
-
-
-                          VIRGINIA OF VIRGINIA
-
-                                 A Story
-
-                                   BY
-                              AMÉLIE RIVES
-
-                                AUTHOR OF
-          “A BROTHER TO DRAGONS, AND OTHER OLD-TIME TALES” ETC.
-
-                               ILLUSTRATED
-
-                                NEW YORK
-                   HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
-                                  1888
-
-                 Copyright, 1888, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
-
-                         _All rights reserved._
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS.
-
-
-                                                                 PAGE
-
-    “I--I--I LOOK A AWFUL FOOL--DON’T I?”               _Frontispiece_
-
-    “I CAN’T COME TO DINNER”                                       11
-
-    “AW-W-W POPO!”                                                 43
-
-    ON THE TOP OF PETER’S MOUNTAIN                                 65
-
-    “I GWINE TAKE DAT DAR OUTLANDISH THING OFFEN YO’, HONEY”      139
-
-    “HE MUST ’A’ HAD A MIGHTY LEETLE CROP”                        161
-
-
-
-
-VIRGINIA OF VIRGINIA.
-
-
-
-
-I.
-
-
-“It’s a girl,” said Roden, laying a wager with himself. “No; it’s a
-boy. Hanged if it isn’t a girl!” He took his short brier-wood pipe from
-his mouth, knocked out its contents against the side of the wagon, and
-pocketed it.
-
-The time of the year was January, the scene a country road in Virginia,
-and it was drizzling, a thick Scotch drizzle, abetted by a lusty east
-wind. Even the branches of the straggling locust-trees that lined the
-red road seemed clogged with it. It hung in folds upon the sides of the
-mountains, and was blown in masses between the clefts of the rolling
-meadows.
-
-Roden was not only a new arrival in Virginia, but in America, and
-the impression made upon him had not, to speak very moderately, been
-favorable. Coming from Washington, some one in the train had asked him
-if it did not remind him of England. He had answered with some curtness
-that it did not, demanding at the same time why he should be particularly
-reminded of England by the state of the weather in Virginia. His
-interlocutor had replied with the never-failing urbanity of the Virginian
-farmer, that “anybody could tell he was an Englisher by th’ way he
-talked, and them loose pants.”
-
-At the moment he first saw the figure alluded to, the owner of the
-British accent and the “loose pants” was shivering in spite of the
-top-coat turned up about his ears and the soft hat pulled down to meet it.
-
-It was indeed a girl; she wore a soft hat, the counterpart of his own,
-fashioned of the same stuff as her dark-gray jacket and the kirtle
-which reached just below her knees. On her legs were shooting-gaiters of
-russet leather, decidedly influenced as to color by the tyrannic soil,
-and on her feet stout cowhide boots. She carried a gun on her shoulder,
-and a game-bag hung at her side. She further appeared to be bounded
-on the east, west, north, and south by dogs. An old mastiff lounged
-sulkily at her heels. Far in front, a collie gave chase to a stately
-buzzard, which sailed away undisturbed by its pursuer’s shrill barking,
-while an asthmatic pug sought a Juggernautal fate between the ponderous
-wagon-wheels, and a little black-and-tan terrier, sniffing hither and
-thither among the mist-drenched weeds, reminded Roden of the accounts of
-certain mammoth ants as related by the credulous Herodotus.
-
-The girl, who had been walking with head bent, looked up as the creaking
-of the wagon-wheels arrested her attention.
-
-“I beg your pardon,” said Roden, “but can you tell me if I am on the
-right road to Caryston Hall? I think that’s the name.”
-
-She looked at him seriously for a moment, and then said, “Yes, you are. I
-s’pose you’re th’ new Englishman. Are you?”
-
-“I suppose so,” said Roden. “My name is Roden. I have bought a farm
-somewhere in this neighborhood, and it is called Caryston Hall.”
-
-“That’s it,” she said; “you’re right. My father’s th’ overseer there. Why
-don’t you get down and walk? You look so cold. I’ll show you.”
-
-“Thank you,” said Roden; “I think I will;” and he jumped down beside her.
-
-Judging by her attire, he had at first thought her a sporting
-country-woman of his own, like himself an exile in a far country; but
-after she had spoken he found that the soft, slow intonation was strange
-to his ear. “The overseer business explains it,” he thought. “She is a
-native, and this language is Virginian.” In the mean time the girl was
-also making mental observations. He was the third English gentleman she
-had seen, though of immigrant Britishers she had known full threescore
-and ten. She was thinking that he had spoken to her with an unusual
-civility, and wondering how long it would continue. Civility this young
-Virginian had not found to be a characteristic of the British settler in
-her native State.
-
-“I’m very lucky to have met you,” said Roden, as they walked on, having
-dismissed the services of the ancient wagoner, whom the girl addressed as
-“Unc’ Dick.” “I would like to ask you some questions about the place, and
-it’s awfully kind of you to go back with me.”
-
-She said, indifferently, and without lifting her eyes this time, “Oh, I
-was goin’ back anyway! ’Tisn’t any bother.”
-
-Her long strides matched Roden’s exactly, and the rapid motion through
-the stiffly yielding medium under foot began to warm his veins. They saw
-the serpentine flourish of Unc’ Dick’s voluminous whip-lash outlined
-against the pale sky as the wagon descended a hill just in front of them.
-Two more buzzards appeared, slanting in still absorption towards the
-west. Instantly the collie was after them.
-
-“Why didn’t you telegraph?” said the girl, suddenly.
-
-“I did,” said Roden, with some grimness. “I telegraphed twice. I also had
-the pleasure of rereading both telegrams when I arrived at the station
-about an hour ago.”
-
-“Seems to me,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at the
-mastiff, pug, and terrier, that were having a tow-row over an old
-shoe (which same seem to be sown in lieu of corn in the thorns by the
-Virginian way-side)--“Seems to me that letters reach us twice as quick
-as telegrams, anyhow. You must have thought it funny we didn’t send for
-you?”
-
-“I don’t know that I found it very amusing,” said Roden, truthfully,
-adding, in a tone of helpless aggravation, “All my luggage was left
-behind in Washington.”
-
-At this direct appeal the overseer’s daughter at first looked as
-sorrowful as even Roden could have desired, bursting the next moment into
-peals and roulades of laughter. Roden, after the first sharp inclination
-to feel angry, joined in her mirth.
-
-“Pore feller!” she said at last, taking off her rain-soaked hat, on which
-she appeared to dry her brimming eyes--“Pore feller! it all seems awful
-to you out here, don’t it?”
-
-“It does,” said Roden in his heart, but out loud he replied with
-mendacious civility that it did not. He was, moreover, occupied in a
-close scrutiny of her uncovered locks. They were of a pale golden color,
-lying close to her forehead in thick, round rings, after the manner of
-a child’s, and clustering heavily, with the dampness. As he stood beside
-her he saw also that she was very tall, taller than most tall women,
-and that her fair throat, rising boy-like from a dark-red kerchief, had
-unusual suggestions of muscle beneath its smooth surface.
-
-Presently they walked on. The top of a tolerably high hill was soon
-reached, surmounted, as Roden at first thought, by an almost impenetrable
-thicket. As they approached nearer, however, he perceived an aperture
-in the mass of foliage, and a long wooden gate, hanging by one hinge in
-an aimless, desultory manner, and ornamented also as to its dingy gray
-with copious splashes of red mud. On either post were rusty iron vases,
-wherefrom there sprouted two stunted specimens of the aloe tribe. One
-of these vases, having been broken some years before, hung over to one
-side with a suggestion of inanimate sentimentality highly ludicrous. Some
-kind Samaritan had thrust a stick in between its disabled joints, thus
-preventing it from utter downfall.
-
-The view beyond the gate was unique, and to Roden rather pleasant after
-his morning’s experience. The lawn proper was shaped like a lady’s
-slipper, and outlined by a gravel carriage-drive. It seemed as though
-some Titaness might have set a careless foot among the surrounding
-shrubbery, crushing out of existence all save a bordering fringe of
-evergreen and acacias. The long, low house of red brick--with wings
-out-spread after a protective, hen-like fashion in the direction of the
-many out-houses--was to be seen through the bare branches of two splendid
-tulip-trees. A little Alderney heifer was grazing near the portico, and
-some dorkings stood resignedly on long yellow legs under the shelter of
-the large box-bushes.
-
-As they worked along the sinuous carriage-way Roden looked with a feeling
-of ownership at the glimpses of distant hill and forest, as visible
-through the crowding tree-stems. Here he was to make his home for at
-least the next two years, and he was glad not to find it so bad as he had
-expected.
-
-As she opened the hall door the girl said to him, “Father won’t be here
-until six o’clock. I’ll have you some dinner ef you want it. But you’d
-better go to your room first, hadn’t you, you’re so wet?--I’ll send you
-some things the larst Englishman left behind him. There’s a barth ready,
-and plenty of towels. I’m used to fixin’ for you English, you see. Well,
-good-by till you’re dressed; then I’ll show you over the house.”
-
-[Illustration: “I CAN’T COME TO DINNER.”]
-
-She sent a little “nigger,” who conducted him with wordless dignity to
-the apartment allotted him, and who some five minutes later returned
-again with the “last Englishman’s things.” That personage must have been
-of very slight proportions and medium height, whereas Roden stood six
-foot one in his stockings, and was of excellent figure. He struggled for
-some time with the meagre garments, and then decided that he could not
-put in an appearance until his own garments should be dry. At this moment
-some one knocked at the door with the announcement--“Dinner rade-y.”
-
-“I can’t come to dinner,” said Roden at the key-hole. “The clothes won’t
-fit me. Say I am very sorry.”
-
-The departing footsteps echoed down the narrow corridor that led to the
-room which had been given him, and Roden, who had taken the silk coverlet
-from the bed and rolled himself in it, stretched out before the fire of
-pine cones in the big fireplace. The room was large and square, and had
-hangings of faded green silk embroidered with tarnished gold. A ponderous
-mahogany wardrobe, looking like nothing so much as a grim wooden
-mausoleum, occupied nearly all of one wall. Facing this on the opposite
-side of the room was a low chest of drawers, also of mahogany, with brass
-lion-head handles. A square mirror in a wrought-brass frame hung over
-it. The bedstead was low and wide, with foot-board and head-board of a
-like height. Voluminous curtains of faded green fell from a mahogany
-frame fastened to the ceiling, and were tucked back behind brass knobs
-on either side of the bed. There was a huge pale-green paper screen
-crowded into one corner of the room, and behind this Roden discovered a
-bath-tub and a washhand-stand. One picture hung over the mantle-shelf, a
-reproduction of the Madonna of the Chair, done evidently with a very hard
-and very pointed lead-pencil, and faintly tinted with pink chalk as to
-lips and cheeks.
-
-Roden lay in the soft embrace of his one Indian-like garment and stared
-up at this work of art. He became fascinated in wondering how many days
-it must have taken its indefatigable perpetrator to make the million of
-little scratches that composed it. He wondered if it were the production
-of generations past or present. Could Virginia herself have been guilty
-of it? He thought not. At all events he hoped not. Her voice seemed
-to put her beyond the pale of such possibilities. He recalled it to
-his memory’s ear now, with a distinct sensation of pleasure. There had
-been in it a certain rich sonorousness. It was grave, serious, soft
-as the rush of the rain through the short grass without. A beautiful
-voice attracts men always, even as the _timbre_ of a fine instrument
-invariably attracts a musician. It is, so to speak, the overture to the
-whole character. No; the pink-cheeked Virgin, with the slate-colored
-infant tilted against her wooden and unresponsive bosom, could never
-have been the work of the maiden in the Rosalind costume. Never, never!
-Why, now that he thought of it, should the cheeks of the pictured
-Madonna so blush? unless, perhaps, at the culpable drawing of her sacred
-proportions. Why should she have been drawn at all? There was absolutely
-no reason that he could discover. The pine cones crackled and blazed up
-with a savory smell. The fragrant warmth stole pleasantly over the young
-fellow’s relaxed limbs. The pink-and-gray Madonna faded slowly and surely
-away in a golden haze. There was a pleasant humming as of a summer field
-within his ears. Why did he seem to be pulling up a scarlet window-blind,
-which obstinately refused to remain in position, in order to let three
-large black sheep gambol at their pleasure about that imposing mahogany
-catafalque? And why did the loss of a brass key at least three feet
-long, and which seemed to belong to his hat-box, occasion him such acute
-mortification when called upon by a very old woman in blue kid low-shoes
-to explain its whereabouts? And why did--and why didn’t--and what on
-earth made them all? Roden had not slept so soundly since leaving British
-soil.
-
-He was awakened by a vigorous rapping at the door. He sat up and rolled
-himself more tightly in the big green silk quilt.
-
-“Who is it?” he said.
-
-“’Tis yo’ clo’es,” replied a solemn voice. “An’ please, sur, ter dress ez
-quick ez you kin, ’case supper soon be rade-y.”
-
-Roden admitted his once more dry outfit through a small aperture in the
-door, after having inquired as to the time, and finding that he had slept
-two hours.
-
-“Miss Faginia she say ez how she ben think you’d rayther eat yo’
-supper jiss so, ’thout sp’ilin’ it with er sorter dinner,” chanted the
-monotonous voice without.
-
-Roden admitted that “Miss Faginia” had been quite right in her
-conjecture. In half an hour he went out into the big hall, which, divided
-by three arches, ran through the centre of the house. Over the first was
-a fine moose-head. There were skins of many beasts here and there on the
-slippery oak floor, and straight-backed chairs set against the panelled
-wall, which some barbarian had painted white. A much-carved oak table on
-one side supported a large silver flagon and two old-fashioned tankards.
-On the other was an old-fashioned hat-rack, filled mostly with feminine
-head-gear of various makes and sizes. A pair of branchy antlers supported
-riding-canes of all descriptions.
-
-Guided by the sounds of a piano softly played, Roden opened a door on
-his left, and found himself in a large firelit room, whose walls were
-absolutely covered with pictures large and small, all in old Italian
-frames, all more or less stiff and ill painted, all hung, regardless of
-size or shape, as close to one another as they could possibly be placed.
-The effect of the thus concentrated colors was, in spite of the defects
-of the pictures themselves, quaint and jewel-like. Over the mantle of
-carved oak reached upward to the ceiling an enormous square mirror in the
-style of the First Empire. On one side of the room was hung its mate,
-also in lonely grandeur, and facing the portrait of a very rosy dame in a
-still rosier tulle dress, the whole suggesting in color the presence of
-the all-pervading Virginian soil.
-
-Just under this second mirror was a piano, and at this piano was standing
-the overseer’s daughter, striking idle chords with her left hand.
-
-She had taken off her Rosalind costume, and appeared in a blue homespun
-dress, neat and scant of make, and with her two big braids hanging over
-her shoulders.
-
-“Oh, it’s you!” she said, addressing Roden. “I was just trying th’ piano
-to see ’f any ’v the keys’d stuck since the last Englishman left; but th’
-haven’t. D’you like music?” she went on, in her vibrant voice, which
-seemed in some strange manner to harmonize with the firelight and the now
-steady hum of the rain without. “I’ll tell you, before you say anything,
-I can play very well.”
-
-Roden found her open conceit a very novel and amusing sensation, but when
-she had struck a few chords firmly, her long fingers sinking in among the
-keys as might the fingers of a miser among the gold coin that he loved,
-he thought no more of anything save the melody that filled the room.
-
-“Gad!” said he, when she had ceased, “I should say you could play,
-rather! Where on earth--who taught you?”
-
-“No one,” she said, absently, striking noiseless chords with her left
-hand, and not looking at him. “I’ve heard people, and I do’t by ear.
-And the men that’ve had th’ Hall’ve been awful kind ’bout lettin’ me
-play--an’ that’s all,” comprehensively--adding, with sudden irrelevance,
-“Were your clothes quite dry?”
-
-“Quite,” he assured her; “but they are beastly dirty to come to supper
-in.”
-
-“I dried them myself,” she continued, taking no notice of his last
-assertion. “Such work as I had, too! I really think if Milly hadn’t
-helped me, you’d ’a’ been in--in--in your green silk quilt now.”
-
-She leaned forward for some moments, laughing, with her head against the
-music-rack, so that the piano reverberated shrilly with the clear sound.
-Roden laughed with her.
-
-“Who told you--the little nigger?” he asked. “And who is Milly?”
-
-She got suddenly to her feet, as suddenly becoming grave, and closed the
-piano.
-
-“Milly’s one o’ th’ darkies,” she said. “Come and get your supper.”
-
-He followed her across the wide hall into the dining-room, and found that
-supper at Caryston Hall was a very pretty meal. It was served on finest
-but much-darned damask, by the light of six tall candles in silver
-candlesticks, each ornamented by a little petticoat of scarlet silk,
-which gave them the appearance of diminutive coryphées pirouetting on one
-slender wax leg. A bowl of violets and primroses occupied the centre of
-the table, flanked on either side by crystal dishes, filled, the one with
-the pale amber of honey, the other with the deep crimson of cranberries.
-
-The overseer’s daughter poured out tea behind a great silver urn, while
-on her right hand a monstrous cut-glass flagon foamed with richest milk.
-“Positively artistic,” thought Roden, feeling a certain respect in his
-British breast for this little maiden of Virginia who could evolve out
-of her own country-bred brain effects so charming. “It’s a beastly
-pity!” he told himself, though in what the pity consisted he could not
-quite have told any one else, unless perhaps that a being so gifted with
-a talent for instrumental music, and the setting forth of appetizing
-supper-tables, should be hemmed in from further progress by the scarlet
-soil of her native State, and should murder his sovereign’s language with
-ruthless regularity by beheading some words and cutting the remainder in
-two.
-
-He also pondered somewhat as to the way in which Virginian overseers and
-their children expected to be treated by resident foreigners. He noticed
-that the girl ate nothing herself, sitting with her hand in her lap after
-she had poured out his cup of tea, and pulling idly at the frayed edge of
-the table-cloth, with eyes downcast. He wished very much that he knew how
-to address her, and was casting about in his mind as to how he might find
-out her surname without being rude, when she answered him directly.
-
-“My name is Virginia”--she said “Faginia”--but it came softly to the
-ear--“Virginia Herrick.”
-
-“They ought to have called you ‘Julia,’ Miss Herrick,” said the young
-Englishman, gravely regarding her grave face.
-
-“Why?” she said, with her swift change from listless to alert--“why ought
-they? It’s a hijeous name, I think.”
-
-“It isn’t very pretty--not near so pretty as ‘Faginia,’” said Roden,
-gallantly; “but there was a fellow once called Herrick who was always
-writing songs to ‘Julia.’”
-
-“Oh,” said the girl, with a sudden dawning in her sombre eyes, “that’s
-the man wrote ‘To Daffodils’ and ‘Primroses’ and things, ain’t it?”
-
-“That’s the man,” he said.
-
-“Well,” she replied, slowly, “I don’t see why I ought to be called Julia.
-Her last name wa’n’t Herrick, ’cause he wouldn’t ’a’ written those kynder
-things to his sister, and a man wouldn’t ’a’ taken th’ trouble to write
-songs to’s wife.”
-
-“Why?” said Roden, fixing on her his eyes, at whose blueness she began to
-wonder in a vague way. Thus looking out from the young man’s sunburnt,
-weather-marked face they reminded her of some vivid, sky-colored flower
-springing into sudden azure among brown summer grasses.
-
-“Why?” he repeated. “Are all Virginian husbands so ungallant to their
-wives?”
-
-“So what?” she said, contracting her level brows.
-
-“So rude, so careless of their wives.”
-
-“Oh, I reckon so,” she made answer. “I don’t know much ’bout men ’n’
-their wives. My father’s died when I was born, an’ somehow I don’t take
-much to women, nor they tuh me. But I know ’nuff,” she supplemented, “to
-know a man ain’t goin’ to make a fuss over ’s wife.”
-
-“If you ever marry,” said Roden, “do you think you will put up with that
-sort of thing?”
-
-“Sho!” she exclaimed, rising and pushing back her chair, which made a
-sharp sound on the polished oak of the floor. “I’ll never marry in _this_
-world.”
-
-“Well, you certainly won’t in the next,” said Roden, smiling broadly;
-“that is, if you’re orthodox.”
-
-“What o’dox?” she said, pausing to question him, with one hand on the
-table.
-
-“Orthodox--if you believe all that the Bible tells you.”
-
-“Well, I don’t,” she said, quickly; “not by a long sight. I don’t believe
-all those things got into one place like that ark without killin’ each
-other clean out. An’ I don’t believe those b’ars eat them children for
-laughin’ at that ole feller’s bal’ head (I’ve laughed at many of ’em
-myself, an’ no b’ars ’ain’t ever eat me; an’ if ’twas right then, ’twould
-be right now). No, I cert’n’y ain’t or-or-orth’dox,” said Miss Virginia
-Herrick, beginning to clear away the supper-dishes.
-
-“You’re not commonplace, at all events,” Roden told himself, as, after
-having obtained her permission to smoke, he lighted a cigarette.
-It was now past eight o’clock, and still no signs of the recreant
-overseer. Roden occupied himself with putting many questions of a
-more business-like character to Miss Herrick, as she moved about the
-room restoring things to their proper places. He found that the little
-petticoats which ornamented the candles were some more of the things left
-by “the last Englishman;” and that the primroses and violets grew in what
-was called the “greenhouse,” a narrow glass-fronted corridor reaching
-along the front of the east wing of the house, and opening out of the
-dining-room.
-
-He said he would like to go in to look at it, and she at once conducted
-him there, carrying no candle, since a full-moon looked in at them
-through the lattice of the winter trees. A thick soft air, spongy with
-dampness, closed about them. The flowers rose dark and redolent on all
-sides. Roden could make out the large, bunchily growing leaves of a
-magnolia-tree outside, seen in rich relief against the dim sky.
-
-Roden, who had an artistic soul, found much pleasure in watching her. He
-was beginning to think that in her own unique way she was beautiful, and
-she was certainly shaped like a young caryatid.
-
-After she had answered various queries about house and out-house, niggers
-and stables, they returned to the dining-room, and lifting one of the
-tall candlesticks from a side-table, she opened one of the many doors.
-
-“I’m going to father’s room,” she announced; “’f you like you can come
-too. Most of ’em” (alluding probably to the preceding Englishmen)--“most
-of ’em liked to smoke there. I’ve got my spinnin’ an’ some things to do.
-Ef you want to stay here, there’s books.” She made a comprehensive sweep
-with her candleless hand in the direction of a low bookcase which ran
-around three sides of the room.
-
-“I think I’ll come with you, if you really don’t mind,” said Roden.
-
-“Lor’, no!” she hastened to assure him. “But ’f you don’t like dogs an’
-’coons an’ things, you’d better not.”
-
-“Oh, I don’t mind ’coons and--and things,” said Roden, somewhat vaguely.
-“I’ll come, thank you.”
-
-They went down a long hall, descended a little stair-way whereon the
-moonlight fell bluely through a square window high above, down more
-steps, along another passage with sharp turns, and in at an already open
-door. An old negress, vividly turbaned, was heaping wood upon an already
-immense fire.
-
-“Lor’, mammy!” called Miss Herrick, “for mercy’s sakes stop! ’F you put
-any more wood on that fire you’ll have to get up on th’ roof an’ shove ’t
-down th’ chimney.” The “’coons and things” were already crowding about
-them.
-
-Roden recognized several of his canine friends of the morning, and
-there were, moreover, two splendid old hounds, which at sight of their
-evidently beloved “Faginia” set up a most booming yowl of welcome.
-There were also the ’coon; a curious flat-stomached little beast, that
-flew about after a startling fashion from chair to chair, and which Miss
-Herrick introduced as a “chipmunk;” a corn-crake; a young screech-owl;
-and three large Persian cats.
-
-All these pets, he discovered later, had been presented from time to time
-by the “last Englishman,” or “the Englishman before the last,” or “the
-Englishman before the one with the glass eye,” or the fat wife, or the
-ugly sister, or what not.
-
-“If I can only add a gorilla or a condor to this unique collection,”
-reflected Roden, “my position is assured. I will probably be forever the
-‘last Englishman,’ and I will always be mentioned as ‘the Englishman who
-gave me the gorilla.’”
-
-He then sat down in a corner as far removed as was consistent with
-politeness from the other inhabitants of the apartment, and occupied
-himself with watching “Faginia,” her “mammy,” and the “things.”
-
-“Aunt Tishy,” said Miss Herrick, indicating him with a movement of her
-bright head, as he sat withdrawn into his coign of vantage, like a
-hermit-crab within its shell, “that’s the new Englishman, Mr. Roden.”
-
-“How yo’ do, sur? Hope yo’ coporosity segastuate fus rate, sur,” quoth
-the dusky dame, with an elephantine dab, supposed in the innocence of her
-Virginian heart to correspond to the courtesy of civilization.
-
-“My what?” said Roden.
-
-“She means she hopes you are well,” explained Virginia, about whose neck
-the raccoon was coiling himself with serpentine affection.
-
-“Oh yes, thanks, very well. Are you?” said Roden.
-
-“Gord! yes, sur; Tishy she _al’uz_ well--ain’ she, honey?” This last
-appeal to Virginia.
-
-“Oh yes,” said that young woman “’cep’ when you get th’ misery, or th’
-year-ache in th’ middle o’ th’ coldest nights, an’ have me huntin’ all
-over creation for somethin’ to put in your year. Oh yes!”
-
-“G’way, chile!” exclaimed the thus maligned personage, with an air of
-indignant sufferance. “If I didn’ know yer wuz jess projeckin’, I sutny
-would feel bade.”
-
-“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said her mistress, easily. “_This_ one,” again
-indicating Roden, “’s goin’ in fur horse-racin’. Some of his horses’s
-comin’ day after to-morrer. That’s better’n Herefordshire cattle, ain’t
-it?”
-
-“Co’se _you_ think so,” said Aunt Tishy, with something between a sniff
-and a grunt, as she settled herself in the chimney-corner with a basket
-of darning, and fell to work, stretching the stockings to be mended over
-a little gourd.
-
-“Why, Aunt Tishy?” said Roden, beginning to feel as though he were a
-character in a book, and might spoil the plot by saying the wrong thing.
-
-The old negress looked up at him over her big gold-rimmed spectacles,
-with her great underlip pushed out, showing its pale yellowish lining.
-
-“Lor’! sur,” she said, “Miss Faginny’s plum crazy ’bout horses. Ev’ybody
-on de place’ll tell you dat. I alwuz hol’s as how somebody done cunjur
-her mar ’fo’ she was bown. Dat’s why she so run made ’bout horses.
-Somebody sutny _is_ cunjur Miss Faginny. I’ll say dat with my last bref!”
-
-“Oh, shut up, mammy!” here interpolated Virginia.
-
-“I sutny will,” reiterated the old black.
-
-“Cert’n’y will what?” said Miss Herrick; “shut up? I’m sure I hope so,
-and I know Mr. Roden does.”
-
-She rose and put down the raccoon, who immediately clambered up to the
-carven top of an old oak press close by, and hung there, smiling genially.
-
-Virginia busied herself in getting out her spinning-wheel and winding
-the distaff with blue wool. As she sat down to her spinning, with her
-closely plaited fair hair falling into her lap, a novel thought suggested
-itself to Roden, namely, that this blond maiden might be a Desdemona
-dressed up as Marguerite, with the Moor concealed as her nurse.
-
-He watched with a strange sensation of unreality the whirring wooden
-wheel, the soft falling of the blue thread upon the floor, the dusky
-smoke-stained rafters of the room, wherefrom hung strings of onions and
-red peppers in gay festoons; the old negress, wrinkled as to her black
-face with busy absorption; the moving of the different creatures in
-the sombre depths of shadow. Now it was the glint of the corn-crake’s
-flame-like crest as he thrust an inquisitive head from his position on a
-shelf over the mantle. Now the white gleam of the raccoon’s sharp teeth
-as he grinned with an amiable persistency upon the room and its inmates.
-Now the old hounds grumbled uneasily in their sleep, or the Persian cats
-leaned against his legs with luxurious, undulating appeals to be caressed.
-
-“Why don’ yo’ sing, honey?” said Aunt Tishy; “yo’ know yo’ kyarn’ harf
-wuk ef yo’ don’ sing.”
-
-“Yes, do sing, Miss Virginia,” said Roden. “A nig--I mean a darky song,”
-he added, quickly.
-
-“What shall I sing, mammy?” questioned she.
-
-“Dat ’pen’s on whut kinder song de gen’leman wants.”
-
-“Well, what kind do you want?” she asked him.
-
-“Something characteristic,” he replied.
-
-Thus adjured, she sang to him, in a very rich contralto voice, the
-following ditty:
-
-    “Ole ark she reel, ole ark she rock,
-    Settin’ up on de mountain-top.
-        Ole ark a-movin’, movin’ chillun--
-        Ole ark a-movin, I thank Gord!
-
-    “Ole hyah, whut make yo’ eye so pop?
-    I thank Gord fuh tuh see how tuh hop!
-        Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
-        Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!
-
-    “Ole hyah, whut make yo’ legs so thin?
-    I thank Gord fuh tuh split ’gin de win’!
-        Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
-        Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!
-
-    “Ole hyah, whut make yo’ hade so bal’?
-    I thank Gord ben butt ’gin de wall!
-        Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
-        Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!”
-
-Before Roden could say anything, she rose and put aside her
-spinning-wheel, holding out to him her long shapely hand, which was
-covered with tan as with a brown glove to within about an inch of her
-homespun sleeve. “Good-night,” she said; “I’m sleepy. Father won’t be
-here now till tuh-morrer. I s’pec’ he slept at Cyarver’s. Everything’s
-ready--your barth an’ everything.”
-
-Thus dismissed, Roden took himself off to bed. As he dropped to sleep
-to the tune of “Ole ark a-movin’,” he was conscious of uncomfortable
-memories concerning haunted rooms in old Virginian mansions. Not that
-he believed in ghosts--Heaven forbid!--but some one might--some little
-nigger, you know--might play one a trick.
-
-He was roused suddenly and unpleasantly by three solemn raps on the door
-at his bed’s head.
-
-“Well--what is it?” he said, in an unnecessarily loud tone.
-
-“’Tis me--Aun’ Tishy,” replied an unmistakable voice. “Please come to de
-do’, sur, jess a minute.”
-
-He answered this appeal, opening the door cautiously an inch or two,
-whereupon she thrust into his hands a little white bundle.
-
-“Dis heah’s fo’ yo’ to war tuh-night. Marse Gawge he don’ war no
-night-shuts, and dey am none o’ th’ other Englishers lef’ none; so I
-jess stole you one o’ Miss Faginny’s. Don’ say nothin’ ’bout it, please,
-sur, ’case ef dar _is_ one thing Miss Faginny’s ’tic’lar ’bout, ’tis her
-clo’es.”
-
-Roden took the long white garment gingerly, as men lift a young baby,
-bade Aunt Tishy good-night, and closed the door. He then went to the fire
-and began to examine what that colossal personage had inferred to be
-“Miss Faginny’s night-shut.”
-
-It was a capacious arrangement of very thin linen, and superfine little
-frills of a like material--hardly the garment in which an overseer’s
-daughter would have wooed repose. The young man looked at it carefully
-and gravely from all points of view, then went and hung it over the
-mirror, and returning to bed, regarded it with the mute attention which
-he had before bestowed on the drab-colored Madonna. It was a dainty
-thing, probably a relic of some previous Englishman’s wife or daughter,
-and the rosy light from the handful of fresh cones which he had thrown
-on the fire stole in and out of its sheer folds caressingly.
-
-He left it hanging there, and the last thing he remembered that night was
-its gleam, as of a pretty ghost in the firelit dusk of the big room.
-
-
-
-
-II.
-
-
-He could have sworn that he had slept but a moment when a terrific
-squeaking and squealing, yelping and growling, under his windows, aroused
-him with sufficient abruptness.
-
-His first idea was that the “’coons and things” were “killin’ each other
-clean out,” after the fashion of Miss Virginia’s supposition in regard to
-the Scriptural beasts in the story of the ark.
-
-Looking out, however, he saw that a large black and white hog was being
-chased, nipped, barked at, and otherwise maltreated by the mastiff and
-the collie. The frightened beast rushed hither and thither, squealing
-and grunting, and the two dogs followed, falling over each other in the
-eagerness of pursuit. After a while the mad trio disappeared to the
-farther end of the long terrace.
-
-Dawn had just broken. The east was one deep even tone of mellow gold,
-translucent, palpitating. Over against it lay gray streamers as of a
-tattered banner. The morning-star seemed to spin with a cold blue glitter
-as of ice in the voluptuous saffron of its setting. A band of trees
-stood out against the vivid east, with bold relief of indigo leaves and
-branches, like a gigantic tracery of unknown hieroglyphics. Over field
-and lawn a white steam rose and melted slowly--blue hill and tawny meadow
-appearing and disappearing as the pearly masses rolled together or
-dissolved.
-
-Roden heard with supreme delight the confidential voice of a little
-nigger announcing through the key-hole (their favorite channel of
-communication) that his “trunks dun come.”
-
-He got with all speed through his ablutions, and, when his boxes were
-brought, into a well-worn shooting-coat and knickerbockers, determining
-as he laced his hob-nailed boots to “do” the farm thoroughly that
-morning, and devote the rest of the day to mountain-climbing and
-explorations generally.
-
-As he went out on the square portico at the front of the house he met
-Miss Herrick, again in her boy’s dress, leading the mastiff and the
-collie with either hand. She had evidently been to the rescue of the
-black and white hog, and both dogs had a sneaky appearance, as though
-they knew a flogging was in store for them.
-
-“Mornin’,” she said to Roden, with her grave directness of regard. “How’d
-you sleep?”
-
-Before he could reply, a voice, rising in long, wailing tones upon the
-chill air, interrupted them.
-
-“O-o-o-o Po!” it called; “O-o-o-o _Po_!” then a pause as if waiting for a
-reply. Then again, “Aw-w-w Po-po! Aw-w-w _Po_-po!”
-
-“It’s father callin’ Popo,” explained Virginia.
-
-“Who’s Popo? Another nigger?”
-
-“Yes,” briefly.
-
-“What does ‘Popo’ stand for? Napoleon?” questioned Roden, much interested.
-
-“No,” she said. “’F you wait an’ listen you’ll hear. Father always calls
-like that at first. ’F Po answers tuhecly he’ll jus’ stop. ’F he don’t
-answer, father’ll jus’ go on callin’ till he says th’ whole name.”
-
-[Illustration: “AW-W-W POPO!”]
-
-Roden listened with absorbed attention.
-
-“O-o-o-o Popo! Popo! Popo!” rang out the voice, with angry staccato
-insistence. “You Popo! Aw-w-w! you _Po_po!” Then, presently, “O-o-o-o!
-you Po-po-cat-e-petl!”
-
-“Good heavens!” said Roden, bursting into laughter. “Is that really the
-poor little devil’s name?”
-
-“Mh--mh,” said Virginia, with a nod of assent. “There was three of ’em
-born all to oncet. One’s called Popocatepetl, an’ one Iztaccihuatl, an’
-one Orizaba. We call ’em Popo, an’ Whattle, an’ Zabe.”
-
-“That triumvirate ought to rule something,” said Roden. “Could a nigger
-ever be President, Miss Virginia? What a lark it would be to speak of
-President Popocatepetl! What’s the other name?”
-
-“Page,” said Miss Herrick.
-
-“Page!” echoed the young Englishman--“_Page?_ why surely that name
-belongs to the ‘F.F.V.’s,’ doesn’t it?”
-
-“All the darkies took th’ name o’ th’ fam’lies they b’longed to after th’
-war,” she explained. “I had a cook here oncet called Faginia Herrick;
-she used to b’long to father ’fo’ th’ war.”
-
-“By gad!” was Roden’s sole remark. “By _gad_!” said he again.
-
-“_You_ needn’t say nothin’!” she exclaimed, breaking suddenly into her
-melodious laughter; “there’s two little right _black_ niggers at th’
-mill, an’ one’s called Prince Albert and th’ other Queen Victoria, ’n’ ’f
-you leave off th’ ‘Prince’ or th’ ‘Queen’ they won’t answer you, neether.”
-
-She was evidently delighted with his expression of face at this, and
-released the two dogs in order to indulge more freely in her mirthful
-mood. She sat down on the stone steps, letting her arms hang simply at
-her sides, and putting down her head, laughed into the hollow lap of her
-gray kirtle, as though confiding her surplus merriment to its care.
-
-It was at this moment that the overseer came into sight--a tall, gaunt
-man, with a beard that seemed flying away with his round head, after the
-fashion of a comet’s tail; little steely blue eyes drawing close to the
-bridge of his nose as though it magnetized them; long, crooked teeth, not
-unlike the palings in one of his own fences for tint and irregularity;
-and a wide-open square smile, like the smile of a Greek comic mask. He
-wore a waistcoat of as many hues as Joseph’s renowned garment, a blue
-cotton shirt, ginger-colored trousers tucked into heavy mud-crusted
-boots, and a straw hat, impossible to describe, tilted to the back of his
-head. In his arms he carried the little black-and-tan terrier which Roden
-remembered, and twisted its untrimmed ears while talking.
-
-“Howdy? howdy?” he remarked, genially. “My darter Faginia’s tole me ’bout
-you. Got all yo’ clo’es lef in Washin’ton? Hey? Got ’em this mornin’?
-You don’ sesso? Well! My darter Faginia says as how you’re goin’ in fur
-horse-racin’? That so? You don’ sesso? Well, what d’you think er my
-darter Faginia, anyhow? Darter, go ’n’ bring me some water; I’m mortal
-thirsty.” Then, as the girl disappeared, “Well, what d’you think er her?”
-
-“She seems to me very--very charming,” ventured Roden.
-
-“Well, sir, you ’ain’t got no more idea of th’ sweethearts that girl’s
-had--I mean would ’a’ had ’f I’d ’lowed it. The las’ one was Jim Murdoch,
-a hoop-pole man. But, sir”--here Mr. Herrick assumed a tone of the most
-pompous dignity--“but I will tole you, sir, as how my darter Faginia
-shall deceive _no_ retentions, _respecially_ from a hoop-pole man!”
-
-“A hoop-pole man?” said Roden.
-
-“That thar’s hit, sir, an’ I cert’n’y means what I says,” replied the
-overseer, relapsing again into his former slipshod easiness of speech and
-manner. “Consequently were, the beauty of the question air my darter
-Faginia won’t get married twel she gets a mighty good offer.”
-
-“I should say you were perfectly right,” assented Roden.
-
-“Well, yes, sir; I should sesso. I s’pose you ain’t married, air you?”
-
-“No. Do I look very like a married man?” said Roden, who continued to be
-amused. He thought the overseer almost as interesting as Virginia.
-
-“Well, no,” assented old Herrick, manipulating his abundant beard
-with an air of deep thought. “But the beauty of the question air, you
-kyarn’t al’uz tell. Them as looks the mostest married gen’ly ain’t. An’
-contrarywise, them as don’t, air--”
-
-“Married?” said Roden.
-
-“Well, considerbul, mostly,” said the overseer.
-
-Here Virginia returned with a gourd of water, keeping the quick-falling
-drops from her father’s not too immaculate attire while he drank by
-means of her skilfully hollowed hands.
-
-“Yo’ breakfas’ ’s ready,” she said over her shoulder to Roden. He went
-in, and found it to be a slight variation on the last night’s meal.
-There were some corn-meal cakes--batter cakes, Virginia called them--and
-miraculously cooked mutton-chops. A half-hour later the overseer appeared
-at the window to offer his services as guide over the farm.
-
-When Roden returned from his investigations it was one of the great clock
-in the hall, and the sky like a vast blue banner overhead.
-
-He went out on the “front porch,” and called to Herrick as he crossed
-“the yard,” with the little terrier at his heels. “Is there a good view
-from that hill just back of the house?” he asked.
-
-“Mos’ people goes fyar crazy over it,” said Herrick. “Hit’s a right
-rough climb to the top. Want tuh go up? Faginia kin show you. O-o-o-o-o
-Faginia! Faginia!”
-
-Virginia appeared, clad from throat to heels in a vast brown apron, her
-half-bare arms covered with flour, and her thick braids skewered across
-the top of her head with a big wooden knitting-needle.
-
-“Makin’ bread?” said her father. “Well, yo’ kin get yo’ mammy to finish
-that. Mr. Roden here he wants to go trapeezing up to th’ top o’ Peter’s
-Mountain. I tole him you could show him.”
-
-“All right,” she said, briefly; “but I kyarn’t walk: the Alderney heifer
-stepped on my foot this mornin’. I’ll ride if you like:” this last to
-Roden.
-
-“By all means,” he said; “but if you do not mind, I had rather walk.”
-
-“Of co’se,” she said, and disappeared again.
-
-“The beauty of the question air,” said her sire, looking proudly after
-her, “that gyrl kin ride like a Injun.”
-
-“She seems to do everything well,” said Roden, with a pleased
-recollection of those mutton-chops which Aunt Tishy had confided to him
-“Miss Faginia done herself.”
-
-“She cert’n’y does,” said Herrick, and after making some unique excuse
-disappeared also.
-
-Miss Herrick appeared a few moments later, again clad in her boyish
-attire, and mounted upon a fidgety little roan mare. She had slung a
-wicker basket from the saddle, and Roden heard a merry clink as of glass
-kissing silver when the mare sidled about.
-
-“That’s a clever-looking little nag,” said Roden. “Is she yours?”
-
-“Nuck,” said Virginia. “I reckon she’s yours; she goes with the place.”
-
-“I didn’t see her this morning,” Roden said, somewhat puzzled.
-
-“No; she’d gone to the shop to get a new shoe; that’s why. I reckon
-you’ll name her over.”
-
-“Why?” said Roden. It seemed to him he had never put that monosyllabic
-question so often before in the entire course of his life.
-
-“’Cause it ain’t very pretty,” Virginia explained. “Father named
-her--it’s Pokeberry.”
-
-“Oh, I don’t know,” said Roden, laughing. “I rather fancy it. It’s
-uncommon, to say the least. I don’t think I’ll change it.”
-
-“Well, there’s two others I _know_ you’ll change,” she asserted. “They’re
-two carriage-horses, an’ they’re named Peckerwood an’ Hoppergrass.”
-
-“Capital!” said Roden, laughing again. “Change them?--not much! Shall we
-start now?”
-
-It was a perfect day--perfect as only a day in Southern winter-tide
-can be. The air was radiant, wine-like, while with a still further
-suggestiveness little glittering insects spun around and around in the
-sunlight like the particles of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic.
-The roads, dried in some sort by the steady wind of the past night
-and morning, were mellowed to a dull orange in lieu of their former
-startling crimson. Infinite tones of faded browns and grays wrapped wold
-and hill-side. The sky, of an intense metallic pallor, was covered with
-gauze-like masses of wind-torn cirri. As they went on, a sycamore thrust
-its bone-white arms before a dark hollow in the mountain-side, reminding
-one of a skeleton guarding the mouth of a cavern, where during its life
-it had concealed some treasure. The harsh call of crows, beginning in the
-far east, passed in _crescendo_ above their heads, and died away as the
-heavy birds flew westward.
-
-Virginia, apparently unconscious of his presence, was watching Roden
-narrowly as he walked at her side. Owing to that peculiar faculty with
-which only women are endowed, she was enabled thus to observe him while
-seemingly absorbed in the sun-shot vista of the road before them. He
-had taken off his coat, as the increasing sunlight and the exertion
-of walking had overheated him, and his flannel shirt expressed damply
-the splendid modelling of his supple body. She noticed how the sunburn
-stopped in a line about his throat, the fair flesh showing beneath with a
-girlish whiteness, as is often the case with very strong men.
-
-“It’s a heap whiter than mine,” thought Virginia.
-
-“I wish you’d sing,” he said, suddenly. “Will you?”
-
-“A nigger song?” said the girl, with a growing intuition in regard to his
-wishes. She then sang as follows:
-
-    “Bright sunny mornin’
-      Nigger feel good,
-    Axe on he shoulder
-      Goin’ fur de wood.
-    Little piece er hoe-cake
-      ’Thout any fat;
-    White folks quoil
-      ’Case he eat all o’ dat.
-        Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter,
-          Hop ’long, Peter’s son!
-        Hoppergrass sittin’ on a sweet-e’ayter vine,
-          Big tuckey-gorbler come up behine,
-          Hop ’long, Peter’s son.
-
-    “One bright mornin’ John did go
-    Down in de medder fur ter mow;
-    Ez he mowed acrost de fiel’
-    Great big sarpint bit him on de heel.
-    He juck it up right in he hand,
-    And back he went tuh Maury Ann;
-    ‘Oh, Maury Ann, oh, don’ you see,
-    One ole sarpint done bit me!’
-        Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter,
-          Hop ’long, Peter’s son.”
-
-Roden was delighted with her rich, reed-noted voice. She imitated the
-negroes’ tones to perfection. The inflection and intonation were without
-fault.
-
-“How well you do it!” he said. “It’s really awfully pretty. Can’t you
-give me another?”
-
-She sang him one or two more, and ended by repeating in a singsong
-fashion a little rhyme which convulsed him:
-
-    “Mars’r had a leetle dorg,
-      An’ he was three parts houn’;
-    Ev’y time he strike a trail
-      He bounce up off de groun’.”
-
-“They make up all these things, of course?” he asked her.
-
-“Oh yes,” said Virginia: “they’re awful fond of ‘makin’ hymes,’ as they
-call it. Here’s another:
-
-    “Ef I had a needle an’ thread,
-      Big ez I could sew,
-    I’d stitch my ’Liza to my side,
-      An’ off down de road I’d go.”
-
-He amused himself by trying to sing some of the various ditties after
-her, but, as they began to ascend the mountain, found that he needed all
-the breath at his command.
-
-The dead leaves, sodden with the winter rains, closed in masses about
-the feet of Pokeberry, and of the young Englishman as he tramped
-untiringly at her muzzle. The shaft of a young pine rose slender and
-virginal from the lace-work of bare trees, its plumy crest breaking with
-lucent emerald the sea-blue reach of sky. A cardinal-bird flashed, with
-unconscious contrast, against the neutral tints of the woody distance,
-meshed as it were in the multitudinous glittering of sunlit twigs. From
-the leaf-stirred silence, far in the heart of the forest, came the
-urgent rat-a-plan of a woodpecker. Dead leaves occasionally, loosened
-by the fitful wind, fell, turning slowly in their descent, now between
-the startled ears of Pokeberry, themselves most leaf-like, now upon
-Virginia’s skirt or hat, as she sat wordless, listlessly supporting the
-reins upon her knee.
-
-They came presently to a narrow mountain stream, clear and brown, over
-the sunken leaves. The sunlight through the swaying tendrils of a wild
-grape-vine overhead sent dim but sharply defined shadows wavering back
-and forth over its bright surface, as though, being spiritualized,
-they breathed with a new life. A corn-crake, moving cautiously among
-the withered water-grasses, thrust forward its gay crest and peered
-inquisitively at them, whereupon the collie cleared the brook with an
-arching bound, and set forth in mad pursuit of this new quarry. The crake
-at once rose into the blue lift, with the harsh, derisive cry from which
-it takes its name.
-
-After a while they came upon a log-cabin set in a little patch of cleared
-ground. From a small window close against the roof flaunted a mud-stained
-curtain of sacking. The red clay marks responded to a certain morbidness
-in Virginia, by suggesting the wiping of bloody hands upon the coarse
-stuff. There had been a murder some years before on this very mountain,
-and thoughts of a grewsome sort were easily called forth in her when
-remembering. A few black-and-white pigs of the genus “nigger” hurtled
-squealing down the hill-side, pursued by the indefatigable collie, while
-a little fawn-colored child, with whity-brown hair and purplish-white
-eyes, stood in the door and apparently bit its thumb at them.
-
-“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” quoted Roden, cheerily, whereat the
-little darky fled, with a shrill “Yah!” of mingled delight and terror,
-into the bacon-perfumed room beyond.
-
-They were now stopped by some draw-bars, which passed, they found
-themselves ascending a steep incline sown with large stones, as though
-Jove and his giants might have had a sharp encounter just in that spot.
-But having gained the top of the bluff, they came upon a view at which
-Roden stood and stared in silent admiration. It seemed to him that he
-had never before so entirely realized the ball-like character of the
-earth. It seemed now to be swinging like a magician’s globe, imprisoned
-in another of larger size, which was hollowed from some marvellous,
-million-colored gem.
-
-The air had changed suddenly from balmy warmth to a strange damp
-keenness, while the sky, which had cleared on their way up, was strewn
-from east to west with the same woolly clouds which had at first covered
-it. All above them was a lustrous monotone of gray, brightening towards
-the east into a pale daffodil, and farther towards the south into a lurid
-orange. From south to west a band of vivid violet-blue stretched solidly,
-cleft here and there with wedges of pale light slanting in regular order,
-like the bayonets of a vast army marching eastward.
-
-“That,” said Virginia, indicating the gorgeous phenomenon, “means rain.”
-
-“Oh, I think not,” said Roden, carelessly.
-
-“Very well,” said Miss Herrick.
-
-The wind blew ever stronger and stronger from the north, shifting
-suddenly to the north-east. Virginia felt a heavy splash of water upon
-her hand. She said nothing, but held it out to Roden in silence, and at
-the same moment the wind, scolding like an old hag who has been deprived
-by some adventurous urchin of her dinner, bore down upon them.
-
-“Never mind,” said Roden, “we are only about a quarter of a mile from the
-top.”
-
-“Won’t you put on your coat now?” said Virginia, blinded by the blowing
-of her hair into her eyes.
-
-He replied that he did not feel the need of it, and strode on a little
-ahead. The wind sent his shirt in fine ripples across his back. One could
-distinctly see the muscles at work beneath the flexible skin. Strength,
-above all things, was what this little barbarian admired, and she saw it
-now in a perfection which filled her with unconscious satisfaction.
-
-“My! couldn’t he double that braggin’ Joe Scott up!” she told herself.
-“Whew! I’d like to see somebody make him right mad. Couldn’t he lick
-’em!”
-
-As they neared the summit the gale became more furious. Roden was obliged
-to lead the thoroughly frightened mare, and Virginia’s long hair,
-becoming unbound, whipped with the sting of a lash across his face.
-She recaptured and held it firmly with one hand, while he, furtively
-observing it, thought it must be at least two yards in length. She
-assumed a new phase in his eyes, wrapped thus in her plenteous tresses.
-A certain boyish look, transmitted to her through the medium of the
-short locks about her brow, had vanished completely. She looked like
-some mountain Godiva hidden all as in a banner of cloth of gold. Roden
-wondered if such marvellous hair was a characteristic of Southern women.
-
-They came at last to the one stunted apple-tree which crowned the noble
-crest of the mountain, with an effect as bathetic as the scalp-lock of
-an Indian brave. The wind screamed through the gnarled ground-kissing
-branches with the sound of a gale through cordage. Pokeberry squatted
-ignominiously in the fierce hurly, and put back her nervous ears, while
-Virginia swung from the saddle. Once on the ground, she found that to
-keep the perpendicular was a matter of some skill. She put one arm around
-a mass of the tangled branches and looked up at Roden with a laugh, which
-was seized and dashed down the steep declivity or ever it reached his
-ears. He in the mean time having tethered the mare securely, resumed his
-coat, and unbinding his covert-coat from the saddle, offered to help
-the girl on with it. She looked at him in evident surprise, but made
-no resistance. As she loosened the branches in order to put her arms
-into the sleeves, which were whirling wildly, with an air of reckless
-intoxication, a sharp gust blew her, coat and all, directly into Roden’s
-arms.
-
-He laughed, disentangling himself as best he might from the wet bondage
-of her heavy locks, but she, reddening vividly through all her clear,
-sun-browned skin, gave her attention to the garment that he held. It
-seemed to her a strange thing that he should offer to lend it. She had
-been on rainy expeditions with many men, both English and Virginian,
-while none that she could remember had ever before offered to protect her
-in such wise from the inclemency of her native heavens.
-
-She looked down a little consciously at the weather-stained tan-color of
-the little coat. She felt that it would be an insult to suggest to so
-mighty a pedestrian the idea of taking cold; at the same time she was
-afraid that such would be the memento he would bear away with him from
-the top of Peter’s Mountain. As for herself, she was as accustomed to
-wind and rain as one of the big oxeye daisies in her own fields.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE TOP OF PETER’S MOUNTAIN.]
-
-“There’s some sandwiches an’ a glass in that basket,” she said, or rather
-shrieked, to Roden. He went to get them, tacking through the stiff wind
-with much dexterity, and they partook of thin slices of Aunt Tishy’s
-bread and Virginian ham with a heroic disregard of the downpour. All at
-once they were confronted by a small ebon figure, hatless and breathless.
-
-“_Popo!_” said Miss Herrick; “what in the name o’ sense are you doin’
-here?”
-
-“Oh, Miss Faginia, Miss Faginia,” howled the little black, “de lightnin’
-dun gone thoo Marse Johnson’s house an’ kill he an’ he horg! An’ I wuz so
-skeered ’bout you I jess took out an’ run up de mounting to see ef you
-wuz all right.”
-
-“Well, I am,” said his mistress. “You pore little thing, how wet you are!
-Come and get here under these branches.”
-
-The faithful Popocatepetl came and crouched on his heels at her side. He
-was drenched to the skin, and his dark hide showed in patches through his
-shirt of some thin white stuff, which elsewhere puffed out in irregular
-blisters, like the wet linen in a washer-woman’s tub. From a strange
-freak of nature, not unusual in these Virginian mountains, his knotty
-wool was of a pale tan-color. It is a mistake to think that the little
-negro perpetually grins. Nothing absolutely could have been more full of
-woe and resignation than the expression of the young Popo as he watched
-with Pokeberry the ceaseless flood that swept over hill and valley.
-
-Although comparatively sheltered, there still escaped through the tangled
-apple-boughs moisture sufficient to prove extremely unpleasant. The large
-drops fell heavy and monotonous, some into the furry hollows of the
-mare’s flexile ears, causing her to toss her head with a swift impatience
-of movement that set the little metal buckles on her head-gear tinkling
-faintly, some upon Roden’s breast and hands, some upon the uncovered head
-and cheeks of the girl at his side. She tossed her head once or twice
-with a close reproduction of Pokeberry’s impulsive gestures.
-
-The surrounding mountains were by this time entirely blotted from sight
-by the lead-colored sheets of wind-urged rain. The branches of the trees
-on the slopes below them seemed living creatures, who, frantic with
-alarm, tugged and twisted to free themselves from their native boles,
-and to flee before the ruffian wind that assaulted them. Blown leaves,
-like troops of frightened birds, were driven past in gusts. Not a sound
-was to be heard save the ceaseless hiss of the rain on the hard ground,
-the creaking of the tortured trees, and the fluctuating roar of the wind
-above all else. Pokeberry, cowed and shivering, gazed wistfully down at
-the swimming field below.
-
-The darkness had increased palpably within the last five minutes, and the
-wind, raging downward through the stems of the tall pines on the eastern
-slope of the mountain, made a sound like to the angry breathing of some
-giant through his locked teeth.
-
-“That is almost wolfish,” said Roden.
-
-“There _was_ wolves in these mountains when my father was a little boy,”
-she responded.
-
-Darker clouds seemed to be ever rolling up from the east, veined with
-glittering threads of lightning, which pierced the irregular masses on
-all sides like the fronds of an immense leaf. The trees on the slopes,
-still wind-swept, seemed anon pale with terror or dark with dread as
-their light and dark leaves were alternately tossed upward. Over against
-the west was a dull citrine glare, like the smoke that overhangs a
-battle-field on a sunlit day, reflected here and there in the slimy soil
-and rain-roughened waters of a stream some way beneath them.
-
-Suddenly Virginia turned and swung out of Roden’s coat with one of her
-swift movements. “Please put it on,” she said to him.
-
-“Why, no,” he said; “I don’t want it. I’m perfectly comfortable. I don’t
-know why I brought it--unless from a happy inspiration in regard to you,”
-he added, pleasantly. She turned from him, and stooping, wrapped the
-shivering Popo in it.
-
-“They feel the cole so!” she said to Roden, standing erect again. “An’ I
-never wrop up.” Roden did not know whether to laugh or to swear.
-
-When the rain had abated somewhat, and they returned to Caryston, he told
-himself, as he soothed his inner man with some excellent Scotch whiskey,
-that he “really rather liked it in the girl; but--d--n the little
-nigger!--that was my pet coat!”
-
-
-
-
-III.
-
-
-Roden was the younger son of an Englishman of title. He was also what
-is sometimes graphically described as being _sans le sou_. It was his
-intention to try stud-farming in Virginia. No better horseman than Roden
-ever put boot in stirrup. He had, as an old pad-groom once remarked, “a
-genus for osses.” It was a mania, a fad of the most pronounced type, with
-him. No woman’s eye had ever possessed for him half the charm that did
-the full orbs of his favorite mare, Bonnibel, as she gazed lustrously
-upon him over her well-filled manger. No sheen of woman’s hair had ever
-vied, in his opinion, with the satin flanks of Bonnibel. What was it to
-love a woman? Was it half the zest, the delight, of feeling a good horse
-between one’s knees, what time the welcome cry of “Gone away!” makes
-glad delirium in one’s veins, while the music of the spotted darlings
-thrills air and soul? Roden would bluntly and unpoetically have informed
-you that you were a “duffer” had you attempted to argue the point. He had
-never cared much for women, either collectively or as individuals. They
-had perhaps played too small a part in his life. “Egad, sir!” his father
-had cried to him one day in a fit of anger, “you’ll grow up with a pair
-of legs like pot-hooks!”
-
-Mr. Herrick informed him, on the second day after his arrival, that “the
-beauty of the question were, he cert’n’y did have a mighty good foothold
-on a hawse.”
-
-It was on that day also that most of the horses arrived from New
-York--Bonnibel among them. She was as beautiful a daughter as Norseman
-ever sired. Deep of girth, clean of limb, broad of loin, with splendid
-oblique shoulders, bossed with sinew and muscle which quivered with
-restrained power beneath the silky, supple hide; a small compact head
-with ample front, over which the sensitive leaf-like ears kept restless
-guard; great limpid eyes, a crest like a rainbow, and quarters to have
-lifted Leander clean over the Hellespont. In color she was a rich brown,
-touched with tan on muzzle and flanks, while the slight floss of mane and
-tail had also flecks of gold towards the ends, like those in the locks of
-some dark-haired women. Like her great-granddam, Fleur-de-Lis, she stood
-full sixteen hands, but was neither leggy nor light of bone.
-
-“May I give her an apple?” said Virginia, as she turned her slow, dark
-look from Bonnibel to her master. That sagacious damosel was already
-reaching after the coveted golden ball in the girl’s hand, with cajoling
-little movements of her soft nose. Having obtained permission, Miss
-Herrick threw one arm over the mare’s graceful crest and presented her
-with the apple--one of those renowned Albemarle pippins on which no duty
-is demanded by England’s gracious queen.
-
-Bonnibel ate it with evident participation in her sovereign’s good taste,
-rubbing her handsome head against the girl’s arm with an almost cat-like
-softness of caress.
-
-“I don’ s’pose any one ever rides her but you?” said Virginia, with a
-suggestion of wistfulness in her low voice.
-
-“Well, no,” said Roden; “only the lad who gives her her gallops. She is
-as kind as a kitten, but rather hot-headed and excitable. Why do you ask?
-Would you like to ride her?”
-
-“Yes, of co’se I would,” said the girl, calmly; “but you needn’t bother;
-I know how Englishmen are ’bout their horses. Some time, if the boy as
-rides her gets sick, if you’ll let me I’ll show you whether I kin ride or
-no.”
-
-“Your father says you ride like an Indian,” said Roden.
-
-She moved her shoulders beneath her loose gray jacket with something very
-like a shrug. “I don’t bleeve father ever saw a Injun in his life,” she
-remarked. “You wait; I’ll show you.”
-
-“I don’t doubt you have a good seat,” said Roden, pleasantly; he took
-particular pains to speak pleasantly always to Herrick and his daughter.
-“But the chief thing with a horse like Bonnibel is the hands. How are you
-about that?”
-
-“How do you mean?” she said, puzzled.
-
-“Why, have you nice light hands? Are you gentle in handling your mount?”
-
-“Oh,” she said, with the comprehensive indrawing of the breath which he
-was beginning to recognize as one of her chief characteristics. “You mean
-am I kind about yerkin’ ’em. Well, I’ll tell you: I never pulled any
-rougher on a horse’s mouth in my life than I’d like anybody to pull on
-mine.”
-
-“I wish some of my friends would take that for their motto,” said Roden.
-“I’m thinking I’ll let you ride Bonnibel some time, if _she_ will.” He
-ended with a smile.
-
-It was not more than a week afterwards that he had occasion to require
-Virginia’s services. One of the other horses, a rank, irritable brute,
-called Usurper, had jammed Roden’s shoulder quite severely against the
-side of the box, and Bonnibel’s own especial groom had been sent back to
-New York to bring on two new-comers but just arrived from England.
-
-“I don’t think she’ll stand a riding-skirt,” he said, rather doubtfully,
-as the beautiful beast was led out, reaching after the reins with her
-supple neck.
-
-“I ain’t goin’ to ride her with one,” said Virginia.
-
-He then saw that Bonnibel was saddled with a man’s saddle, and the next
-moment the girl was astride of the mare, the reins gathered skilfully
-into her long brown fingers, head erect, and hands well down--lithe,
-beautiful with the beauty of some sunburnt, mountain-bred boy.
-
-As Bonnibel felt the strange touch upon her mouth she wheeled, rearing a
-little, and the girl’s soft hat was shaken from her head. Roden wondered
-if he had ever seen anything prettier than the sunlight on the young
-Virginian’s sun-like curls, and the glossy hide of Bonnibel.
-
-The mare was going quieter now, mincing along and picking up her feet
-after a fashion much in vogue among equine coquettes. She was beginning
-to like the feel of the light, firm hands, and to be sensible of the
-masterly pressure of the strong young knees upon her mighty shoulders.
-
-“By Jove! what a graceful seat the little witch has got!” Roden said
-to himself with sufficient admiration. “And hands as steady as an old
-stager!--Gad!” This exclamation, breaking forth at first from an impulse
-of terror, ended in the relieved announcement, “That was fine; as I live
-it was!”
-
-Bonnibel had bolted, going straight for a snake-fence at the bottom of
-the hill on which the stables were builded. To stop her was, he knew,
-impossible; to turn her aside on the slippery turf, more unreliable than
-usual with the spring rains, would have been culpably perilous. The fence
-just here was fortunately not very high, but Bonnibel had one serious
-fault. When excited, she had a way of going at her fences head down,
-after a fashion calculated to break her own neck, and certainly that of
-the person who rode her. He saw the girl sit well down in the saddle, run
-the bit through the mare’s mouth, and bring her head up, showing her the
-leap in front with a skill he could not himself have rivalled; and Roden
-was no tyro. Bonnibel cleared the rails in gallant form, and Virginia
-then took her for a canter around the field beyond.
-
-She came up to Roden, ten minutes later, with flushed cheeks and her
-great eyes brilliant.
-
-“If she had a-hurt herself then,” she said, flinging herself
-tempestuously to the ground, “I’d ’a’ got one o’ th’ grooms to kill me.”
-She turned and showered the mare’s sleek crest with kisses, then tossed
-the reins to Roden, and ran swiftly out of sight towards the house. He
-thought her the strangest creature he had ever seen.
-
-In the mean time the days wore on. Roden was more than pleased with his
-Virginian venture. He had three excellent stables building, his gees were
-all in first-rate condition, and his prospect for the provincial races
-more than fair.
-
-Virginia now rode Bonnibel every day. There sprung up between the two,
-mare and woman, one of those mutual attachments as rare in reality as
-they are common in fiction. Virginia could catch the nervous beast when
-it meant danger to others to come within reach of her iron-shod heels.
-Virginia seemed to murmur a strange language into her slender ears, as
-certain in its effects as the whisper of the Roumanians to their horses.
-For Virginia would Bonnibel become as a spring lamb for meekness, or one
-of her own mountain-streams for impetuosity. It afforded Roden a strange
-pleasure to watch the relations which existed between this beautiful
-savage maiden and his beautiful savage mare.
-
-On the other hand, he found the girl more than useful to him. She knew
-all the owners of good horse-flesh in the surrounding counties. She
-explored strange woods with him, while it came to be an understood thing
-that every day she should go with him on his long tramps. She marched
-sturdily at his side through brake and brier. She had no skirts to tear,
-no under-draperies of lace to draggle. She was always good-tempered and
-never tired.
-
-It was one day about the middle of March that they stood together on a
-windblown hill-side. A dark-blue sky gleamed overhead, set thickly with
-clouds of a vivid, opaque white, like the figures on antique Etruscan
-ware. The chain of distant hills clasped the tawny winter earth, as a
-violet ribbon might clasp the dusky body of an Eastern slave. So like was
-the pale horizon to a sunlit sea that the white gleam of a wood-dove’s
-wing across it suggested instantly to them both the idea of a sail.
-
-There was a sound, now far, now near, vague, intermittent, made by the
-rushing of the wind through the dry grass in the fields. The forlorn
-discord of the voices of spring lambs reached their ears, together with
-the reassuring monotone of the ewes. A sudden commotion among the flock
-caused Virginia to run suddenly forward, shading her eyes with her hand.
-
-“It’s that narsty Erroll dorg again!” she said, wrathfully. “He’ll jess
-run those sheep to death.”
-
-“What dog?” said Roden, coming up beside her. “By Jove! it’s a German
-sleuth-hound,” he added. “I’m afraid he’ll play the deuce with your
-father’s sheep, Miss Virginia.”
-
-“He will so, ef he ain’t stopped,” she said, gloomily. “I didn’t know the
-Errolls had come back to Windemere. Plague gone him! Look there, now!”
-
-Just here came the shrill sound of a dog-whistle, then a clear voice
-calling, “Laurin! Laurin! Laurin, I say!”
-
-They saw a girl on a chestnut horse, galloping towards the terrified,
-bleating sheep. She gained upon the great hound, came up with him, swung
-from her saddle, and caught him by the collar. After a moment or two she
-began to walk towards them through the weeds and brambles which overgrew
-the hill-side. As she came nearer they could see that she held a lamb
-beneath one arm. A tall, slight girl in a dark habit, with dark curls
-escaping about her forehead from her very correct pot hat. The hound
-followed meekly. “I am so very, very sorry,” she called out, while yet
-some distance off. “I am afraid my dog has hurt this poor little thing.”
-As she came closer Roden saw that there was blood on the lamb, and on the
-dog’s dripping jaws.
-
-“Please look at it,” the girl said, wofully. “I’m afraid nothing will
-ever break him. He will have to be sent away. They are your father’s
-sheep, aren’t they, Miss Herrick--you are Miss Herrick?”
-
-Virginia lifted her full look to the stranger’s face. “Yes, that’s my
-name,” she answered. “Why don’t you muzzle him, or keep him chained?
-He’ll get shot some day.”
-
-The girl looked sadly down at her huge pet. “I’m afraid he will,” she
-said, gently. “I wish he wouldn’t do it. I can’t feel the same to him.
-Ah, you beast!”--this last to the recreant Laurin, in a tone of wrath. In
-the mean time Roden had finished his examination of the lamb.
-
-“I don’t think it’s serious,” he said, kindly; “but it will have to be
-looked after a bit. Miss Herrick here will doctor it successfully, I’ve
-no doubt.”
-
-“Oh, couldn’t I have it?” said the girl, eagerly. “I’m such a good hand
-at curing things. Do let me have it, Miss Herrick.”
-
-“Take it if you want it,” said Virginia.
-
-“But cannot you have it sent?” said Roden, as the girl held out her
-hand for the lamb. “I am afraid you will get blood all over your habit,
-Miss--” He had not meant to fish for her name, and stopped abruptly.
-
-She looked at him with a soft smiling of lips and eyes. “My name is
-Erroll--Mary Erroll,” she said. “And thank you, I would rather take it.
-Laurin will follow me now. _Ah_, you beast!”
-
-“You will have to put it down until you mount,” said Roden, laughing a
-little in spite of himself, as the old lines about Mary and her little
-lamb crossed his mind.
-
-“Oh no, I wouldn’t put it down,” she said, hastily. “Miss Herrick will
-hold it for me, won’t you?--and if you would be so kind as to mount me,
-Mr. Roden.”
-
-“You know my name?” said Roden, as he took the slight foot, arched like
-Bonnibel’s crest, into his hand.
-
-“Why, who in the neighborhood does not?” she said, settling herself in
-the saddle. “Not to know you would be to argue one’s self very much
-unknown in this neighborhood. Now give me the lamb. Thank you so much.
-Come, Laurin. Good-by, Miss Herrick.” She placed the lamb carefully
-against her side, whistled to the hound, and started off at a round trot.
-Her figure, in its trim Quorn-cloth habit, came into bold relief against
-the vivid sky. He watched admiringly the long supple waist as it swayed
-to the motion of the horse, the bold graceful sweep of the shoulders,
-and high carriage of the small head. He had read so much concerning the
-gathers and gilt braid of the Virginian horsewoman that it struck him
-as something entirely strange, the fact that Miss Mary Erroll should
-wear a neat, well-cut habit, and a chimney-pot hat. He also recalled
-that her saddle was all that it should be, and that instead of the
-gold-and-ivory-handled cutting whip which he had been led to expect, she
-carried a light but sturdy crop.
-
-“By Jove! how she rides!” he said to himself.
-
-“Don’t I ride as well?” came the soft monotone of Virginia at his ear.
-
-He answered her, still with his eyes on the vanishing figure of the girl
-in the Quorn-cloth habit. “You ride like an Arab,” he said. “She rides
-like--like--like an Englishwoman.”
-
-“You don’t think I ride as well,” said Virginia, in an indescribable
-voice, turning away. She was filled with an unreasoning, unchristian,
-wholly uncivilized desire to mount Bonnibel, overtake, and spatter
-Miss Mary Erroll with as much mud as possible. Suddenly she turned and
-came back to Roden. “I--I--I s’pose you think a gyrl oughtn’ to ride
-straddle?” she said, with an unusual hint of timidity in her rich tones.
-
-“Oh, I don’t know that there’s any harm in it,” he said, carelessly.
-Again she stood away from him. A feeling of utterly unreasonable anger
-and rebellion was swelling in her heart and straining her throat. Was it
-against Miss Mary Erroll or against Roden? She could not herself have
-told. One fact was entirely apparent to her: he did not deem what she did
-or did not do things worthy his consideration.
-
-“I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel!” she said, passionately, between her
-locked teeth, as she went blindly on through the furze and briers. “I
-bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel--straddle or no straddle!”
-
-It was not until three days later that she found out from her father the
-fact of Roden’s having been to call (nominally) upon the lamb of Miss
-Mary Erroll.
-
-“The beauty of the question air,” ended that modern Solomon, as he filled
-his white clay pipe--“The beauty of the question air, that thar gyrl
-cert’n’y is goin’ to lead that young fellar a darnce. They say she’s got
-it down ter a fine p’int.”
-
-“What?” said Virginia, curtly.
-
-“Why, coquettin’--hyah! hyah! _That’s_ the darnce she’ll lead _him_. ’N’
-they sez, moresomever, as how th’ English fellars takes to her like the
-partridges ter th’ woods--plague ’em!--’count o’ her w’arin’ boots like
-a man, an’ skirts at harf-marst when she goes out on hawseback. Lawd! I
-cert’n’y do ’spise ter see a woman hitched onter th’ side uv er hawse
-like a pecker-wood a-stickin’ ter rer tree-trunk!”
-
-Virginia came and leaned on the back of his chair, picking some bits of
-straw from his many-hued waistcoat. “You don’t think it’s any harm for a
-girl to ride straddle, do you, father?” she said, slowly.
-
-“Harm!” said old Herrick, twisting about in his chair to look up at
-her--“_harm!_” He set his pipe firmly between his teeth, and pushed out
-his underlip with an expression of entire scorn. “Is there any harm in
-a hoppergrass hoppin’?” he questioned. “G’long! don’ talk none o’ yo’
-nonsense ter me!”
-
-This, however, did not entirely satisfy her on the question in point.
-
-Roden was not a little astonished to meet her, as she returned from
-giving Bonnibel her morning gallop, in a very fair imitation of Miss Mary
-Erroll’s habit, and an old pot hat that had evidently belonged to some
-one of the previous Englishmen.
-
-“Why, what a swell you are!” he said, pleasantly, joining her. “But how
-does Bonnibel like the change?”
-
-“It don’t make any diff’r’nce how she likes it,” said Miss Herrick,
-curtly, adding hastily, with a swift change of manner, “She r’ared once
-or twice at first, but that’s all.” Then she stopped suddenly, and
-stepped around in front of him. “How--how does it look--really?” she
-said, with a shamefaced and comprehensive downward glance at her skirt.
-
-“It looks awfully well,” Roden assured her--“awfully well. How tall and
-strong you are, Miss Virginia!”
-
-“I’ve got a right good mustle,” she said, showing her handsome teeth in
-one of her rare and vivid smiles. “Mornin’: I’ve got a heap to do.”
-
-Roden watched her as she stalked away with her splendid swinging stride,
-thinking vaguely of her beauty and its absolute waste in her position.
-“She’ll marry some ‘po’ white’ who talks as much like a nigger as her own
-father,” he thought, half regretfully; “have a lot of children, and end
-by smoking a pipe--ugh!” He then went to call, for the third time that
-week, upon Mary Erroll. The visit ended by their going for a ride, and
-just as they neared the gates of Caryston a smart shower came pelting
-down the eastern slope of Peter’s Mountain.
-
-“Do come in and wait until this is over,” he said, urgently, bending from
-his horse to open the long gray gate, which was now proudly supported on
-strong hinges. “Miss Herrick will chaperon us.”
-
-“Why, of course I’ll come,” she said, amazed, in her Southern freedom,
-that he should pause to question the propriety of her so doing. At one
-o’clock in the day, and with her little darky henchman mounting guard,
-what possible objection could any one find? She ran up the stone steps
-with a pretty clattering of her boots, and Roden threw wide the doors
-of the great hall. She was delighted with everything; got on a chair to
-examine the great moose-head; struck some chords on an old harp that she
-discovered in a dark corner; made friends with the collie and one of the
-Persian cats, who came purring up from the recess of a distant window;
-looked over his collection of curious weapons; and on finding that he
-had spent some years of his life in Mexico, questioned him about his
-experiences there with a pretty assumption of almost motherly interest.
-
-“Can’t you say some--some Mexican?” she said. “I should so like to hear
-it.”
-
-“I love you, most beautiful of maidens,” said Roden, lazily, in the
-Mexican patois.
-
-“What does that mean? It sounds enchanting.”
-
-“It means enchantment.”
-
-She leaned suddenly forward and looked at him with her bright, soft,
-childishly chaste eyes. “Mr. Roden,” she said, sweetly, “if I were not
-very sure you were only laughing, I should accuse you of trying to
-ensnare my simple country soul with a spurious sentimentality.”
-
-Roden roused himself from his lounging position in one of the big hall
-chairs with a jerk. An expression half of amusement, half of guilt,
-crossed his handsome sunburnt face. “You are very unjust,” he said. “I am
-certainly not laughing, and I couldn’t be sentimental if I tried.”
-
-“Oh! oh!” she said, with her pretty Southern accent. “How very, how
-rudely unflattering!”
-
-“I meant I would not have to try to be so--with you,” said Roden,
-dexterously mendacious.
-
-“How very, how rudely untruthful!”
-
-They were here told by Popocatepetl that “lunch dun rade-y.”
-
-Roden’s meals were generally presided over by Virginia, and she came
-forward to meet him now with a little silver dish of apples in one hand,
-evidently utterly ignorant of the presence of Mary Erroll. She stopped
-short, half-way across the room. A shadow as definite and sombre as the
-shadow from a brilliant cloud upon a laughing grass-field in May settled
-over her face.
-
-“I’ll have to fix another place,” she said, curtly, and turned her back
-upon them in order to do so.
-
-Miss Erroll expressed herself charmed with her luncheon. She ate bread
-and honey with all the gusto of the queen of nursery lore, taking off her
-riding-gloves and showing long, flower-like hands, that were reflected as
-whitely in the polished mahogany of the round table as the pale primroses
-which adorned its centre.
-
-Virginia moved about noiselessly. All at once she stopped beside Roden,
-and put one hand heavily on the back of his chair. He looked up in some
-surprise. Her eyes were flashing under her bent brows, like the “brush
-fires” of her native State under a night horizon.
-
-“I’ll wait on _you_,” she said, in a smothered voice--“I say I’ll wait on
-_you_, _but I won’t wait on her_.” She dashed down his napkin, which she
-had lifted from the floor, and strode with her swift, noiseless movements
-to the door.
-
-“Virginia!” said Roden, aghast--“Virginia!”
-
-“I don’t care!” cried the girl, passionately, swinging open the heavy
-door--“I don’t care! I ain’t anybody’s nigger!”
-
-She rushed out tempestuously, dragging from one or two rings the heavy
-portière, which with a native incongruity hung before the door itself.
-
-“How vulgarity will crop out!” said Roden, rising to shut the door. “That
-poor little girl has behaved so well until to-day!”
-
-That evening, as he sat writing in a little room opening into the
-dining-room, Virginia entered, and came and stood beside him. He did not
-look up. She had annoyed him a good deal, and he was not prepared to
-yield the forgiveness for which he felt she had come to plead. She stood
-there some moments quite silent, then reached over his shoulder and
-dropped something on the table before him.
-
-“You said th’ other day you wanted one for the silver. There ’tis,” she
-said. She turned before he could speak, and left the room.
-
-Lifting the crimson mass from the table, he saw that it was an
-old-fashioned purse of netted silk, secured by little steel rings. He
-recalled a speech which he had made a day or two ago concerning the
-inconvenience of modern purses as regarded silver currency. He started up
-and opened the door, calling the girl by name two or three times. No one
-answered, and he went down the hall and into Herrick’s room.
-
-The overseer was there, whittling something by the light of a smoking
-kerosene lamp. Aunt Tishy was there, grumbling to herself about “folks
-cuttin’ trash all over de flo’ fur her ter break her pore ole back over.”
-The raccoon was very much there, as he seemed to be having a fit just as
-Roden entered. But there was no Virginia. Her spinning-wheel stood idle
-in its corner; her heavy boots were drying in front of the wood fire;
-there was a book, face down, upon the deal table--a book which she must
-have been reading, as no one else at Caryston besides Roden ever glanced
-between the covers of one.
-
-He lifted it, expecting to find some Dora-Thornesque romance of high
-life. It was a condensed copy of “Youatt on the Horse,” and beneath it
-was a racing calendar for ’79. Alas! alas! even this discovery told
-nothing else to this otherwise discerning young man. He smiled as he put
-down the volumes, thinking that the little Virginian was bent on making
-him acknowledge her a superior horsewoman in all respects.
-
-He then inquired of Herrick as to the whereabouts of Virginia. Neither
-the girl’s father nor Aunt Tishy could tell him.
-
-“If you’ll lend me a pencil I’ll just leave a note for her,” he said,
-feeling instinctively that she would not care to have a message in
-regard to her little gift left with her father or the old negress.
-
-He scribbled a few words on one of the fly-leaves of the racing calendar,
-tore it out, folded it securely, and handed it to Herrick.
-
-“Please give that to your daughter when she comes back,” he said.
-“Good-night,” and left the room.
-
-Old Herrick waited until he heard the distant clang of the dining-room
-door; then he settled his spectacles very carefully upon his large nose,
-pushed out his underlip, and unfolding the little note, thrust it almost
-into the flame of the lamp while reading it.
-
-    “‘DEAR MISS FAGINIA’ (Humph!),--Many thanks fur yo’ beeyeutiful
-    purse. I will alluz keep hit. Very truly yours,
-
-                                                       “‘J. RODEN.’”
-
-“Humph!” ejaculated Herrick again--“humph!”
-
-He set one long, knotty hand back down against his side, and turned the
-bit of paper about scornfully between the thumb and forefinger of his
-other hand, regarding it the while over his spectacles. “Humph!” he said
-for the fourth time.
-
-
-
-
-IV.
-
-
-It was one o’clock on that same night Virginia Herrick leaned with round
-bare arms on the table, above which hung a little oblong, old-fashioned
-mirror in a warped mahogany frame. The one candle on a little bracket at
-her right hand, brought out the clear tones in her face and throat and
-arms, and dived vividly into her masses of loosened hair; beyond her was
-a background of vague shadows; she looked from the tarnished mirror like
-a painting from its frame. Her eyes were sombre and heavy under their
-dark lids. The light falling down upon her sent long delicate shadows
-trembling upon her cheeks--shadows such as are made by the bending of
-summer grasses across a woman’s white gown, and which in Virginia’s case
-were cast by her thick, curled lashes.
-
-She had taken off the waist of her homespun dress, and the folds of her
-much-gathered chemise assumed a silvery tone in the concentrated light.
-The contrast between the dead white of the stuff and the living white of
-her neck and arms was as perfect as when Southern peach-trees, blossoming
-before their time, are seen next day against vast fields of snow.
-
-One of the Persian cats leaped with soft agility upon the table, and
-passed purring between the girl and her fair image in the dingy glass;
-she swept him from her way with one sure motion of her strong bare arm,
-and returned to her intent scrutiny of her own face.
-
-The time passed on. A rat began an intermittent nibbling in the old
-wainscoting of the room; sharp, sudden noises were heard overhead; the
-fire died out in tinkling silence; a heavy shroud of semi-transparent
-tallow wrapped the one candle. Two o’clock had sounded through the
-hollow depths of the old house some time ago. Suddenly she spoke.
-“I wisht I knew ef I war pretty,” she said. Then, with passionate
-reiterance, “I _wisht_ I knew ef I war pretty.”
-
-The cat, hearing her voice, leaped again beside her, as if to answer;
-again she swept him to the floor. The soft, cushioned thud of his feet
-against the bare boards sounded quite distinctly upon the silence, so
-alert to catch every noise. “Oh, I wisht--I _wisht_ I knew ef I war
-pretty,” she said once more.
-
-Poor little savage, you are pretty indeed--with a prettiness which
-civilization would give many of its privileges to possess. So, I doubt
-not, were fashioned the wood-nymphs of old, with strength and with health
-and with grace beyond all power of reproduction--even so have they gazed
-deep into their woodland lakes; and the lakes, did they not answer? Who
-but Beauty was ever mother of such curves and tints?
-
-This time she put another question. “I wisht I knew
-ef--it--pleased--_him_.”
-
-She had yielded up her secret to the old mirror, and to Hafiz--what
-better confidants? The one had no tongue; the other a tongue used only
-for lapping unlimited supplies of Alderney cream.
-
-With a sudden movement she leaned forward and blew out the sputtering
-candle. She did not wish even her own eyes in the mirror to pry upon her.
-
-Three days later Roden and Usurper figured in a hurdle race of some note
-in the neighborhood.
-
-This Usurper was by King Tom, out of Uarda, and as rank a brute as ever
-went headlong at his hurdle, often taking off nearly a length too soon.
-Virginia, who had seen him day after day at his work, ventured timidly to
-suggest to Roden that one of the lads should ride the horse. He laughed,
-and told her he had thought her above that very ordinary failing of
-women--nervousness. She said nothing more, turning short on her heel
-with the customary dissenting movement of her fine shoulders.
-
-These races were to be quite a swell affair, and there were a good many
-carriages outside of the course. Miss Erroll and her mother, sunk deep in
-an old-fashioned landau, talked to Roden as he leaned on the side of the
-carriage, very brown and gallant in his racing-togs.
-
-Virginia was seated on Pokeberry, not three yards off. She watched
-curiously each movement of Miss Erroll, dwelling with strained, wondering
-eyes upon her pretty wrinkled gloves; her close-fitting corsage of white
-serge; her little dark-red velvet toque; her parasol, a vivid arrangement
-of cream-color and red, which made a charming plaque-like background for
-her fair face; she also noticed the posy of blue and white flowers which
-was pinned on the left side against the white bodice of Miss Erroll.
-Roden’s colors were blue and white. Virginia herself had a little knot of
-white and blue hyacinths on her riding-habit; she jerked them out with
-a savage movement, tossed them on the ground, and carefully guided the
-hoofs of Pokeberry upon them.
-
-All unconscious was she that in her eyes, blue now with anger, and her
-cheeks so white with pain, she wore his colors whether she would or not.
-
-There were two races before the one in which he rode. Then he went off
-to be weighed, and Virginia dismounted from Pokeberry, and gave a little
-nigger a cent or two to hold the mare.
-
-She went and leaned against the railing, waiting for the start. All went
-well enough until the finish. Roden came sweeping down the homestretch in
-an easy canter, Usurper well in hand and going game as a pebble, and one
-more hurdle to jump.
-
-Virginia held her breath; she had a horrible certainty that Usurper
-would refuse that last hurdle, or do something equally idiotic. Roden
-sent him at it in fine form. There was a second of expectancy, a smart
-crash, and then Usurper, scrambling heavily to his feet, tore off down
-the course, leaving a mass of blue and white half under the débris of the
-hurdle. The brute had not risen an inch, and had flung Roden headfirst
-into the hurdle, himself turning a complete somersault.
-
-On came the other horses, ten of them, in full gallop. Mary Erroll stood
-on her feet, with a little broken cry. Some men, until now paralyzed
-with astonishment and horror, started forward; but swifter than all,
-unhesitating, strong of arm as of nerve, Herrick’s daughter, diving
-beneath the rail, rushed out into the middle of the track, and seizing
-the senseless man beneath his arms dragged him by main force out of the
-way of the coming horses. The hoof of one of them, however, struck her on
-her left shoulder, taking a good bit of flesh and cloth clean away as
-though with a knife.
-
-There was a good deal of blood about Roden’s head--some at first thought
-that he was seriously injured. They carried him into a tent and sent for
-a surgeon. In an hour he was all right, however, and wrote a few words
-upon some little ivory tablets, sent him by Miss Erroll for that purpose,
-to assure her of his entire recovery. Mary then sent to ask if Miss
-Herrick would not be so very kind as to come and speak to her. The girl
-came, sullenly enough, touching from time to time the bandages about her
-left shoulder, as though restless under even so slight a restraint.
-
-“I want to thank you so very, very much,” said Mary, in her sweetest
-voice. She leaned far out of the landau and held out her hand to Virginia.
-
-“What a’ _you_ thankin’ me fur?” demanded the girl, fiercely, stepping
-backward from the extended hand. “_You_ ain’t got nothin’ to thank me
-fur--have you?” she ended, with a sudden change from aggressiveness to
-appeal infinitely pathetic.
-
-A swift red had dyed Mary’s face at the first reception of her kindly
-meant advances. It faded out now, leaving her very pale.
-
-“Every one who is a friend of Mr. Roden ought to thank you, if they do
-not,” she said, with great dignity. “I am sorry I spoke, since it has
-been so disagreeable to you. Good-morning.”
-
-Virginia was dismissed--she felt it. The knowledge went scorching through
-her veins as kirsch through the veins of one not accustomed to its fire.
-She hated the girl with a mad, barbaric impulse, which was as much beyond
-her control as its tides are beyond the control of the ocean; she felt an
-animosity to Miss Erroll’s very hat, to her pretty parasol with its bunch
-of red velvet ribbons on the bamboo handle. She would have liked to seize
-and tear them to pieces, as a humming-bird tears the flower which has
-refused its honey. A red mist rose to her eyes. The Erroll carriage and
-its occupants seemed to be melting away and away in a golden haze. She
-stepped backward, keeping her eyes on it, as a fascinated bird looks ever
-on the serpent that has charmed it.
-
-“I hate her--I hate her--I hate her,” she said, back of her teeth, not
-fiercely, as she had at first spoken, but with a dull assertiveness.
-
-She refused several offers from kindly neighbors who would have driven
-her home. She could ride quite well, she said, without using her left arm.
-
-The evening was lowering and purple towards the north-east, full of
-vague shadows and noises of homeward creatures. The west was aglare as
-with floating golden ribbons from some mighty, unseen Maypole behind the
-luridly dark mountains.
-
-The slanting light touched the crests of the clods in a newly ploughed
-field to her left with a vivid effect, remindful of the light-capped
-wavelets on an evening bay. Farther on it was long, glistening stalks of
-fodder which caught the level gleaming from the west, as might the rifles
-of a regiment that has been ordered to fire lying down. The fresh green
-hollows of the hills were full of a palpable golden ether, like cups of
-emerald brimmed with the lucent amber drink of other days.
-
-A leather-winged bat brushed against her cheek, flying heavily into some
-broom-straw just beyond. She saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing
-beyond the dark hours ahead of her, the heavy aching of her heart, and
-its loud monotonous beating, to which she unconsciously set words as one
-does to the iterant chatter of a clock.
-
-“Yes, he loves her--yes, he loves her,” so it seemed to say, over and
-over, again and again. Almost she could have torn it from her breast
-and flung it from her, had not it been sacred to her for the love of
-him with which it was filled. Think of it; try to imagine it. A woman
-fully developed, heart and body full of the South from bright head to
-nimble feet, as the South is full of beauty; free as the birds that
-cleaved her native air with strong, untiring wings; unlearned in all
-emotion whether of love or of hate; not weary in sense or perception;
-untutored, unknowing, uncivilized--and loving for the first time in all
-her one-and-twenty years of living!
-
-There was no analysis here, no picking to pieces of little emotions,
-no skewering of butterfly passions to sheets of paper from the book of
-former knowledge. No comparison between then and now--between now and
-what might possibly have been had the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope
-of existence assumed a certain difference of juxtaposition. She loved
-him. Why she loved him, how she loved him, she could no more have told
-you than she could have told the names of the different elements which
-composed the tears with which her hot eyes brimmed.
-
-It was seven o’clock of that same evening. Roden, restless and feverish,
-flung from side to side on an old leathern sofa in the library. There
-were no candles, but a great fire of chestnut-wood sought and found all
-such points as were capable of illumination in the sombre old room--the
-brass claw feet of the tables and chairs, the great brass hinges of the
-rosewood bookcase, the glass knobs on an old writing-desk in one corner,
-Roden’s eyes and hair as he lay listlessly resigned for a moment or two
-staring into the noisy labyrinths of the flames.
-
-It was half an hour later. The leaping flames had settled as in
-sleep upon a bed of red-gold coals; a little ever-ascending spiral
-of gray-white smoke escaped from a cleft in the end of one of the
-half-burned logs. The old chimney-place was like a vivid picture set in
-the dark wall. Its yawning black throat, heavily clogged with soot, was
-tinged faintly for some way up by the glow from the lurid mass on the
-hearth. The great iron fire-dogs, at least four feet in height, were
-connected from shaft to shaft by a chain in grotesque suggestion of the
-Siamese twins. The much-burnt bricks had assumed opaline tones, in rosy
-grays and greenish-yellows, beneath the intense heat and light. On the
-hearth-rug the collie lay stretched, his ruffled legs every now and then
-executing an unavailing canter, as in his dreams perchance he chased a
-soaring buzzard.
-
-They were all three asleep--the fire, the collie, Roden. A soft crooning
-wind, conducive to slumber, sighed at the doors and windows, vibrating
-every once in a while with sonorous minor cadences.
-
-Suddenly the incessant monotone was snapped, as it were, to silence.
-The door leading into the library had been opened; some one entered
-cautiously, stood still; then the door was again closed noiselessly.
-
-The person who had entered crept forward a pace or two. It was Virginia.
-She had not yet taken off her riding-habit, and the bandages were yet
-about her shoulder. Some dark stains here and there told where the blood
-had soaked through. As she came forward, nearer to the rich lambency of
-the fire, her white face borrowed some of its roseate flush, but the
-lines of pain, mental and physical, were traced as with a fine chisel
-about the sombre mouth and eyes. Stealing past the foot of the sofa on
-which Roden lay, she stood a moment looking at him. Her crossed wrists
-pressed each other hard against her bosom, her long fingers drawing the
-stuff of her habit in wrinkles with the tenseness of their grasp upon
-it. Her breast rose and fell, impatient, eager, behind the close prison
-of her arms, as some woodland thing so held might seek to be free. All
-at once she sank down to her knees upon the hearth-rug, lifting both
-hands to her bent face, and rocking herself to and fro with wild, swaying
-movements of her supple body. The collie raised his head with a drowsy
-curiosity, and let it fall heavily again upon the floor. The varying
-monody of the wind had begun again through the chinks in the closed door.
-
-At last she lifted her head, letting her clasped hands fall loosely into
-her lap. A sudden flame showed her with an added vividness the face of
-Roden as he lay in tired unconsciousness upon the old lounge. She moved
-nearer to him, still on her knees; then again lifting her hands to her
-bosom, leaned forward and gazed upon him as though one should drink with
-the eyes. Her great braids, ruffled and half unplaited, followed the
-lithe curves of her back with glittering undulations, as of two mated
-golden serpents. So passed some moments.
-
-Presently, as though uneasy, even in the far-off Land of Nod, beneath
-those moveless, hungry, beautiful eyes, the young man stirred, and
-muttered something in his sleep. Swift and noiseless as a cat she leaped
-backward into the folded shadows; but he did not wake. Once more she came
-forward. With a stealthy movement she drew out a little pair of scissors
-from the bosom of her dress; then bending over, lifted, with the touch of
-a butterfly upon a flower, one of Roden’s much-tossed curls. There was
-the sharp hiss of steel through hair, and the soft brown semicircle lay
-in the girl’s palm. She lifted it to her lips with the gesture of one
-who, half starved, suddenly finds bread within his grasp; then turning,
-she stole out again, even as she had entered.
-
-
-
-
-V.
-
-
-Roden was not able to leave the house for many days. During this time
-Virginia waited upon him, sang to him, brought into service her every
-power of amusement.
-
-She coaxed her perverse “mammy” to teach her new darky songs by reading
-endless chapters in the Bible. All her spare time was spent in setting
-them to appropriate accompaniments. She would sit and recount absurd
-anecdotes to him by the hour in her slow, sweet monotone, as unsuggestive
-of anything humorous as can well be imagined. Sometimes she fetched her
-spinning-wheel and spun as she talked. He felt vexed with himself that
-he could not sketch her as she sat plying the dull blue thread with
-her nimble fingers. Her homespun dress dropped naturally into those
-broad, generous folds beloved of sculptors. She had a clear, placid
-profile, which always found shadows sufficiently willing to serve as
-background for its pale beauty. Her head was noble in its contours, and
-as graceful in its startled, listening movements as that of a stag.
-Roden did make several attempts to fix her upon paper, but ended always
-with a contemptuous exclamation and a hurried, clever drawing of a
-steeple-chase, or Bonnibel, or some other equally horsy subject.
-
-One day he happened to mention that as a lad he had played tolerably well
-on the violin. Virginia rose at once, saying that she thought there was
-one in the attic.
-
-She took a candle, and went up the little corkscrew staircase that led
-into the roof of the house--a dark, dusty, cavernous place, smelling of
-mould and old books. There were many hair-covered trunks studded with
-brass nails, heaps of old saddles and harness, fire-dogs, brass and
-iron, a disused loom.
-
-The corners of the room were veiled in a thick and rustling obscurity,
-suggestive of parchment and rats. Onions and red peppers adorned the
-ceiling.
-
-Virginia set down the candle on one of the moth-eaten trunks, and lifted
-the lid of a second.
-
-A fine cloud of little white particles flew out into her face, as
-impalpable, as easy of escape, as impossible to recapture, as the
-contents of Pandora’s box. The girl thrust in her long brown arm, and
-drew out a bunch of white ostrich feathers.
-
-They were shedding their delicate moth-nibbled filaments like snow upon
-her dark gown and the bare floor of the attic. She drew them caressingly
-through her fingers as though in pity; it seemed to her sad that things
-so charming should have so common a fate. She then stooped, and after a
-little searching drew out the violin.
-
-She was about to shut down the lid of the trunk when something caught her
-eye--a bunch of cherry-colored ribbon, which burst from beneath a mass of
-moth-eaten gray fur, like a sudden flame from covering ashes.
-
-She reached down and pulled it out; but lo! it was not only a knot of
-ribbons; something more followed--a sleeve of heavy antique silk, stiffly
-brocaded in red and gold flowers on a cream-hued ground. Then came more
-ribbons, a mass of fine lace, a scarlet petticoat. The girl put down the
-violin, held up this relic of the Old Dominion, and shook it out somewhat
-contemptuously. A little parcel fell from the musty skirt--a pair of
-slippers with high red heels and little red rosettes. As she looked, a
-sudden change came over the girl’s face, a sudden flash of resolve, a
-quick suffusion of bright color. She seized the little shoes, bundled
-them again into the dress, and drew her own homespun skirt over the
-whole. Then, tucking the violin under her arm and lifting the candle, she
-ran at a perilously hurried pace down the contorted stair-way and into
-her own room.
-
-She closed and locked the door, laid the dress and violin on the bed,
-and still standing up, pulled and tugged at one of her heavy shoes until
-it came off in her hand, discovering one of her shapely feet in its blue
-yarn stocking. But, alas! Virginia present could not get her foot into
-the slipper of Virginia past. She sat down on the edge of the bed in
-mortified vanquishment, and turned the pretty, absurd thing about in her
-strong hand. Then once more she tried to put it on. She found that by
-squeezing her toes into the toe of the slipper she could manage to walk,
-as there was no restraint at the back of the foot. She then lifted and
-put on the dress. It would not meet by several inches about her splendid
-young bosom, and the waist gaped at her derisively from the little
-mahogany-framed mirror. She was, however, determined. She hid these
-defects as best she might, by snipping away bunches of the cherry-colored
-ribbon here and there, and pinning them in reckless profusion above the
-gap in the bodice. My lady of the time of George the Third must have
-been shorter than this damsel of the first year of President Cleveland’s
-administration. The stiff, flowered skirts stopped short at least three
-inches above her instep. Virginia had fortunately very commendable
-ankles, and peeping thus from the mass of mould-stained red and yellow
-frillings, they looked as sleek and trim as the neck of a bluebird
-peeping from autumnal foliage.
-
-She tilted the little glass forward by means of one of her discarded
-shoes thrust behind it, and darted a shamefaced glance at her transformed
-self. Bravo! bravo! Miss Herrick! You are worthy of that famous name. So
-hath Abbey oft drawn Julia, plenteous in her shining skirts and tresses,
-beribboned, beautiful. Ah! what eyes! what lips! what an exquisite
-expression, half of self-conceit, half of timid uncertainty! What a
-throat for a dove to envy, supporting the face kissed brown by the sun,
-like an orchid whose stem is fairer than its flower! Snood up that banner
-of golden hair, my good Virginia; twist it about with the string of
-little shells you yourself gathered last summer; make yourself as lovely
-as possible, my little fawn, for the sacrifice. The gods have demanded
-it from time immemorial--a band of fair maidens every year to appease
-the Minotaur Despair. Good-by, Virginia; good-by; good-by. Never again
-will that dim green glass reflect such looks from you. Do not forget the
-violin. Was it not for him that you went to fetch it? Is it not for him
-that you have forced your strong young body into the curveless dress of
-1761? Is it not all for him? And even unto the end will it not be for
-him?
-
-Roden, conscious only of her presence by the unusual rustling of her
-skirts, looked up questioningly. When he saw her, who she was, he started
-to his feet, his lips parting in an expression of utter amaze. It was as
-though one of the bepowdered Caryston dames had stepped from her massive
-gilt frame in the hall without and confronted him. He could say nothing
-but her name, in varied tones of astonishment, inquiry, and approval.
-
-She stood before him on her high heels as uncertain as a child learning
-to walk, smoothing out the much-creased folds of her gay attire with
-restless, nervous fingers, the stringless violin in her other hand.
-“I--I--I look a awful fool--don’t I?” she said, laughing not very
-merrily. “I--feel ’s ’f I’d sorter got roots to my feet in these shoes.”
-She thrust out one foot, in its incongruity of yarn stocking and Louis
-Quinze slipper, tilted it to one side, and regarded it in apparent
-absorption.
-
-Roden was only thinking what a charming picture she made tricked out in
-all this red and gold of other days. She stood there before him like a
-beautiful present, clad in the garments of a past as beautiful. He felt
-a strange sensation of having stepped back into the time of Henry Esmond
-and the Virginians. He glanced down at his wrists, half expecting to see
-lace ruffles spring to adorn them, under the magic of the hour.
-
-“You pretty child!” he said at last, “what on earth made you think of
-getting yourself up in this style?” But he knew that she was more than
-pretty. He would have liked to tell her so, only he was always very
-careful what he said to this little Virginian; and florid compliments,
-though perfectly adapted to the period of her costume, would smack of the
-familiar when considered under the lights of the nineteenth century.
-
-He wondered at the radiance in her suddenly lifted face. How could he
-know that at last the so often asked question nearest to her heart was
-answered, and answered by him? He thought her pretty!
-
-“I brought you the violin,” she said, turning away with an effort. “I
-reckon I’d better go ’n’ take off these things. They cert’n’y do look
-foolish--don’t they?”
-
-“No, don’t,” said Roden. “You ought to humor an invalid, you know. You
-are so awfully nice to look at in that queer old gown.”
-
-Dimples that he had never before seen, just born of joy, stole in and
-out about the corners of the girl’s red lips. She was more even than
-beautiful; she was enchanting. How ever had she come by all those
-old-time airs and movements? Had she perchance imbibed the spirit of the
-past with the air of the old house where she had always lived? Did some
-of those old _grandes dames_ lean from the walls at night to teach her
-that subtle, upward carriage of the head?
-
-He forgot all about the violin, and stood looking at her in wondering
-absorption.
-
-“I--I’ve got a new song for you,” she said, presently, in a low voice.
-She seated herself sidewise at the piano, as though diffident of the
-furbelows that composed the back of her novel attire, striking at the
-same time noiseless chords with her left hand.
-
-“You said you liked Scotch songs. I found this one in a old book that
-b’longed to my mother. She was Scotch. Mus’ I sing it?”
-
-“Please do,” said Roden.
-
-Thus encouraged, she sang to him in the following words:
-
-    “I hae a curl, a bricht brown curl,
-      A bonny, bonny curl o’ hair,
-    An’ close to my heart it nestles warm,
-      But its brithers dinna ken it’s there.
-
-    “I stole my curl, my silk-saft curl,
-      My bonny, bonny curl o’ hair,
-    An’ a’ the nicht it sleeps upon my heart,
-      But its master doesna ken it’s there.
-
-    “O bricht, bricht curl! O luvely, luvely curl!
-      O curl o’ my bonny, bonny dear!
-    I wad that again ye waur shinin’ on his head,
-      But I wad that his head waur here!”
-
-Now although Roden had often before heard her sing, he was conscious of
-a sound in her voice to-night which was utterly new to him--a sound so
-marvellous, so altogether exquisite, so melting sweet, that he was almost
-afraid the beating of his heart would prevent some of its beauty from
-reaching him. There was in it a divine fulness which he had never before
-heard in a human voice. It was like the sea on summer nights. It was like
-the distant wind in many leaves. It was like the eternal complaint of the
-voices of the fields on April noons. It filled him with a sense of peace
-and unrest at the same time. It thrilled him and possessed him utterly.
-Blind that he was, however, no faintest inkling of what had produced this
-divine result came to his mind. He was touched, but touched only as he
-would have been by any other voice as perfect.
-
-“My dear little girl,” he said, bending over and kissing her smooth brow
-with one of his rash impulses, “we must see what can be done with that
-voice. I am thinking that you will add to the honor of your name some
-day, Miss Herrick.”
-
-She started to her feet. It was as though her very heart’s blood had
-risen to meet his lips. A delicate, vivid rose-color dyed all her brow
-and temples. “How do you mean?--how do you mean?” she said, in a rough,
-shaken whisper, holding both hands against her heart as though afraid it
-would leap from her body.
-
-“Never mind what I mean just now,” he said, with the smile of a wiseacre;
-“and, Virginia, since you have sung that song so charmingly, I am sure
-that you will be glad for me about something which I am going to tell
-you.”
-
-Glad? Was she not always glad for anything which gave him joy? Had she
-not read her eyes almost sightless, night after night, in mastering that
-strange horse lore which would enable her to help him in his enterprises?
-She came nearer, in bright expectancy; lifted her face to meet his looks
-and words.
-
-“Yes,” she said; “please tell me. I know I’ll be glad--I cert’n’y will.”
-
-“I am engaged to be married,” he told her. “I am engaged to be married
-to Miss Mary Erroll, and--I want you to be the first to congratulate me,
-Virginia.”
-
-He could recall nothing afterwards but the swift withdrawing of her hands
-from his. He could not even remember how she had left the room. She
-seemed to vanish as though in reality she had been but a wraith summoned
-up by fancy from days long fled.
-
-But Virginia? Ah, Virginia! Out, out, out into the night she sped on
-supple, unshod feet. She had torn off those queer little parodies of
-shoes at the hall door, and held them now mechanically to her breast as
-she ran.
-
-The air, redolent with peach-blossoms and hyacinths just born, rushed to
-meet her from the dark jaws of the east, as though some leviathan should
-breathe with a sweet breath upon the night May earth. There was no moon
-in the lustrous blue-gray of the heavens, but the stars seemed trying to
-atone for her absence by their multitudinous shining.
-
-As Virginia dashed on past a clump of box-bushes, her skirts brushing the
-stiff leaves set them rattling, and woke the nested birds to querulous
-complaints. Her feet were wet with the night grasses, and bruised with
-the pebbles of the carriage-drive. She reached the lawn gate, opened it,
-and rushed through. On, on, across a field of grass, close-cropped by
-the not fastidious sheep, who, warmly folded on a neighboring hill-side,
-still nibbled drowsily between their slumbers such luscious blades as
-were within their reach.
-
-She came at last to a little enclosure set about with evergreens and
-almost knee-deep in withered grass. Her eyes, grown accustomed to the
-wan light, could make out two little hillocks, as it were, formed within
-by heaped-up earth, and clasped by the tangled herbage. Underneath their
-sometime verdant rises slept the first twain who in Virginia bore the
-name of Caryston. Side by side, so had they lain, in death together
-as in life they had been. Virginia knew well this their self-chosen
-resting-place. Here on summer afternoons would she come to knit. Here she
-always brought the first spring flowers, and here she had always placed
-boughs of white and purple lilacs every day while they lasted. She had
-dreamed and wondered and enjoyed here, and here she came to suffer, as
-from some subtle instinct a man turns to his childhood’s home to die.
-
-Just outside the wicket gate the daffodils were all in plenteous blossom,
-as though day, for once relenting, had dropped an armful of gold into
-the lap of night. On a locust-tree near by a mocking-bird trilled and
-warbled. She cast herself face down upon one of the graves, clasping
-it about with her bare arms, as one clasps a proven friend in time of
-trouble. She had spoken no word as yet. She suffered as keenly, as
-dumbly, as any creature, wild or tame, to whom there is no soul. But all
-at once a cry broke from her, then over and over again, “O my God! O my
-God! O my God!”
-
-The sobbing piteousness of this desolate prayer as it tore its way from
-the depths of her wild heart--who shall write of it? Not I--not I--even
-if I could. She was a savage; she suffered like a savage. Will any say
-there was no justice in it? It is something, is it not, to be capable of
-passion such as that? She suffered beyond most people, men and women, it
-is true; but was she not in that much blessed above them?
-
-She lay there until the dawn looked whitely above the eastern hills upon
-the waking earth. In her quaint old dress one might have thought her the
-tortured ghost of the woman who had so long slept in peace below the
-grass-hidden mound. She staggered, when at last she rose to her feet,
-and fell for a moment upon her knees. There was a sense of vagueness
-that possessed her. She did not seem to care now, somehow. She wondered
-if they would be married at the little church in the neighborhood, and
-if they would let her come. She thought _he_ would. She thought that she
-would not mind much seeing it. Of course they would live here. She would
-see them together every day. Well, what of that? She was surprised in a
-dull way that it did not affect her more. Then she remembered that she
-had not made any bread for him, such as he liked, the night before.
-Well, it was a pity; but it was too late; it wouldn’t have time to rise
-now. She must think of something else. Morning came on apace, clad all
-in translucent beryl-colored robes, and brow-bound with gold and with
-scarlet.
-
-The birds were waking and chattering, as women chatter over their morning
-toilets. Some more hyacinths had bloomed in the night, and there was a
-great clump of iris, that she had not noticed the day before, on the
-hill-top. A cardinal-bird, sweeping downward like a flame fallen from
-some celestial fire, made his morning bath in the hollow of a tulip-tree
-leaf--a relic of vanished winter filled by kindly spring with fragrant
-rain.
-
-As she neared the lawn gate she saw some one leaning over it. A swart,
-red-kerchiefed figure, clad in a dress whose stripes of blue and white
-circled her large body as its hoops a barrel. It was Aunt Tishy. She
-pushed upon the gate, jamming her stout proportions uncomfortably in her
-haste to reach the girl.
-
-“Gord! Miss Faginia, whar _is_ you ben? An’ gret day in de mawnin! what
-dat you got on, anyhow? Gord! Gord! ef de chile ain’ jes ez wet ’s ’f
-she’d ben caught in de Red Sea wid Phario. Honey, whar _is_ you ben, in
-the name o’ Gord? Tell yo’ mammy. Is you been see a harnt? What de matter
-wid my baby? Gord! Gord! dem eyes sutney _is_ ben look on suppn dradeful.
-Po’ lamb! po’ lamb! Look at dem little foots, an’ de stockin’s all war
-offen ’em same as de rats dun neaw ’em. Ain’ yo’ gwine tell yo’ mammy, my
-lady-bug? Come ’long so. Mammy kin ’mos’ kyar yo’ ter de house.”
-
-Virginia submitted listlessly to the old black’s blandishments. She was
-not sorry to have Aunt Tishy’s massive arm about her. Her feet ached and
-smarted; there was a sharp pain in her side when she drew her breath, and
-that dreadful feeling of being a thing just born, a creature who had no
-past, still held her in its numbing grasp.
-
-Aunt Tishy took her into the big kitchen--an out-house consisting of
-one room, and a fireplace in which one might have roasted a whole ox.
-It was lined on two sides with great smoke-darkened pine presses. The
-other walls and the ceiling had once been white, but were now stained the
-color of a half-seasoned meerschaum pipe. The two windows had casements
-with diamond-shaped panes of dingy glass set in lead. Enormous deal
-tables stood here and there. From the surrounding gloom came the glimmer
-of brightly polished tin, as brilliant in its effect as the glint of a
-negro’s teeth from the dusk of his face.
-
-[Illustration: “I GWINE TAKE DAT DAR OUTLANDISH THING OFFEN YO’, HONEY.”]
-
-Aunt Tishy, having seated her nursling in an old wooden rocking-chair,
-dragged a basket of chips and shavings from the capacious ingle-nook, and
-set about making the fire. She first scooped away the yet warm ashes of
-yesterday with her shapely yellow-palmed hands. Negroes generally have
-well-formed hands and remarkably pretty finger-nails. Then she began
-laying a little foundation of shavings and lightwood splinters; here and
-there she stuck a broad locust-chip. When these preparations were all
-completed she went out to “fotch a light,” she said, assuring Virginia of
-her speedy return.
-
-In a few moments she was back, carrying a handful of live coals in her
-naked palm, having first sprinkled a few ashes over it for protection.
-With these she kindled the fire, which soon made a busy clamor in the
-hollow throat of the old chimney.
-
-Once more she disappeared, returning with a bundle of things in her arms:
-a big shawl, Virginia’s shoes and stockings, and her homespun dress.
-
-“I gwine take dat dar outlandish thing offen yo’, honey,” she announced,
-seating herself on the pine floor in front of the girl, and beginning
-to draw off her torn stockings. “I gwine mek yo’ put on yo’ own frawk
-’fo’ dey sees yo’ in d’ house. Marse Gawge he ain’ knowin’ nuttin’ ’bout
-yo’ bein’ out all night. I ’mos’ skeered to deaf ’bout yo’, but I ain’
-seh nuttin’ to _naw_body, ’case I didn’t think my honey gwine g’way fur
-good.” She took the little cold bare feet into her cushiony palms and
-rubbed them softly. Every now and then she bent down her gayly turbaned
-head and blew with warm breath upon them after the negro fashion of
-ministering to any frozen thing, from a bit of bread to a young “squawb.”
-
-“Yo’ barf’s all rade-y in de house,” Aunt Tishy continued, as she knelt
-up and began unfastening the ribbons from the front of the old-time
-garment the girl had donned in a mood so different.
-
-“Gord! honey,” she said, as the pins accumulated in her capacious mouth,
-“in de name o’ sense what dun persess yo’ tuh put on dis hyah thing?
-Name o’ Gord! _who_ ever see sich a thing _aney_how?” She held it up
-with much of the contempt with which Virginia had at first regarded it,
-tossing it finally into the chip-basket.
-
-Virginia said nothing from first to last. She was almost sure that she
-was dreaming, and would soon awake.
-
-“My sakes ’live!” chuckled Aunt Tishy, as she hooked the homespun dress
-about the girl’s waist, “wouldn’ I ’a’ thanked Gord-amighty ef yo’d ’a’
-ben dis good when yo’ wuz leetle, honey? Mk, mh-_mph_!”
-
-(This final ejaculation I find impossible to describe with pen and ink.)
-
-When she had completely altered her charge’s appearance, replaiting her
-dishevelled hair, and unwinding from its tangled meshes the little chain
-of white and red sea-shells, Aunt Tishy took her by the hand and led her
-across the side lawn to the house.
-
-“Now yo’ kin dress comfbul,” she told her, “an’ jess mek’ yo’se’f easy,
-my lamb. Tishy she ain’ gwine seh nuttin’ tuh _naw_-bode-y.”
-
-Virginia tried to smile upon her. Something stiff at the corners of her
-mouth seemed to prevent her. She turned, lifting one hand to her cheek,
-and went into the yet quiet house.
-
-
-
-
-VI.
-
-
-Roden wondered a good deal during such moments as his thoughts reverted
-not to his ladylove, concerning Virginia’s recent neglect of him.
-Popocatepetl was his attendant now at meals, dried his newspapers, and
-gambolled for his amusement. Virginia had come to him on the afternoon of
-the day following that upon which he had announced to her his engagement,
-and had said she “didn’ know what took her las’ night. She cert’n’y was
-glad he was so happy. He mus’ please scuse her ’f she’d ben unperlite.
-She cert’n’y was glad.” But Roden missed her very much. Besides, he
-wished exceedingly to hear her sing again. He wanted to be quite sure
-that he had not deluded himself in regard to the possibilities contained
-in her sonorous voice.
-
-Virginia continued to be very economical of her presence, however, and
-three days afterwards he was summoned to New York by telegraph to attend
-the bedside of an ailing thorough-bred.
-
-Virginia did not come to tell him good-by. He thought it strange at the
-moment, but did not have time to ponder over it subsequently. She, in
-the mean time, kneeling behind the “slats” of her bedroom window-blinds,
-watched the little Canadian fishing-wagon as it drove away, with
-Popocatepetl proudly installed on the back seat. She held something
-crushed against her breast--an old Trinity College boating-cap which
-belonged to Roden. She knelt there for full a half-hour after the last
-grinding of the cart-wheels on the carriage-drive. No tears rose to
-soothe the burning in her eyes. She had not wept since that night spent
-by those lonely graves. At last she rose and went over beside the fire.
-The day was unusually raw for the season of the year.
-
-Rebellious robins chattered on the eaves. A fitful wind swept rudely over
-the fields. Virginia, with unseeing eyes on the low-smouldering fire,
-caressed the bit of blue cloth in her hands with absent, slow-moving
-fingers. Anon she lifted and examined it closely. It seemed to her that
-the lion on the coat of arms might have been better done. She remembered
-an old print of Daniel in the lions’ den which was in the big family
-Bible. Therein the king of beasts was, she thought, far more ably
-depicted. This lion had an inane expression, owing probably to the two
-black dots which stood for his fierce eyes, a paucity of mane, and a
-superfluity of tail which struck her as undignified. Suddenly she burst
-out laughing. Peal after peal of the merry, staccato sound rang through
-the winding passageways above, and echoed down into the lower halls;
-ripple upon ripple of wild merriment; a rush, an abandonment of jollity,
-in which she had not indulged for many a day. She tried in vain to stop.
-She could not. That little oblong lion with his much-curled tail was
-too much for her. Ha! ha! Oh, how funny--how funny it was! and how she
-enjoyed a good laugh! And was it not far, far better to laugh than to
-cry? Oh, that funny, funny, funny little beast! How merry he made her,
-how jolly, how care-free, once more!
-
-A voice rang out suddenly, calling her name: “Faginia! O-o-o-o Faginia!
-O-o-o-o Faginia!”
-
-Startled into sudden gravity, she slipped the cap into the breast of her
-brown stuff gown, and went to the door.
-
-“That you, father?”
-
-“Yase, ’tis. What ’n th’ name o’ goodness ’r’ you hyahhyahin’ ’bout up
-thar all by yo’self? Howsomdever, the beauty of the question air, thar’s
-a young lady down here as wants ter see you, an’ I’d never ’a’ knowed
-yo’ was in the house ef yo’ hadn’ been goin’ on like a wil’-cat with the
-stomach-ache.”
-
-“Who is it?” said Virginia.
-
-Back came the name in strident unmistakable syllables,
-“Miss--Ma-ry--Er-roll.”
-
-There was a second’s pause.
-
-“I’ll be down in a minute,” Virginia called back.
-
-Miss Mary Erroll was walking up and down the “front hall” in her
-Quorn-cloth habit, whistling softly to herself. Her short riding-skirt
-needed no holding up to enable her to move comfortably, and her hands
-were clasped behind her about her hunting-crop.
-
-Virginia, coming slowly down the many convolutions of the broad
-stair-way, noticed the dark sheen of the thick braid folded away
-under the smart little hat, the glimpse of fair cheek and throat, the
-thorough-bred lines of the slight figure.
-
-“Mornin’,” she said, briefly.
-
-Miss Erroll stopped in the midst of an intricate aria, unbent her red
-lips, and held out her hand in its loose dog-skin glove: evidently she
-intended to ignore the unpleasantness of their last interview.
-
-“I came to Caryston for two reasons,” she announced, cheerily. “First,
-to give your father a message which Mr. Roden left with me. Secondly, to
-bring you something, Miss Virginia. I believe you like dogs?”
-
-“Some dawgs,” said Virginia, speaking in a dull, even tone.
-
-Miss Erroll, nothing daunted, led the way to the library; she pulled off
-the wrappings from about a wicker basket, and lifted out a sturdy mastiff
-pup, who, supported across the palm of his whilom mistress’s fair hand,
-made ungainly motions with his great paws, as though trying to swim.
-
-“Won’t you take him, Miss Virginia? We have so many dogs at home, it
-would be a real kindness.”
-
-“Most likely my father ’d like to have him,” said Virginia. “I don’t have
-much time ter ’tend ter dawgs. I’m much obliged ter you, though.”
-
-Miss Erroll, thus rebuffed, set down the little mastiff on the floor, and
-pushed it with the toe of her riding-boot. One of the characteristics
-of this young woman was an insatiate desire for the good-will of every
-one. It was weak, no doubt; but, as the celebrated saying hath it, the
-weakness was very strong. Somehow it made Mary uncomfortable to think
-that the overseer’s daughter, humble though her position was, should not
-succumb to the charm which she chose to exert for her benefit.
-
-The unconscious little peace-offering in the mean time was making
-abortive efforts to peer into every object out of his reach which the
-room contained.
-
-A sudden revulsion of feeling came over Virginia, a sense of unnecessary
-rudeness, and of the uselessness of it all.
-
-“I--I’ll take him, thank you,” she said, stooping and lifting the puppy
-into her capable young embrace. “I’m mighty glad to have him. He cert’n’y
-is pretty.”
-
-Poor Virginia! She felt the baldness of these phrases without knowing how
-to remedy them. “He cert’n’y is cunnin’,” she added.
-
-Mary was much relieved. “I thought you would like him,” she said. “I have
-named him ‘Mumbo,’ after one of his ancestors. If you don’t like the
-name, please be sure to change it.”
-
-“Oh, I like it!” said Virginia. “I couldn’t give him a better one to save
-my life. I kyarn’t never scarsely think o’ names fur the critters on th’
-farm. Does he know it yet?”
-
-“Oh no!” Miss Erroll assured her.--“You’ll have to teach him that.”
-
-She looked down intently at one of her gloves, and began to unbutton it.
-“I suppose you have heard of my engagement?” she said, without looking up.
-
-Yes, Virginia had heard of it. She said so in an even monotone which
-had in it no suggestions either of approval or disapproval. She was
-astonished to feel Miss Erroll’s hand on her arm.
-
-“Miss Virginia,” said that young lady, with a sweet and whole-souled
-blush, “I’m going to ask you to do me a tremendous favor. I--I would like
-so much to see Jack’s--Mr. Roden’s room just as he left it, don’t you
-know--with his boots and coats and whips lying about. I don’t want your
-father or any of the servants to know, because they would think me crazy;
-but I’m sure you’ll understand.”
-
-Virginia led the way without a word. The mastiff pup made playfully
-affectionate dabs at her round chin with his rose-leaf tongue. Roden’s
-bedroom was on the ground-floor. He did not occupy the majestically
-gloomy apartment in which his first night at Caryston had been spent.
-This room was in the east wing of the house, plentifully perforated with
-small casements, and panelled from floor to ceiling. This panelling had
-all been painted white, and the result of the heavy coatings, renewed
-from time to time, was a rich, ivory-like smoothness of tint and tone.
-A little single iron bedstead stood in one corner of the room, between
-two windows. There were some capital old sporting prints upon the walls,
-numberless hunting-crops and riding-canes stacked on the high mantle,
-spurs, gloves, tobacco-bags, cartridges, and what not heaped pell-mell on
-tables and chairs, about twenty pairs of boots and shoes ranged along one
-side of the room, some on and some not on trees. Garments of divers kind
-were pitched recklessly about. It is perhaps needless to say, after the
-foregoing description, that confusion reigned supreme.
-
-Miss Erroll, at first shyly conscious of Virginia’s presence, soon began
-to move about after her usual airy fashion. She lifted the brier-wood
-pipe, so often smoked in Virginia’s presence, and pressed her lips
-playfully to its glossy bowl.
-
-“Aren’t women geese, Miss Virginia, when they care for any one?” she
-said, turning to laugh at the girl over her graceful shoulder.
-
-She was entirely at her ease now, and went about from object to object,
-touching some and merely looking at others, with a little conscious air
-of possession which was like the turning of a rusty knife in the girl’s
-heart. She tossed an old shooting-coat from the bed’s foot to a chair,
-remarking, as she did so, “What careless creatures the best of men are!
-I shall have to give Master Jack a lesson in the old proverb concerning
-places and things--when--when I am Mrs. Jack!” she ended, merrily.
-
-Turning over some things on a table near one of the windows she came
-across an old-fashioned netted purse of red silk, with steel rings and
-tassels--the purse Virginia had netted for him during such odd moments as
-she could steal from her many occupations. She watched Miss Erroll now
-with hungry eyes, the eyes of a wounded lioness who watches, helpless,
-the taking away of one of her cubs. Her heart beat against her homespun
-bodice with short, quick throbs. She stooped and set the struggling puppy
-upon the floor. It seemed to her as though she had been holding fire in
-her arms.
-
-“Oh, this is so pretty!” said unconscious Mary. “This is so very quaint
-and pretty! I must have it. Of course he’d give it me. I’m just going to
-take it without saying by your leave;” and with that she slipped it in
-the pocket of her habit.
-
-Virginia shut her eyes for a moment, dizzy with pain and anger; but the
-red light which seemed to surround and envelop her when she did so made
-her fainter than ever. She lifted her dark lids and stared out at the
-blank strip of sky above the box-bushes outside the window, vacantly,
-unseeingly.
-
-She had no distinct recollection of the remainder of Miss Erroll’s visit.
-That one fact concerning the taking away of the purse which Roden had
-promised to keep always alone remained distinctly in her mind. She had
-tried honestly to overcome the all-powerful, unreasoning dislike of Miss
-Mary Erroll, and the result had been worse than if it had not been tried.
-The discordant, insistent yapping of the mastiff pup irritated her almost
-beyond endurance. He seemed bent on intruding upon her his regret for the
-departure of his former mistress.
-
-As she went wearily into her father’s work-room, and sat down to her
-spinning-wheel, she heard his voice at the window calling her.
-
-“Well?” she said, listlessly.
-
-“’Pears to me,” said he, jocosely, “as having rained, it air cert’n’y
-pourin’. Heah’s Joe Scott come ter bring yo’ them jorhnny-jump-ups he sez
-as he promised yo’.”
-
-She got violently to her feet, upsetting the wheel and tearing her skirt
-against a projecting nail as she hastened to the window. “Tell him I’m
-sick,” she said. “Tell him I’m in bade. I ain’t a-goin’ ter see him;
-that’s flat. If needs be, tell him so.”
-
-But Mr. Joseph Scott had already entered the room. He was a person of
-sinuous, snake-like presence, and seemed capable of shedding his complete
-attire by means of one deft wriggle. His neck rose from a turn-down
-celluloid collar, after the fashion of the neck of “Alice in Wonderland,”
-after she had partaken of the cake which caused her to exclaim,
-“Curiouser, and curiouser!” His long locks, of a vague, smoky tint,
-exuded an unsavory smell of (I am ashamed to say) rancid pomatum. He wore
-a threadbare summer overcoat, though in his case the “over” was a decided
-misnomer, as there was nothing under it but an unbleached cotton shirt,
-and a sporting vest which had evidently belonged to some Briton. His
-necktie would have put an October forest to the blush. His mud-colored
-trousers were pulled down outside of his great cowhide boots, which
-presented their very apparent tops in a ridgy circle beneath the stuff of
-his trousers.
-
-A strangling sense of loathing and revolt rose in Virginia’s throat.
-She felt as though she would indeed suffocate beneath that terrible
-combination of smell and vulgarity. She leaned far out of the window, and
-spoke to him without turning her head.
-
-“Mornin’,” she said, curtly. “P’r’aps you heard me tell father I was
-sick.”
-
-“Lor’! air you?” said Mr. Scott. “I cert’n’y am sawry. Here’s them
-jorhnny-jump-ups I hearn you seh ez how you wanted.”
-
-“Thank you,” said Virginia, in a stifled voice. She still leaned out of
-the window, and the conversation flagged.
-
-“Larse night,” suddenly announced Mr. Scott, with spasmodic
-assertiveness, “Larse night a peeg-horg came down th’ mounting and
-gneawed all pa’s corn orf.”
-
-“He must ’a’ had a mighty leetle crop,” said Virginia from without the
-window. Her voice came back into the room softened by the purring air
-without.
-
-“I’m tawkin’ ’bout gyarden corn,” said Mr. Scott, failing to appreciate
-the sarcasm.
-
-Again a silence. The mastiff pup, diverted by the arrival of the
-new-comer, went sniffing about his redolent person.
-
-“Ef he was a fox,” thought Virginia, dryly, “’twouldn’t take no houn’s
-ter foller his scent. I could track him a week arter-wards myself.” Out
-aloud she said, “Air them roots or flowers you brought me?”
-
-“Both,” said Mr. Scott.
-
-Another pause.
-
-“The tarryfied fever’s a-ragin’ up ter Annesville,” he announced,
-presently.
-
-Virginia faced about for the first time. “Is it?” she asked. “Who’s down?”
-
-“Nigh all o’ them Davises. The doctor says as how it’s ’count o’ their
-makin’ fertilizer in their cellar.”
-
-[Illustration: “HE MUST ’A’ HAD A MIGHTY LEETLE CROP.”]
-
-“What?” said Virginia.
-
-He repeated his assertion.
-
-“Ef that’s true,” she said, slowly, “I ain’ goin’ to bother my head ’bout
-’em; such fools oughter die.”
-
-(Be that as it may, she “bothered” herself enough to tramp on foot all
-the way to Annesville, some eight miles, that very afternoon, and offer
-her services as sick-nurse. The house fortunately was under quarantine,
-and there was assistance enough.)
-
-“But that ain’ nothin’ ter th’ skyarlet-fever over the mounting,” Mr.
-Scott pursued, in a tone whose threadbare lugubriousness revealed the
-morbid satisfaction which lined it. “That’s fyar howlin’; an’ they sez,
-moresomeover, ez how it can be kyard an’ took from a little bit o’ rag.”
-
-Old Herrick, who had come again to the window, was listening intently.
-“’S that so?” he said, finally. “Well, consequently were, the beauty of
-that question air, thar ain’ much rag trade goin’ on between that side o’
-th’ mounting an’ t’other. Hyeah! hyeah!”
-
-“How can you laugh, father?” said the girl.
-
-“Godamighty, gyrl! I ain’ laufin’ at the folks as is got the fever, but
-at them as ain’t.”
-
-“They says as how it kin be kep’ in a piece o’ ribbon or sich fur over
-twenty year,” pursued Mr. Scott, who, apparently not content with his own
-fragrance, continued from time to time to bury his long nose in the bunch
-of johnny-jump-ups which he still held.
-
-“’S that so?” said old Herrick again. “I tell yo’ what, darter, ’f that
-thar’s true, yo’d better have them things ez th’ las’ Englisher’s wife
-lef up in th’ attic burned up.”
-
-“Why?” said Mr. Scott, before Virginia could reply.
-
-“’Case thar baby died o’ th’ red fever, and thar’s some o’ its belonging
-up thar inter a cradle--some little odds an’ eens ez they furgot ter take
-away with ’em in their trouble.”
-
-“Yo’d cert’n’y better burn ’em,” said Mr. Scott, with knowing gloom. “I’d
-as soon sleep with a bar’l o’ gunpowder over my hade.”
-
-“Well, seems to me ef there’s danger ’n either, ’twouldn’t be in th’
-gunpowder,” said Miss Herrick, dryly, “seein’ as it don’ never blow down,
-an’ yo’d be onder it.”
-
-“G’long, Miss Faginia!” exclaimed her not-to-be-rebuffed admirer. “Yo’d
-have yo’ joke ’bout a dyin’ minister!”
-
-He left a half-hour afterwards, all unconscious of the seeds of disaster
-which he had sown, and the next day Roden returned from New York in
-excellent spirits. On the following Tuesday he went into the kitchen and
-had a private conference with Aunt Tishy, which resulted in his leaving
-it with pockets considerably lightened, and shoulders laden with the
-thanks and praise of its proprietress. He also confided in Virginia, and
-asked her assistance. He wished to give his bride-elect and her mother a
-little dinner--wouldn’t Virginia help him? She was so very clever about
-such things. He knew if she would only help him that everything would be
-perfectly satisfactory. She promised, and he went off on Bonnibel to
-Windemere entirely content.
-
-Miss Erroll drove her mother over to Caryston in a village-cart, and,
-as luck would have it, a sudden shower caught them about a quarter of a
-mile from the house. Mary, however, got the brunt of the shower, as she
-was driving, and had at once wrapped her mother in all available rugs and
-wraps.
-
-Mrs. Erroll stepped out upon the front porch at Caryston with the ruffle
-at her throat, and a little damp, and the plumes in her bonnet somewhat
-limp; but Mary’s dress of white wool was soaked through and through, and
-her hat a sodden mass of white lace and straw.
-
-Roden relapsed at once into the agonies of alarm in which newly engaged
-men are apt to indulge when the health of their _fiancées_ is called into
-question. He went again to Virginia, and overwhelmed her with instruction
-and entreaties. Miss Erroll was conducted to a bedroom bright with blue
-chintz and many wax-candles, and Virginia, having provided her with some
-of her own clothes, went off to dry the soaked garments. That, however,
-Roden would not hear of. It was too far to Windemere to send back for dry
-garments. Then Virginia must lend Miss Erroll one of her dresses.
-
-Virginia had three dresses besides the one she wore. She brought them all
-in and laid them on the bed. Miss Mary, who had an artistic eye, chose
-a gown of garnet wool with plain round waist and short skirt. When she
-had turned it in a little at the throat, and fastened a bit of cambric,
-which Virginia brought her, kerchiefwise about her neck, she looked
-like a charming Cinderella who had resumed her humble attire to please
-her Prince. Mary’s throat, however, could not stand the severe test of
-laceless exposure. It was too slender and long. Where Virginia’s massive
-column of cream-hued flesh rose from the clasp of such a kerchief with
-infinite suggestions of mythical forests and Amazonian warriors, Miss
-Erroll announced that she looked “scraggy.” She took up the bit of
-black velvet with its buckle of Scotch pebbles which she had worn about
-her throat when she arrived. But the wet stuff left dark stains on her
-fingers, and had assumed a cottony, lack-lustre hue. “If only I had a bit
-of velvet to go about my throat!” she said, regretfully. “I can’t go down
-this way--I’m so indecently thin!” She laughed a little and sat down as
-in despair.
-
-A sudden thought leaped hot in Virginia’s breast. A bit of velvet? She
-had no velvet of any kind, but she knew where a piece was. A bit of
-dark-blue velvet ribbon, just such a bit as Miss Erroll wanted. True, it
-had been used to loop a baby’s sleeve, but around that slender throat it
-would reach most amply.
-
-“I--kin--get--you a piece,” she heard herself saying.
-
-Her voice sounded strange and disembodied to herself, as though it did
-not issue from her own lips. She thought that she to whom she spoke
-must start up with horror for the change. But no, she only smiled
-blandly, sweetly, with that faint suggestion of patronage which was as
-perceptible, though not as palatable, as the dash of bitter in orange
-marmalade.
-
-“Thank you so much!” she said. “I shall quite suit myself then.”
-
-Virginia took a candle and went up into the attic, as ten days ago she
-had gone. The damp, dusty smell brought back to her that terrible memory
-as only a perfume can recall the past.
-
-Her veins throbbed ever hotter and fiercer. Her time was come. Revenge
-was in her hands. What fever could be more virulent, more deadly, than
-the fever that dark-haired girl had set raging in her veins? What was
-the verse that she had read only last night to Aunt Tishy out of what
-the old negress called “de Holy Wud?” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
-tooth. Joe Scott was not the only person she had ever heard speak of
-such a thing. It had simply served to recall it to her mind. Ha! ha! She
-had never liked Joe Scott before, and she had been very rude about those
-johnny-jump-ups. Poor Joe! She would thank him the very best she knew how
-when next she saw him. Poor Joe! good Joe! dear Joe! Yes, there it was,
-the pretty bassinet cradle, with its faded blue and pink ribbons. That
-little English baby had died full four years ago. She walked towards it,
-shielding the candle with one scooped hand from the playful assaults of
-the night wind. The cradle stood just in front of an old hair-covered
-chest. As she neared it, a consciousness of eyes regarding her came upon
-her. Ah! there they were. A rat, paralyzed for the moment by the sudden
-light, had paused on the edge of the old chest, and fixed her with his
-little, protruding, evil-looking eyes. She made a spasmodic, terrified
-movement with her hand, and he leaped down, his sleek, tight-skinned
-body striking the floor with a repulsive sound as of unsavorily nurtured
-corpulence. The girl turned with a strong, uncontrollable fit of
-shivering towards the cradle. It was rocking slowly back and forth in
-the uncertain light, its pink and blue ribbons fluttering with a ghostly
-and ill-timed gayety. A cry almost broke from between her gripped lips,
-but she remembered suddenly that the rat must have set it in motion when
-he leaped from the top of the chest. Setting the candle on the floor
-beside her, she stooped over and began lifting out the little sheets
-and blankets and bundles of linen and silk. One of those sudden noises
-which disturb sleep at night in an old house jarred through the room.
-She stuffed the things hastily back and looked behind her. Nothing
-there. But as her glance went round the room she saw before her, black,
-assertive, monstrous, the likeness of a huge cradle, cast by the candle
-against the whitewashed wall of the garret. Her heart beat with laboring,
-heavy thuds. If it were not quite so black, she thought, or if it had
-only been more the size of the real cradle; but its vast presence in the
-low-roofed room seemed like the presence of some presiding fate. She tore
-away her look from it by sheer force of will, found what she wanted,
-caught up the candle, and rushed headlong from the room.
-
-Miss Erroll received her with the same sweet smile. “You were pretty
-long,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve given you a lot of trouble.”
-
-“No, none,” said Virginia. She cleared her throat and repeated the words.
-They were indistinct at first, because of the dryness of her tongue and
-the roof of her mouth. She watched with hot, moveless eyes the slim
-fingers of Miss Erroll as she first crimped the curling bit of velvet
-between her fingers, with a deft, almost imperceptible movement, and
-forced the teeth of her little buckle through it.
-
-“How damp it smells!” she said, as she lifted it to her throat to put it
-on; “just as if it had been stuffed away in some old attic.”
-
-Virginia’s knees smote together. She put out her hand to steady herself,
-and sank heavily into a chair.
-
-“’Taint nuthin’--’tain’t nuthin’,” she said, roughly, as Mary ran to her
-side. “I’m better jess so. Don’ tech me, please. An’ please ter scuse me.
-I kyarn’ bear no one to tech me when--when I’m like this.”
-
-Alas! alas! Virginia, when were you ever “like this” before, in the whole
-course of your seventeen years of strength and health and placid, if
-bovine, contentment?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The dinner, thanks to Virginia, was a success. Roden’s wines were
-excellent. They were going to ask Virginia to sing for them. Roden said
-he thought it would please her so much. After dinner Mrs. Erroll sat down
-to the piano, and the sweethearts wandered off into the “greenhouse,”
-leaving open the door between the rooms. A rhomboid of pale yellow light
-from the candles on the dinner-table fell into the narrow, flower-crowded
-corridor, touching the great geranium-leaves into a soft distinctness,
-and showing here and there the flame-colored and snow-white glomes of
-blossom.
-
-Roden, out of sight of Mrs. Erroll, had straightway put an arm about the
-supple waist of his betrothed, and one of her hands had found its way to
-his short curls with a movement as of long habit. As the slanting light
-from the room beyond caught the sheen of her delicate throat above its
-velvet ribbon, he bent his head and pressed down his lips upon it and
-upon the bit of velvet.
-
-Virginia, by some strange coincidence or freak of fate, was at this
-moment crossing the lawn to put the mastiff pup into his kennel.
-Attracted by the unusual light in the greenhouse, she looked up. Looking
-up, she saw Roden as he stooped and kissed his sweetheart’s throat. She
-gave a fierce broken cry, like an angered beast, and turning, ran with
-all her might into the house.
-
-Poor Mrs. Erroll, summoning up musical ghosts from her maidenhood’s
-_répertoire_ on the old piano, thought that one of Roden’s horses had
-gone mad and galloped through the room.
-
-In the mean time Virginia, panting, wordless, seized Mary with one
-strong hand, and with the other tore off the velvet from about her neck.
-“I--I--I’ve read as how it was pizen; I jess remembered. Here’s yo’
-buckle.”
-
-She rushed madly out again, and flinging herself upon the bare floor of
-her little bedroom, beat the hard boards with her hand and dragged at her
-loosened hair.
-
-
-
-
-VII.
-
-
-There is One who hath said that to Him belongeth vengeance. When His
-creatures take into their incapable grasp the javelins of His wrath it is
-generally with as impotent and baleful a result as when young Phaëton,
-seeking to guide the chariot of the sun, brought to himself despair, and
-scorched to cinders the unoffending earth. Thus was it with Virginia.
-With the nearness of her unbridled love and anger she had forever seamed
-as if with fire the fair world of her content. It seemed to her that
-space itself would be too narrow to hold her apart from such women as
-were good and true.
-
-Just God! could it be that her sin was to be visited upon the being whom
-of all the world she loved best, because of whom that sin had been
-committed? Was Roden going to suffer, perhaps to die, in the stead of
-the woman she had sought to slay? He was not often at Caryston now; most
-of his days were spent with his betrothed. He did not notice the change
-which was stealing over Herrick’s daughter. He had no time to wonder that
-she did not sing now at her spinning as once she had sung. He would not
-have paused to listen to her had she done so.
-
-He was called away again to the North on the last of May, and on
-the day after his departure Aunt Tishy burst into Virginia’s room
-with flour-covered hands. “Gord! Gord! honey,” she said, tossing her
-blue-checked apron up and down with wild, savage gestures of dismay and
-grief, “what yuh think?--Marse Jack’s sweetheart’s dun got de rade fever,
-an’ dey don’ think as how she’ll live.”
-
-Virginia stood and stared at her with eyes which saw nothing. Her face
-took on a ghastly greenish pallor. About her brow and mouth there stole
-a cold moisture. She opened her lips, and seemed to speak. Her lips
-framed the same words stupidly over and over again.
-
-“Gord! honey,” cried the old negress, seizing her, as she swayed backward
-as if about to fall, “is yuh gwine be sick yuhsef?”
-
-Virginia pushed her away, walked steadily over to an old oak cupboard,
-took out a jug of whiskey, and drank from its green glass throat as
-she had seen men do. The stinging liquid filled her veins with a hot,
-false strength. She spoke quickly now, in a harsh tone, seizing the old
-nurse by the shoulders, and thrusting her white face, with its lambent,
-distended eyes, close to that of the terrified Aunt Tishy.
-
-“When was she took? Who tol’ yuh? Are yuh lyin’? Ef yuh’re lyin’ I’ll
-curse yuh with such curses yuh won’ be able to be still when yuh’re dead.
-But yuh wouldn’ lie tuh me, would yuh, mammy? You wouldn’ lie to me to
-send me tuh hell in th’ spirit ’fo’ I was called there fur good. Yuh hear
-me? Why didn’ yuh tell me befo’? Who’s with her? Who’s nursin’ her? Put
-up my clo’es. I’m goin’--I’m goin’ right now. God! Air yuh a-tryin’ to
-hold me? Ha! ha! That’s good--that cert’n’y is good. I’ll make father
-larf at that when--when I come back. Why, you pore old thing, I could
-throw you outer that winder ef I tried. Well, don’t cry. What a’ you
-cryin’ fur? God! God! God! have mercy on me!”
-
-She fell upon her knees, wringing her hands and throwing backward her
-agonized face, as though with her uplooking, straining eyes she would
-pierce the very floor of heaven and behold that mercy for which she
-pleaded. Then she leaped again to her feet. All at once a calmness fell
-upon her. She resumed the old dull listlessness of some days past as
-though it had been a garment.
-
-“I’m goin’ to Mis’ Erroll’s,” she said, quietly. “I wan’ some clo’es.
-Send ’em; I ain’t er-goin’ tuh wait. Tell father.”
-
-Virginia, arrived at Windemere, went down the basement steps into the
-kitchen. The cook, a young mulatto woman named Lorinda, came forward to
-meet her on cautious, brown-yarn toes.
-
-“Miss Mary’s a-dyin’,” she announced, in a sepulchral whisper. “De doctor
-seh ez how she kyarn’ live nohow. She’s jess ez rade ez a tomarker fum
-hade tuh foots. An’ she’s jess pintly ’stracted. Yuh never heah sich
-screechin’ an’ tuh-doin’ in all yuh life.”
-
-“Kin I see Mis’ Erroll?” Virginia said, shortly. She sat down on an
-upturned half-barrel near the door, and leaned with her forehead in her
-locked palms. Lorinda, rebuffed but obliging, went to see. Virginia was
-not surprised when she returned shortly, followed by Mrs. Erroll herself.
-Her heart would never quicken its beat again for anything this side of
-torment, she thought. Poor, erring, repentant, suffering little savage,
-what are you enduring now if it be not torment?
-
-Mrs. Erroll, nervous and hysterical, took the girl’s hands in hers,
-and scarcely knowing what she did, bent forward and kissed her cheek.
-Virginia started back with a harsh cry, which was born and died in her
-throat.
-
-“Poor child!” Mrs. Erroll said, humbly. “I beg your pardon. But if you
-feared contagion you ought not to have come here.”
-
-“’Tain’t that--’tain’t that,” said Virginia. “Don’ min’ me; I’m queer
-like sometimes. I didn’ mean nuthin’. Ev’ybordy in this neighborhood ’ll
-tell yo’ I’m a good nurse. I’ve come to he’p yo’. I’ve come to take kyar
-of her. I’ve come to _make_ her live!”
-
-She lifted one arm with a gesture of command almost threatening. The next
-moment it dropped heavily to her side. The old dull look crept like a
-shadow over the momentary animation of her face. “They’ll tell yo’ I’m a
-good nurse,” she said, in her slow monotone.
-
-Mrs. Erroll was only too thankful for the proffered services. She had
-no assistance from the whites in the neighborhood; indeed, all of the
-neighboring families had left for the Virginia Springs.
-
-Virginia, after removing her shoes, went at once to the sick-room. As her
-eyes fell upon the flushed face on the pillow it was as if every drop of
-blood in her body turned first to fire and then to ice.
-
-She stood with her hands against her breast and looked down at her own
-work. The beautiful dark tresses, formerly so smoothly braided about
-the small head, now ever turning from side to side as though in search
-of rest which it found not, were tangled and matted until no trace of
-their former lustre remained; the red lips, ever moving, gave forth wild,
-incoherent cries and mutterings.
-
-About the slender throat coiled the wraith of a dark-blue velvet ribbon.
-
-“Take it off, take it off,” whispered Virginia. “She kyarn’ git well
-while that’s there--she kyarn’.” Reason came back to her with a sudden
-rush, and she knew that only her mind’s eye saw the velvet ribbon.
-
-She then took her place by the bedside, from which she did not move to
-eat or sleep for twelve days and nights. They brought her bouillon and
-made her drink it under penalty of being turned from the room. For twelve
-times four-and-twenty hours she listened to those senseless ravings.
-She was mistaken in turn by the sick girl for her mother, for some of
-her school-room friends, for Roden. Mary would sometimes put up both
-narrow, fever-wasted hands to her little throat, and cry out that she
-was choking--that Virginia had brought her a band of fire and locked it
-about her throat. By what strange coincidence such a fancy should have
-possessed her who shall say?
-
-Thus they went together, those two, through the Valley of the Shadow--the
-all but murdered, the almost murderess--and she who had sought to slay
-brought back to life.
-
-Roden, detained by some business complication in New York, heard nothing
-of his sweetheart’s illness until telegraphed for on the day of the
-crisis. It was just the balance of a mote in sunshine between life and
-death. Life brought the mote that won. They told him he must thank
-Virginia. They had all thanked her, and blessed her, with thanks and
-blessings which burned her guilty soul with twice the fire of red-hot
-maledictions. That they should bless her whom God had cursed! Ah, God,
-she prayed not! She would but know if God himself wept not because of the
-sad mockery.
-
-A wild thought came to her with healing in its wings, as when a blade
-of grass forces its way between the stones in a prisoner’s cell. She had
-read of atonement: might she not atone?
-
-Perhaps God would let her buy forgiveness with her life. Why had she not
-taken the fever; or was this fever now which rioted through her veins?
-She was walking homeward with her shoes slung across her shoulders. The
-grass felt cool and damp against her bare feet. Would it not wither where
-she trod? She looked backward over her shoulder with a laugh. It seemed
-to her that her footprints would be set as with fire across that lush
-June field.
-
-Then came a curse upon her eyes. For her the earth lost all its summer
-green; the heavens above her bent not bluely down to meet the blue
-horizon. The birds ceased singing, and echoed her mirthless laugh; all
-nature took it up--a monstrous harmony of jovial sounds. At what were
-they making merry, these creatures large and small--the crickets, the
-wild birds, the many voices of field and forest, of air and water?
-
-Was it at her they laughed? Did they jeer at her because she had lost
-her soul? Ah, for the cool green to look upon! Ah, that its blue would
-return to the lurid heavens! The curse of blood was upon her. Because of
-it she looked on all things as through a scarlet veil. Red was the vault
-above her; red the far-reaching line of well-loved hills; red, red, the
-whirling earth.
-
-Virginia did not die. A week after her recovery she sent and asked if
-Roden would come to her father’s room; she wished to speak with him.
-
-He went most willingly, having never felt as though he had sufficiently
-thanked her for what she had done for one who was to him as the life in
-his veins.
-
-As he entered the room, in spite of all his self-control he could not
-restrain a slight start. Was this Virginia Herrick?--this snow maiden
-with eyes of fire, and tangled hair that seemed to flame about her white
-face as though it would consume it?--this fragile, wasted, piteous memory
-of a woman? She was as poor a likeness of her former self as a sketch in
-white chalk would be of one of Fortuny’s sunlit glares of canvas.
-
-He came and stood beside her, wordless, and then put one of his strong
-brown hands kindly on her hair.
-
-“Wait,” she said, drawing herself away from him--“wait.”
-
-“Ah, Miss Virginia,” he said, in his breezy, gentle voice, “we will soon
-have you out of this. You won’t know yourself in two weeks.”
-
-“Wait,” she said, her great eyes burning into his.
-
-“My poor little girl,” he said, almost with tenderness, “I am afraid you
-have over-estimated your strength. You had better let me go now. I will
-come to-morrow whenever you send for me.”
-
-“Wait,” she said a fourth time, in that strange, still voice.
-
-He had a horrified doubt in regard to her reason as he took the chair to
-which she pointed and sat down facing her.
-
-“Well,” he said, with an assumption of gayety which he was far from
-feeling, “what is it? Am I to be scolded for anything?”
-
-“Do you believe in torment?” said the girl. She kept her hollow,
-stirless eyes on his. There was an absence of movement about her almost
-oppressive. She seemed not even to breathe.
-
-“My dear child,” said Roden, nervously, “do choose a more cheerful
-subject. Really, you know, it isn’t good for you to be morbid now. Let’s
-talk of something jolly and pleasant. Don’t you want to hear how the
-mokes are coming along? And Bonnibel, poor old girl! I’m afraid her
-feelings will be awfully hurt when I tell her you didn’t ask after her.”
-
-“I s’pose ev’ybordy bleeves in torment that has felt it,” said the girl.
-She had not moved in anywise. Her deep, still eyes yet rested on his
-face. She seemed drinking his looks with hers. “I’ve sorter come ter
-think as hell’s in th’ hearts o’ people,” she went on. “There ain’t no
-flames ez kin burn like them in people’s hearts.”
-
-Roden jumped to his feet, and went over beside her. “Virginia,” he said,
-kindly but firmly, “I’m not going to let you talk like this. Good Heaven!
-those country quacks know as little about medicine as I do; not as
-much, by Jove! for I’d not have let you leave your bed for a month yet.
-Come, dear, let me persuade you. Go back to bed. I’ll come and see you
-to-morrow in your room, if your father’ll let me. You must, Virginia!”
-
-“It ain’t no worse, do you reckon,” she went on, dully, “tuh be in hell
-than tuh have hell in you? I’ve thought er heap ’bout it. I’ve most
-answered it, but I’d rather--”
-
-“Hush! hush!” said Roden, imperatively. He thought her delirious, and
-started to the door to call her nurse.
-
-“Wait!” rang out her voice, with all its old, clear strength. She had
-risen to her feet. She was there before him. The light from the window
-behind her struck through her hair, so that she seemed standing between
-rows of living flame. “I want tuh tell you,” she said. “I didn’t use tuh
-think I was a coward, but I am--I am!” She beat the palms of her hands
-together, and tossed back her head as though seeking to be rid of the
-superflux of agony which tore her. “I kyarn’ bear to say it tuh yo’; I
-kyarn’ bear to hear yo’ curse me, ez I have so often hearn yo’ in my
-dreams. I kyarn’ bear--O God!--I kyarn’ bear fur yo’ tuh know me ez I am.
-O God! O God! this’ll wipe it out, won’t it? This’ll buy me peace?”
-
-“Virginia! Virginia!” said Roden, beside himself. He tried to force her
-again into her chair.
-
-“Ah! don’t touch me!” she cried out--“don’t yuh touch me, tuh hate me
-worse than ever when yuh know--Listen--listen hard, ’cause yuh ain’t
-a-goin’ to bleeve me when first yuh hear. Yuh come here tuh thank me fur
-savin’ her life. Listen: ’twas me ez tried to kill her--’twas me! me!
-me!” The last word broke from her with a wild sob, almost vindictive in
-its urgent violence. She seemed like one who scourges mercilessly his
-own flesh for its sins against his soul. “I done it--I done it. I tried
-ter kill her. Listen! You’ve hearn o’ fever bein’ cyar’d in bits o’
-ribbon--in leetle bits o’ velvet ribbon--one, two, ten, twenty years?
-There was a leetle baby died here onc’t. It died o’ th’ fever _she_ liked
-tuh ’a’ died of. I give her that piece o’ velvet to w’ar roun’ her pretty
-throat. I went up intuh th’ attic, an’ hunted an’ hunted till I found it
-in th’ baby’s cradle. I give it to her. I tried to kill her. O my God!
-Do yo’ want tuh touch me--now?”
-
-He stood and stared on her like one dazed by a sudden blow, though not
-quite stunned.
-
-“You are crazy,” he said, thickly. “Poor Virginia, you are crazy.”
-
-“O God!” she wailed. “I wisht I wuz--I wisht I wuz! Oh, ef I wuz only
-like them dumb beasts in th’ stables out thar! Ef I wuz only Bonnibel,
-then--then--then yuh wouldn’ hate me; an’ ef yuh did, I wouldn’ know.”
-
-“You are raving,” he said again.
-
-“Ask her--ask her, if yo’ don’ bleeve me. Ask her ’f Faginia Herrick
-didn’ bring her a leetle bit o’ blue velvet to w’ar round her throat the
-night she got wet in th’ rain. She said then it smelt damp like it had
-been in a attic. Ask her--ask her.”
-
-“God in heaven!” said Roden, between his teeth, “can you be telling me
-the truth?”
-
-“_He_ knows I am!--_He_ knows I am!” she said, wildly.
-
-Roden turned from her, resting his hand on the back of the chair in which
-he had sat when he first entered the room. His head drooped. The double
-horror seemed like a palpable thing at his side.
-
-“D’ yo’ bleeve me?” she said, with panting eagerness.
-
-“Yes,” he said. She would not have recognized his voice had he spoken in
-the dark.
-
-She waited a few moments, motionless, frozen, as it were, with suspense
-and dread. Then she leaned forward, and holding fast her bosom with her
-crossed arms in the gesture usual with her, fixed her dilating eyes upon
-him. Was it possible, could it be true, that after all he could not curse
-her? Nay, dear God! was he even going to forgive her?
-
-“Say something,” she said, in a bated voice--“say somethin’. Jess so you
-don’ curse me, say somethin’.”
-
-Still he spoke not. She fell upon her knees and laid her head upon his
-feet. “O my God! my God!” she sobbed, “air yuh goin’ tuh furgive me?”
-
-Then he spoke to her. “Forgive you?” he repeated--“forgive you?” He
-laughed a short, rough laugh. “By G--!” he said, turning away from her,
-so that her forehead rested on the bare floor instead of on his feet,
-“it’s all I can do not to curse you!”
-
-When she rose again to her knees she was alone in the darkening room.
-
-
-
-
-VIII.
-
-
-Roden did not return to Caryston that night, nor the next day, nor the
-day after that. A boy was sent from Windemere to bring over some of his
-boxes. On Monday of the next week he went with the Errolls to Old Point
-Comfort, where Mary had been ordered to stop during her convalescence.
-
-As much as he despised Virginia for her confession, that pathetic, joyous
-cry of hers as she thought him about to forgive her would sometimes ring
-in his ears; her deep, still, pleading look, as of some dumb beast, for
-mercy haunted him at times. He could feel her forehead on his feet, and
-the eager grasp of her hands upon them. It was not pleasant, all this;
-for while it annoyed and even pained him, he could not say honestly
-to himself that he felt any disposition to forgive her. Forgiveness is
-no doubt divine. Roden was quite sure that it was an attribute which,
-like happiness, belonged solely to the gods. As for himself, he was
-distinctly, vehemently, entirely human. He did not forgive--almost he did
-not wish to feel forgiveness. What! forgive a creature who had sought to
-murder his manhood’s one love? Verily he would be no better than herself
-did he so much as dream of pardon. Between her and her God must rest that
-question. He would none of it. And yet why did that earnest, wistful
-voice, so thrilling with a timid exultation, come ever to his mental
-ears: “O my God! my God! air you goin’ ter furgive me?” Pshaw! what
-balderdash! He had not cursed her. Let her comfort herself with that. He
-did not know many other men who would have been as forbearing. And yet
-again--those hands about his feet, that huddled form prone before him in
-humblest entreaty! It made him irritable at times. He was conscious of
-having acted with perfect justness, and yet he felt that his justness had
-not been tempered with overmuch mercy.
-
-In the mean time Virginia lived on, if one can be said to live whose
-heart is dead within her. She did not dare to pray for death; she did not
-dare to hope for peace; she feared to die, poor ignorant child, because
-of the roaring flame which waited to devour her. She feared even more to
-live, because of the fire with which she was already consumed. She never
-moved save to go to bed and get up again. Sometimes she would sit all
-day out-of-doors under the great horse-chestnuts, already shrivelling
-in the June sunlight. Nothing roused her; nothing moved her in anywise.
-Poor old Herrick would recount to her his drollest stories, ending with
-a vociferous “Hyeah! hyeah!” in hopes of eliciting some answering mirth
-from her. But when he had reached the most excruciatingly funny climax,
-and paused to hear her laugh, she would turn on him her vague, gentle
-eyes, and say, “What’s that, father?” or sometimes, “Were you a-talkin’
-ter me, father dear?”
-
-The old man went heavily about his work. He was like some willing beast
-too late in life called upon to support a heavy burden. He was disgusted
-and angry to feel the big tears on his cheeks.
-
-“The beauty of the question air,” he quoth, angrily, to himself one day,
-“I ain’t wuth th’ victuals I eat. I’m a pore ole fool ez oughter be
-a-suckin’ ov a sugar rag, ’stead o’ tendin’ ter er beeg place like this;
-but, Godamighty! ef that thar gyrl don’ git a heap peerter ’fo’ long, I’m
-gwine plumb crazy. My sakes! who’d ’a’ ever thought Faginia would a-set
-all day like that a-studyin’ her own han’s like they wuz the book o’
-Gord! Howsomdever, ’tain’t many ez studies th’ book o’ Gord ez faithful
-ez my pore leetle gyrl studies them han’s o’ hern. Somethin’ cert’n’y
-_is_ out o’ kelter with that thar chile. Godamighty! ef Faginia wuz ter
-die--”
-
-He stopped blankly in the midst of the cornfield through which
-he was walking, and thrusting his hands deep in his brown jeans
-trousers-pockets, looked up appealingly at the hot blue sky.
-
-That same evening he was summoned as juryman to Charlottesville, a
-village some fifteen miles from Caryston, and as he kissed Virginia
-good-by his heart rose in his throat. The face she lifted to his was so
-wan, so patient, so like the face of her young mother just ere she died,
-twenty-one years ago.
-
-“Leetle gyrl--leetle gyrl,” said the old man, brokenly, “ef you don’ want
-tuh hurry yo’ father tuh his grave, yo’ll hurry en take them purty leetle
-foots out o’ yourn. Darter, honey, try ’n’ git some o’ them ole red
-roses in them white cheeks. Please, Faginia, honey, I’m ’mos’ worrited to
-death ’long o’ you.”
-
-“Pore father!” she said, stroking his face--“pore father!” that was all.
-Her listless hand fell again into her lap. Her eyes fixed themselves with
-their vague, uncomprehending look upon the far blue distance. She was as
-much apart from him as though she were already dead. He rose to his feet,
-strangling a sob in his brave old throat, that he might not distress her,
-and rode manfully away to his unpleasant duty.
-
-That night a dreadful thing occurred at Caryston. The “mill stable,”
-as it was generally called, from being built on a hill just above the
-mill-pond, caught on fire. There were four of Roden’s most valuable
-horses in it, together with Bonnibel, who had been moved from the house
-stables while they were undergoing alteration.
-
-Virginia was sitting silent by her bedroom window when the first copper
-glare began to tinge the dense upward column of black smoke. She knew
-in a minute what it was, although Aunt Tishy muttered something about
-“bresh” fires.
-
-She leaped to her feet, her heart once more renewing its old-time
-measure. “Mammy!” she called--“Mammy! that’s th’ mill stable! th’ mill
-stable’s on fire! O God above! Th’ pore horses--an’ Bonnibel! O pore Mr.
-Jack--pore Mr. Jack! Ef Bonnibel’s hurt, it’ll break his heart.” She
-had forgotten everything in her thought for him. Her own sin, his harsh
-words--all that had passed between them since first he gave Bonnibel into
-her glad keeping.
-
-“Here!” she called, tossing on her clothes with nervous, eager fingers,
-“han’ me my shoes--quick!--Lord God!--ef only I ken git thar in time!”
-
-She was down-stairs and out of the house almost before the old negress
-knew what she was about to undertake. Out at a side gate she dashed,
-and down a grassy hill at the back of the house. Some catalpa-tree
-roots caught at her flying feet with their knotty fingers as though,
-fiend-like, they would hinder her on her errand of mercy. On, on; her
-breath came quick and laboring. She was on the open road now, straining
-with all her might up a steep, stone-roughed hill. All the northern
-heavens were ablaze with an angry orange. As she gained the top of the
-hill a little fan of lilac flames burst from the stable roof against the
-night. There was yet time--Bonnibel was in a loose-box near the door.
-O God, the other horses! Must they roast alive--the beautiful, agile
-creatures that he so loved?
-
-Below, in the placid breast of the large pond, the lurid mass above was
-reflected with an effect as incongruous as when some world-tossed soul
-pours out its hot confession into the calm keeping of a saintly heart.
-
-The shallow stream shoaled into fire among the black stems of the
-water-reeds, and tossed the flames upon its mimic waves. She gained the
-rough bridge which spanned it; her feet passed with a swift, hollow sound
-across it. She was there--at the stable, and her breath had not yet
-given out. Then all at once she remembered. Oh, joy! joy! If she saved
-Bonnibel, and was herself hurt to death, would not that be atonement?
-Might he not forgive her then? Poor little savage child--poor, sweet,
-uncivilized, true heart! I think indeed he would forgive you if he knew.
-
-There were men running frantically about--omnipresent--useless: they
-had delayed so long to set about extinguishing the fire that it was now
-beyond all bounds. The wild, dull trampling of the hoofs of the terrified
-horses made horror in the air. They whinnied and nickered like children
-pleading for help. One of the English grooms was dashing into the smoke
-and heat. Virginia seized him by the arm.
-
-“I’m coming with you,” she said; “let me keep hold of your coat.”
-
-Alas! alas! the maddened, silly brutes refused to follow. They reared
-madly whenever approached, and struck with their fore-feet at the plucky
-little lad. In no way could he approach them; threats and cajolery were
-in vain. Virginia snatched a whip from the stable wall and tried to beat
-them out. Usurper, vicious to the last, rushed furiously at her, and
-but for the lad’s striking him over the head with a pitchfork, would
-inevitably have dashed her brains out with his wicked hoofs. There was no
-further time to be lost. One side of the roof was blazing ominously, and
-the wall on the eastern side began to tremble.
-
-Virginia, in spite of entreaties and hands held out to stop her, turned
-her skirts about her head and went into Bonnibel’s box. “Six of us ’ave
-tried to get ’er out, miss,” said the panting lad, who had followed her.
-“Don’t you venture in, for God’s sake, miss; she’s that mad she’ll kill
-you--th’ poor hussy!”
-
-Bonnibel was in truth like a horse distraught. She was leaping back and
-forth, and trotting from side to side of her capacious box, nickering
-from time to time, with head aloft and tail held like a plume above her
-satin quarters. No sooner did she hear Virginia’s voice than she stopped
-short, quivering in every splendid limb and sinew.
-
-“Bonnibel!” said Virginia, in that soft monotone the frightened creature
-had not now heard for many a day--“Bonnibel!” There was a second’s pause;
-then stooping her bright head, with a low whinny as of welcome and trust,
-the gallant mare came to the well-known voice.
-
-Virginia tore off her woollen shawl and blindfolded the bright eyes.
-
-In the mean time the rest of the English lads and the head groom had
-arrived, with fire-engines and more help. They had already succeeded in
-getting the horse out. The vicious Usurper they were compelled to leave
-to his awful fate.
-
-“Boys, Bonnibel’s coming!” yelled the lad who had entered the stable with
-Virginia, dashing out ahead of her; “Miss Herrick’s got her, and she’s
-coming kind as a lamb!”
-
-A hearty, roaring cheer went up from without, mingled with exultant
-warwhoops from the negroes gathered around.
-
-Almost they were safe. Why do things happen with only an inch between
-safety and destruction? One instant more and horse and woman would have
-been free. But in that tarrying instant a heavy beam from the front of
-the stable fell crashing down, bringing with it a great mass of bricks
-and mortar. Virginia and Bonnibel were half buried under the reeking
-mass. The flames sent up an exultant roar as of triumph. There was a
-smothered, horrified groan from the men, and then Bonnibel, freeing
-herself by one powerful effort of her iron quarters, galloped off into
-the coolness of the night.
-
-They pulled Virginia out, with such gentleness as they could spare to
-the encroaching flames, and a bed was instantly made for her on the damp
-turf by means of the men’s hastily torn-off coats. She lay there, still,
-white, most beautiful, with peace at last upon her tired face. Did she
-dream, perchance, that he forgave her?
-
-Ah! but the horror that followed--the crash succeeding crash, the hideous
-rioting of the vengeful flames about the poor brutes within. Some were
-suffocated, some jammed to death beneath the continually falling masses
-of stone and brick. Usurper, dauntless, rebellious to the last, struck
-with his iron-shod feet at the flames that made too free with him. He was
-so magnificent in his fierce disdain that more than one of the grooms
-sobbed like girls at the fate which had overtaken him. All at once a
-cry, piercing, shrill, terrible above any sound which had ever come upon
-their hearing, shook the stillness of the night to shuddering echoes. It
-was the one and only sign of pain that Usurper gave ere he sank to an
-awful death among the blazing ruins.
-
-Virginia’s senses returned to her as they were carrying her home in
-solemn silence and with bared heads. She tried to lift herself on one
-elbow, and sank back with a moan of pain; but even for that there went up
-some muttered thanks from the men who carried her. They had thought her
-dead.
-
-“Does the moving pain you, miss?” asked the lad who had been with her in
-Bonnibel’s box.
-
-“It hurts some,” she said, bravely. “What’s happened?”
-
-They had to tell her all about the fire, as though it were a thing new to
-her, and how she had saved Bonnibel.
-
-“Oh, did I?” she said. “Did I?--air yuh sure?”
-
-“Sure, miss?” echoed the admiring Hicks. “Sure? Well, I think we be
-pretty sure o’ that ’ere! Bean’t we, boys?”
-
-They could not say enough.
-
-One thought was making music in Virginia’s heart. “Perhaps he’ll forgive
-me now,” she said over and over to herself. She looked upward at the
-starry heavens through the broad leaves of the catalpa-trees, as they
-bore her up the last hill to the house, with a feeling closely akin to
-joy. “I’ve saved Bonnibel,” she thought--“I’ve saved Bonnibel, anyways;
-ef he don’t forgive me, I’ve done, somethin’ to make him glad. ’Twas
-awful in that burnin’ place; but I saved her--I saved her--I saved her.”
-She said the last three words out loud.
-
-“That you did, miss,” said the boy Hicks, who walked close beside her.
-“Tell her again, boys.”
-
-They told her over and over again, first one and then the other; she
-seemed never tired of listening. For the first time in many, many days
-her white lips fell into the gracious curves they used to know so well.
-She was smiling--smiling for sheer happiness. She was hurt to death,
-she knew that; something whispered it in her glad ears as distinctly as
-though the good God had bent from his great heavens himself to tell her
-so; and she knew--ah! she knew--that her God had forgiven her. Death
-had brought her two gifts so sweet in his chill arms that his embrace
-scarcely frightened her. As they carried her with slow carefulness up
-the front steps and into the wide hall an innocent fancy seized her; she
-would like so much to die in Mr. Jack’s room--on his little iron bed.
-There couldn’t be any harm, could there? She looked so wistfully up into
-the face of little Hicks that he felt she wanted something, and asked her
-what it was.
-
-“Kyar me into Mr. Jack’s room,” she whispered. “It’s--it’s nearer the
-ground.”
-
-The pretty subterfuge was also a very good one. It would have been almost
-mortal anguish to her, had they sought to bear her poor wrecked body up
-that winding stair-way.
-
-So into “Mr. Jack’s room” they carried her, and placed her full gently on
-his forsaken bed.
-
-Aunt Tishy came hurrying with inarticulate cries. They hushed her as best
-they might, telling her that any disturbance might kill the girl. Then
-little Hicks mounted one of Roden’s best horses and dashed off in search
-of a surgeon.
-
-Virginia lay quiet and quite content, staring with wide-open eyes at the
-well-known objects in the airy room. Another delightful fancy seized
-upon her. Ah! it was good to lie there and die, and pretend that she had
-been his wife, and that it was her right to die in there with all those
-much-loved manly kickshaws about her: the Scotch deer-stalker’s cap,
-which hung on one of the sconces of a little mirror over the mantle;
-that heap of glittering spurs on a table near at hand; his whip; his
-boots; an old blue flannel shirt on the bed’s foot. She had not allowed
-any one to enter his room since he left for Windemere, nor had she
-herself been in it.
-
-And even if he didn’t forgive her, she saved Bonnibel. Suddenly there
-came upon her an awful, crashing agony.
-
-“Mammy! mammy!” she called, in her childhood’s voice. She clung to her
-old nurse with might and main. “Oh, mammy, mammy, I’m payin’ fur it! Yuh
-don’ know, but I’m payin’ fur it. I’m so glad--I’m so glad! Mammy, sing
-me ’bout ’though yo’ sins be as scarlet’--sing! sing!”
-
-The old negress, as well as she could for sobbing, sang to her in such
-words as these:
-
-    “’Tis de old ship o’ Zion,
-    Come to take us all ho-ome--
-      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
-    ’Tis de old ship o’ Zion,
-    Come to take us all home--
-      Glory, glory, hallelujah!”
-
-Here she broke off with a pitiful cry: “O Gord! my sweet lamb, mammy
-kyarn’ sing to you while her heart’s fyar breakin’ in her. Don’ ask pore
-mammy tuh sing, my honey--don’, don’!”
-
-“Sing, please, sing,” said the girl, with gentle insistence. Her mind was
-failing her a little for the first time. “God alluz furgives, don’ he,
-mammy? Alluz, alluz. Sing ’bout it, mammy; please, mammy, sing.”
-
-The old negress went on, brokenly:
-
-    “We has landed many thousands--
-          Hallelujah!
-    An’ we’ll lan’ many mo-re--
-          Hallelujah!”
-
-“Please sing ’bout the sins, mammy; that’s what I want--’bout the sins.”
-
-The poor old woman crooned on, swaying her body to and fro as she
-crouched at the bedside:
-
-    “Do’ yo’ sins be as skyarlet,
-    Dey shall be as white as snow--
-      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
-    Do’ yo’ sins be as skyarlet,
-    Dey shall be as white as snow--
-      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
-    ’Tis Jesus is deir Capt’in--
-            Hallelujah!
-    ’Tis Jesus is deir Capt’in--
-            Hallelujah!”
-
-“White ez snow--white ez snow,” murmured the girl. “Mammy, do yo’ bleeve
-that? Ain’t it sweet, mammy? don’ it seem good an’ kind? Mammy, yo’ see
-that ole blue shirt a-hangin’ thar? I loves that shirt, mammy, same as
-some women loves their children. It’s sorter got his shape now, ain’t it?
-Hand it here, mammy. Don’ it smell good?--kinder briery an’ soapy, mammy?
-He used to take more barths ’n any man yo’ ever hearn ov. I used ter hear
-him a-splashin’ clear up in my room. Where’s father, mammy? I do want to
-see father, an’ I want to see Bonnibel ’fore I go. She came to me--oh,
-so sweet an’ lovin’! She knew I’d ’a’ died fur her, I reckon. Mammy, did
-yo’ sen’ fur father? Pore father! pore father! he’ll be so sorry! Oh,
-pore father!” Here the first tears she had shed rolled over her white
-cheeks. The old negress sobbed out aloud.
-
-“Oh, my honey!” she said--“oh, my little lamb!--oh, my honey!”
-
-Again came that terrible pain, almost beyond her power to endure.
-
-“I’m payin’ fur it--I’m payin’ fur it,” she said, over and over again.
-“God’s so good to me! He’s forgiven me; he’s lettin’ me pay fur it.”
-
-The surgeon came at daybreak. He was quiet and serious. Little Hicks was
-the only one to whom he told anything. To him he said, “She may live two
-or three days; she may die before night.”
-
-At one o’clock next day old Herrick returned. He was wordless and
-almost majestic in his deep grief. All day long he sat holding her
-in such positions as would ease her; talking to her; trying to follow
-her wandering fancies. She knew him always, though she knew no one
-else. “Father,” she said, suddenly, in one of the intervals when reason
-returned to her, “won’t you please sen’ fur Mr. Jack? Somethin’ in
-my heart tells me he’ll come--now. Write to him ’bout Bonnibel. Tell
-him I saved her. Tell him I jess want ter say good-by. I don’ wan’
-him ever ter furgive me. I only want to--to look at him once more.
-Father”--wistfully--“_you_ think he’ll come?”
-
-“Yes, yes, my little girl, I think he’ll come.”
-
-“Then write, write, father--quick. Don’ let it be too late. I wan’ so bad
-to look at him once more!”
-
-He came--oh yes, he came! mad with regret and remorse, repentant, eager
-to atone. “Where is she? where is she?” he asked as he threw down his
-hat upon the hall table, and jerked off his spurs, that their jingling
-might not disturb her. If he had only known the music that they made to
-her ears!
-
-“She’s in yo’ room, sur. They tells me ez how ’twar her fancy to be took
-thar,” said Herrick, simply. “I hope ez you don’ min’, sur.”
-
-Mind! Jack’s eyes were hot with the saddest tears of all his life.
-
-He went in softly. There she lay, pathetic, fragile as some long-ill
-child upon his narrow bed. He went and stooped over her, taking into one
-of his brown hands her restless, slender fingers. Her gentle look rested
-unknowingly upon him.
-
-“Ain’t they goin’ ter sen’ fur Mr. Jack?” she said. “I think he’ll
-come--now; father thought ez how he would. Please write it down that I
-saved Bonnibel--please write that down. ’Twas mighty hot, but I saved
-her. Oh, don’ yo’ think he’ll come?--don’ yo’ think he’ll come? I don’
-even arst him to speak to me. Ef he’ll only stand in th’ door so ez I kin
-see him when I go.”
-
-“Virginia--Virginia,” said Roden, brokenly. “My dear little girl, don’t
-you know me? Here I am!--here--at your side. Don’t you feel my hands,
-Virginia? Don’t you know me?”
-
-She went rambling on. “I wonder ef he would furgive me ef he knew? I
-wisht Bonnibel could tell him--I wisht I was Bonnibel!” with a little
-rippling laugh infinitely pathetic. “Oh, wouldn’ I kyar him pretty an’
-straight at his fences, an’ win ev’y race fur him!” Her eyes opened
-vague and sorrowful again upon Roden’s pale face. “Oh,” she said, with
-a long sighing breath, “don’t you think he’ll come? Write to him ’bout
-Bonnibel--please write that ter him.”
-
-“Virginia, look at me--look at me,” said the young man, half lifting her
-in his arms. “Dear little Virginia, here I am. I forgive you with all my
-heart and soul, Virginia. Oh, please look at me, please remember me.”
-
-“Who says ‘furgive?’” she said, with her restless, eager eyes searching
-the room as if for something long expected--“who says ‘furgive?’”
-
-“I do, I do,” Roden said, weeping at last like any girl. “I forgive you,
-Virginia--Virginia. You _shall_ know me!”
-
-Her eyes fixed themselves upon his face, first vacantly, then with a
-wonder-stricken radiance. “Mr. Jack,” she said, under her breath, “did
-they tell yo’? I saved her; that’s all. Yo’ needn’ say nothin’; I jess
-wanted to look at yo’. I saved her. ’Twas awful hot. I kin hear it
-roarin’ now. She come to me; she wouldn’ come to nobody else.”
-
-“Virginia,” said Roden, “listen to me; stop talking. What do I care about
-Bonnibel? Child, do you want to break my heart? Listen, Virginia; I
-forgive you--I _forgive you_.”
-
-“Do--you--really?” she said, with the old timid joy in her soft voice.
-“I ain’t dreamin’? Well, God’s so good to me! But I did save her.
-‘Bonnibel!’ I said--‘Bonnibel!’ an’ she come right straight ter me with
-her pretty head tucked down. Then came all that fire on us. I thought
-’twas over. But I saved her--I saved her. Please tell him that--_please_
-tell him that. I reckon he’ll sorter remember me kind fur that; don’ you,
-father?”
-
-After a while her reason came again. She asked to see Bonnibel; they
-could bring her to the window, she said, and she would like also to give
-her a handful of grass.
-
-They rolled the bed to the window, and little Hicks led Bonnibel up
-beside it. Roden went out himself and gathered a handful of fresh grass.
-I think the lad only respected his master more for the tears that ran
-down his cheeks. He couldn’t see very distinctly himself just then, this
-good little Hicks.
-
-“Bonnibel,” said the girl, in her cooing tones--“Bonnibel.”
-
-What was the matter? Had suffering charged some magic in that soft voice?
-Bonnibel turned indifferently away from the anxious hand, and rubbed her
-bright head with an impatient movement against one of her fore-legs.
-
-“Oh!” said the girl, while the glad flush died out of her face, and the
-green blades fell from her hold upon the window-sill, “Bonnibel don’ know
-me any more--she don’ care. I gave my life for her, an’--an’ she don’
-care.”
-
-“Yes, she does--she does,” said Roden, frantic for her disappointment;
-“she’s just gorged, the little glutton! She’s been out at grass ever
-since you saved her, Virginia dear; that’s all.”
-
-“No, ’tain’t,” said the girl, sadly. “I ain’t the same, I reckon; I
-reckon I’m right near gone, Mr. Jack. Well, I saved her, anyhow. The most
-part fell on me; she kicked herself loose. Please, father, ef Mr. Jack
-don’ come in time--_please_, father, tell him ez how I saved Bonnibel.
-Oh, father, I mus’ tell somebody ’fore I go. I kyarn’ bear to think there
-won’t be anybody in all th’ world ez knows it when I’m gone. I loved him,
-father dear--I loved him so! An’ I’ve been mighty wicked; an’ God’s been
-mighty good ter me; an’ I’m goin’ to heaven, mammy says. But I won’t have
-him even there--I won’t have him--even there.”
-
-The soft voice broke suddenly--stopped. The bright head dropped forward
-on her breast.
-
-Roden had buried his face in her two pale hands. When he looked up, old
-Herrick was closing gently with his toil-roughened hand the sweet wide
-eyes which never more would look on anything this side the stars.
-
-It was at this moment that Bonnibel, repenting, perhaps, of her former
-coldness, thrust in her little deer-head at the open window, and drew a
-long sighing breath as of contentment.
-
-The blades of grass dropped from the thin hand now so still upon the
-stirless bosom were blown along the window-sill by the mare’s warm breath.
-
-                                THE END.
-
-
-
-
-A BROTHER TO DRAGONS, AND OTHER OLD-TIME TALES.
-
-By AMÉLIE RIVES. Post 8vo, Cloth, Extra, $1 00.
-
-    Not alone in the success in reproducing the antique diction are
-    they remarkable, but in getting the color and atmosphere of the
-    period… In the observation of natural objects, and above all the
-    knowledge of the human heart, is found the promise that this work
-    holds forth… The volume takes high rank in the department which
-    marks the most notable achievements of American letters at the
-    present day.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._
-
-    How well Miss Rives has sustained and added to the reputation she
-    so suddenly won, we all know, and the permanency of that reputation
-    demonstrates conclusively that her success did not depend upon
-    the lucky striking of a popular fancy, but that it rests upon
-    enduring qualities that are developing more and more richly year by
-    year.--_Richmond State._
-
-    Miss Rives is a woman of most undoubted power. She has imagination,
-    daring, and an exquisite sense of form.--_N. Y. Star._
-
-    Three of Miss Amélie Rives’s most brilliant stories… Their quaint
-    old-time manner gives them a peculiar charm.--_Philadelphia
-    Bulletin._
-
-    Three striking stories of very unusual force and fertility of
-    thought and diction and strong dramatic feeling, added to which is
-    a quick and sympathetic fancy.--_N. Y. Sun._
-
-    Here is pathos which is not morbid; and though the humor is
-    broad, it is in perfect keeping with the time and the characters
-    of the supposed narrators. These three stories are rich in
-    promise.--_Critic_, N. Y.
-
-    For more reasons than one Miss Rives is seen at her best in
-    old-time tales such as she shows us in this volume. The atmosphere
-    with which these tales are clothed is especially congenial to
-    her, and she can work within its influence with remarkable
-    success.--_Brooklyn Times._
-
-    It is evident that the author has imagination in an unusual
-    degree, much strength of expression, and skill in delineating
-    character.--_Boston Journal._
-
-    There are few young writers who begin a promising career with so
-    much spontaneity and charm of expression as is displayed by Miss
-    Rives in this volume.--_Literary World_, Boston.
-
-PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
-
-🖙 _HARPER & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage pre-paid,
-to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price._
-
-
-
-
-CAPTAIN MACDONALD’S DAUGHTER.
-
-A Novel. By ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 16mo, Cloth, Extra, $1 00.
-
-    It is a genuinely pathetic tale, and shows a keen and accurate
-    knowledge of human nature under many varying conditions.--_Saturday
-    Evening Gazette_, Boston.
-
-    A story of sound moral quality and touching pathos.--_N. Y.
-    Commercial Advertiser._
-
-    There are many excellent delineations of scenes and life in
-    Scotland, Virginia, and Florida… The characters are also carefully
-    studied and successfully drawn. The heroine, the warmhearted,
-    impulsive, and gifted Nan, especially, is a very charming
-    personage… As a quiet story, with a pathetic vein running through
-    it, we can confidently recommend it to all.--_Congregationalist_,
-    Boston.
-
-    Full of life and movement, and marked by both power and
-    pathos.--_Zion’s Herald_, Boston.
-
-    The characters are very well drawn, and there is a natural
-    development of the plot… The descriptions of scenery are vivid and
-    life-like, and the scenes are totally free from the extravagance
-    which mars so much contemporary fiction. The author of this work
-    will be heard from again.--_Christian Intelligencer_, N. Y.
-
-    A novel of Scottish life, shifting to American scenes, and gives
-    the reader a glimpse of life in Virginia and Florida. The story is
-    told with much simplicity, though a study of heredity is in-wrought
-    with the artless narrative… The story is quiet in action,
-    but will please lovers of naturalness and faithful character
-    delineation.--_Commonwealth_, Boston.
-
-    The characters of the story are strong and the book well
-    written.--_Christian Advocate_, N. Y.
-
-    A strong hand has drawn the minister’s household in the manse of
-    Strathlowrie. Surely the author must have at some time made one of
-    just such a Scotch family, so graphic are the touches of reality…
-    Seldom has a grave story of a minister’s household been told with
-    such a rippling accompaniment of humor.--_Philadelphia Ledger._
-
-    A bright, engaging book, sparkling with shrewd Scotch wit on nearly
-    every page, and ends most satisfactorily.--_Christian at Work_, N. Y.
-
-PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
-
-🖙 _HARPER & BROTHERS will send the above work by mail, postage pre-paid,
-to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price._
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