Virginia of Virginia: A Story

“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:

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.

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 nawbody, ’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 aneyhow?” 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.”