"There!" she exclaimed. "That's one of the 'thousand' things I spoke of. In Virginia you gentlemen manifest a certain deference toward women that I have seen nowhere else. It is gallantly protective, respectfully, not servilely submissive, a tribute of strength to weakness which carries with it no reflection upon the weakness, and to women it is the most fascinating thing imaginable. I've expressed it lamely, but—" and with that she took a handful of cigars from the passing box and added:
"At any rate your courtesy to me shall not cost you your smoke. We won't go into the drawing room, but into the porch. The day is mild, and I want to tell you that story."
"Tell me first," he said as they passed into the porch, "how you happen to know anything about it."
"It is simple enough. I've heard my brother tell the story with enthusiasm many, many times."
"Your brother?"
"Yes. Holmes Wentworth is my elder brother. My mother was married twice, you know."
"I see. I didn't know. If I had known—"
"If you had known you wouldn't have spoken of the matter at all. And as it was, you were suppressing all the interesting facts. Now I'm going to relate them according to the gospel of Holmes Wentworth. In a debating society one night he expressed some opinions that gave offence to certain of the students, and some proposal of censure was made and hotly advocated. You opposed it, declaring that debate without absolute free speech must be a mockery. Your impassioned utterance won approval, and the resolution was voted down with only three or four men voting for it. They were not Virginians and—"
"They were the sons of negro traders, every man of them," interrupted Westover; "and for the negro trader and his belongings Virginia gentlemen have neither recognition nor tolerance. They are the vilest—"
He paused in search of a more effective epithet, and she spoke.
"I know all about that," she said, "and you needn't bite an inch off your next cigar by way of expressing yourself. Let me go on with the story. Those 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' went down into Charlottesville and organized a crew of ruffians to drive Holmes Wentworth out of the University and out of Virginia. You heard of the thing, and arming yourself with all the Colt's revolvers you could borrow, you hurried into the town. There you found Holmes sorely beset by a dozen armed ruffians and a crowd of other jeering dissolutes. You pushed him up into a corner, thrust a pair of the pistols into his hands, and took your place beside him, saying: 'If they rush us, shoot with both hands, and shoot to kill; there's no good in wasting ammunition.' Then you called out to the mob: 'Now do your worst, you cowards! But the first man that crosses that curbstone dies the death of the dog that he is, and we'll send some others to—' really you used some dreadful language, Mr. Westover, which I can't repeat, though I know it all by heart. And a little later, after the mob had quailed before you, you swore worse than ever, ordering them to disperse or you'd fire into them and send some of them to the place you had already mentioned. Oh, it was glorious! But the sheriff came and drove the crowd away. You see I know the whole story. Do you wonder that I find things to like in Virginia? Then you took Holmes to live in the same room with you, and after you learned to understand him as well as he already understood you, he and you became bosom friends."
"Thank you," he replied, throwing away a cigar that he had forgotten to light; "but really Holmes's imagination is creative and he has made too much of a trifle."
"He hasn't any imagination at all," she replied; "he's the most prosaic, literal, realistic fact mongerer imaginable, as you very well know. But now I'm going to turn woman again and talk about myself."
Westover thought that about the most tactful turning of a conversation that he had ever known. But she gave him no time to wonder over it.
"I'm staying at The Oaks, you know, with Margaret Conway. She's the very sweetest, truest, loveliest girl I ever knew. She's fit to be the wife of the noblest man in Virginia."
Westover winced, and the girl observed the fact without recognizing it in any way. Instead she went on:
"You see she was my guest for six weeks a year ago, and I'm returning her visit and incidentally enjoying life better than I ever dreamed that one could do. By the way, there's to be a dance at Dr. Carver's over at Fighting Creek, wherever that is, to-morrow night—no, it's the next night, and as there is to be some sort of public meeting near there that day, I suppose I shall see you at the party."
At that moment there was a double irruption from the dining room on the one side and the drawing room on the other, into the porch to see an autumn sunset of peculiar gorgeousness. A little later Boyd Westover took his leave, and bidding Jack Towns follow at his convenience, set out for Wanalah.
As he went he found himself thinking of Millicent Danvers with far more admiration and greatly tenderer sentiment than he had believed himself capable of feeling toward any woman since Margaret had been lost to him.
"She is certainly charming," he said to himself; then correcting his thought he said, "No, that is not the word; it is commonplace, conventional, cheap, and nothing commonplace, conventional or cheap can describe Millicent Danvers. She is all woman—that's it, and I can't imagine anything better as belonging to this world or the next. She is honest, truthful, genuine, but those are ordinary virtues, and her virtues are not confined to the ordinary. She is sympathetic with all things that are essentially right and of good report. Still, that is not the secret of her charm, for many women—perhaps most women—are all that. She has high ideals and she is loyal to them. She's the sort of woman Jephtha's daughter is supposed to have been, and at the same time she has all the qualities that make the story of Ruth the greatest masterpiece of all literature. Heroism is hers, and gentleness not less. She is a Joan of Arc and she is the most trusting child that was ever gently dandled on one's knee. I have it! She has faith; she believes; she trusts, and in her belief she dares and honors daring. Heroism is to her an object of worship; devotion a divine inspiration; truth an inborn characteristic. It is just as I said before—she is all woman, and in all God's work he created nothing else so good or so great as that."
As he reached this point in his meditations he was passing the outer gates of The Oaks plantation, and suddenly his thought reverted to Margaret.
"She, too, is a woman of that type," he reflected. "I do not understand her silence, but I should be unworthy of any woman's love if I doubted her truth. I will not doubt her. I will let no other take her place in my heart so long as I live. She is all that Millicent Danvers is, and to me she is more and always must be. She is the woman who gave me love for love, and even in an estrangement that can now never be undone, I cannot forget the troth we plighted before Fate interposed to spoil my life. I shall not attend the dance at Dr. Carver's."
XXV
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION
The drizzling rain that had marred the day had ceased during the afternoon. The late October sun had set in a golden glory while yet Westover lingered by the side of Millicent Danvers in the porch of the Magister homestead. The evening that followed was irresistibly tempting to lovers of the out of doors.
Two men sat in converse in the porch at Wanalah.
Two women sat in converse in the porch at The Oaks.
The two men were Boyd Westover and Jack Towns.
The two women were Margaret Conway and Millicent Danvers.
The conversations in the two porches were utterly unlike in substance, in tone and in effect. Nevertheless they were not unrelated—in part at least.
Jack Towns had come to give an account of his stewardship, but Westover, with his habitual indifference to petty details, insisted upon it that the report should be broadly general.
"When a man has arranged a matter," he said, "involving nine seven times over, I like him to say sixty-three at the outset, instead of seven times nine. I hate to multiply and divide and add and subtract."
"Why the deuce are you doing it, then?" demanded Jack.
"As how?"
"Why by making the wholly needless and utterly idle computation that seven times nine is sixty-three. Why didn't you just say you liked totals rather than the factors producing them?"
"I suppose it is because I never studied law and therefore haven't a well ordered mind."
"And I don't suppose anything of the sort. I suppose it's because your mind is fascinated with some other subject—and by the way she really is charming—so that it wearies you to think of anything else. Perhaps you'll feel otherwise when you hear what I have to tell you. Are you ready to listen?"
"Yes, certainly. Go on."
"Very well then. That father of yours was never so wise in all his life as when he bought all that mining land up in the Rocky Mountains. I don't know and I can't even guess how he found out the value of what he was buying."
"Perhaps he didn't," said Boyd. "May be he was simply coppering on the ace and taking the chances."
"I had thought of that. It's the most probable solution. However that may be, he managed to buy Golconda and Ophir and California and Australia and the mint and the assay office all in one when he disbursed a few thousand dollars for about the most desolate spot on earth, a place where you not only can't raise a potato but can't even boil one because of the altitude. It takes half an hour up there to produce a soft-boiled egg. You can boil water in two minutes, and as it boils it is so cool you can bathe in it half a minute later. I have some counterfeit continental currency in a cabinet at my house, and upon my word, if anybody had offered me all the land your father bought for you up there in exchange for one of those old and doubly discredited shin-plasters, I wouldn't have made the trade."
"Then the whole thing—"
"Nothing of the kind. I didn't say that or suggest it. I've put your land and mining rights into a new company that already has machinery and management and technical skill and brains established there. The stock of that company will pay heaven only knows how many hundred per cent. per annum in the way of dividends, and thirty-nine per cent. of it is yours. By way of boot, as horse traders call it, I brought away nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sight drafts on New York and Boston. I tried hard to force them to make it a million just for the name of the thing, but I couldn't because they are men of affairs with no sense of the picturesque. And after all—"
"What on earth am I to do with all that money?" asked Boyd in a tone of distressed perplexity.
"Oh, you'll manage that easily enough after you get used to having it. And if you don't want to bother yourself about it, you needn't. I've already invested it for you, acting under my blanket power of attorney, so that the interest is all you'll have to look out for."
"What have you done with it, Jack?"
"In view of the disturbed condition of politics in this country and the rumors of possible war, I have had something more than half of it sent to the Barings in London to be invested in British consols and French rentes. The rest is invested in Virginia sixes and other good, interest paying bonds, and is in the vaults of August Belmont & Co. in New York. By way of providing you with pocket money, I've placed twenty-five thousand dollars to your credit in the Farmers' Bank of Virginia. There. There isn't a seven times nine problem in that whole story for you to wrestle with. You've got only your sixty-three to consider, and when you grow quite sane again you can go over the detailed statements that I shall leave with you. Now tell me, what does it mean—Colonel Conway's attitude I refer to of course."
"Frankly, I don't know."
"Tell me all you do know, and perhaps I can figure out the rest. You see it doesn't appall me to have a seven to multiply by a nine."
"As I said before, I don't know. Colonel Conway's attitude is a puzzle to me. Either he thinks I've done something to offend, or he doesn't. If he thinks so, it isn't conceivable that he should sulk. It is his habit in such cases to make an open issue of the matter. He's a fighter, you know, and not a moody, secretive hater. If he doesn't think I have done anything that should offend him, I cannot understand why he does not call upon me, and especially I don't understand why he avoided meeting me by staying away from the Court House to-day, where I happen to know he had important business. I shall challenge his attitude pretty soon and force some sort of explanation."
"Yes, and by way of preparation for that, you are falling in love with the girl from Boston. That will complicate matters charmingly. Really, Boyd, for a man of brains, education, culture and all that, you now and then make the most elaborately embroidered idiot of yourself I ever knew."
"But I'm not in love with Miss Danvers; I never saw her until to-day."
"I quite understand that. Nevertheless after you have met her three or four times more, you'll make the mistake of thinking yourself in love with her, and you'll court her and she will accept you—for she's positively daffy about you, as I easily found out after you left this evening. Then you'll awake to the fact that after all a man's affections are not so easily transferred as shares of stock are. You've never told me so, but I know, nevertheless, that the one love of your life is for Margaret Conway, and if you permit yourself to attempt a transfer of that passion, you'll repent it in sackcloth and ashes so long as you live. No, don't interrupt me. I'm in desperate earnest, and I'm going to say my say out, even if it results in your ordering my horse and bidding me be gone from Wanalah forever. Now listen to me. I once had a case of quarrelling heirs to deal with. If they had been left to their own devices, the whole estate they were fighting for would have been dissipated in chancery proceedings. I went to each of them separately and compelled each to tell me his side of the story. I found that the whole trouble lay in a lot of mutual misunderstandings, as most quarrels do. I multiplied seven by nine and found it made sixty-three, and after a little I got all of them to accept sixty-three as the product of the factors. In other words, I settled the whole affair, merely by finding out both sides of the facts.
"Now in this case of yours, I am satisfied that the entire trouble arises from a mutual misunderstanding. I insist that you shall tell me all the facts as you understand them. I shall find means of discovering just what the facts are as the other side understands them. It is impertinent in an extreme degree for me to inquire into the matter at all. But in the practice of the law it is my function and duty to be impertinent. Go on, then, and tell me the facts as you understand them."
When Jack began his speech, Westover foresaw what was coming, and was resentfully determined to permit no trespass of such sort upon his privacy. But before Jack had finished, the old dream of life and love, with Margaret for its saint and sovereign, had revived in his mind. What if, after all, Jack Towns should be able to unravel the mystery of Margaret's silence and open a way for him? In that moment all the love he had cherished for Margaret surged back upon his soul in an overwhelming flood that made all other women objects of courteous but complete indifference. He saw clearly that no woman on earth could ever take the place in his heart that this one woman had made her own. He could not even conjecture how the result could be brought about, but the very dream of it so far fascinated him that he was ready to put aside all reserve and respond in perfect candor to Jack Towns's impertinence.
"I hardly know how to tell the story, Jack," he responded, "but I'll tell it somehow, if you'll give me time. Margaret and I were brought up together. Never mind that; it is unimportant. The time came when I loved her and she loved me, and we told each other so. With her father's enthusiastic consent we became engaged, and it was planned that the marriage should take place during the late summer—as soon as I should get the affairs of Wanalah adjusted. With that in view I went to Richmond. You know what happened there. I wrote to Margaret many times. I got no word of reply. I hoped for her sympathy; I had silence instead. I expected Colonel Conway to come to my side during my trouble, and to lend me at least the encouragement of belief in me. He neither came nor sent a line of sympathy in support of my courage. Even the death of my mother—the cruellest blow that fate had ever dealt me—brought no word or line from him or from Margaret. When my name was cleared of stigma by the confession of the real culprit, I came back here to Wanalah with the avowed purpose of making necessary preparations for my sojourn in the mountains. In point of fact, as I know now—my purpose was to open the way for some communication between Wanalah and The Oaks. No such communication came. Colonel Conway did not call upon me, and Margaret sent me no line. Since then Colonel Conway has emphasized his disapproval of me in other ways, as you are aware."
"Yes, well? You believe yourself possessed of ordinary common sense, I suppose?" asked Jack Towns in the tone he was in the habit of using when cross examining a witness whom he intended to discomfit.
"Yes, of course."
"Are you acquainted with Margaret Conway?"
"Why, of course you know—"
"I know nothing. I'm trying to find out. Answer the question. Are you acquainted with Margaret Conway?"
"Yes. I've known her ever since she was born."
"Is she the sort of woman who would or could do what she appears to have done in this case? Is it conceivable that she has left you in a crisis like that which you have gone through, without a word of reply to letters received from you? Is it probable? Is it even possible? Is it thinkable?"
"Apparently—"
"Oh, hang 'apparently.' Apparently the sun circles round the earth, but we know better. Apparently the moon is made of green cheese, but it isn't. Apparently you are a crass idiot, but in the ultimate analysis you are nothing of the kind. Now answer my question: Is it probable or even conceivably possible that under the circumstances of your trouble in Richmond, Margaret Conway, pledged as she was to be your wife, and possessed as she is of an exalted conception of womanly truth and honor, and saturated as she is with the courage of a proud race, the courage that does duty and dares consequences—is it conceivably possible that she has under such circumstances sat still and left unanswered letters received from you in your travail?"
"It seems unaccountable—" began Boyd, and his companion interrupted him:
"Nobody has asked you to account for that which could not have happened. I am asking you to search your own soul and say whether or not this thing can be true. If anybody should tell me that Boyd Westover had set up a counterfeiting plant in one of his barns and was busily 'shoving the queer,' would you expect me to go bothering about how such a thing could have come about? Would you not expect rather that I should give the story the lie without further ado? This is a like case. If you know Margaret Conway, you know she has not been guilty of this stupendous wrong. You have no right to go on acting as if she had been."
"You are right of course," Boyd replied, "so far at least as the principle is concerned. But how do you account for the facts?"
"It isn't my business to account for the facts. I know and you know that under the circumstances which arose in this case, Margaret Conway did not leave unanswered any letter she received from you. Either she did not receive your letters, or you did not receive her replies, or, more probably, both things happened."
"But how could that be? I—"
"I don't know. I'm not the proper person to ask. I'm going up to bed now, if you don't mind. I've said all I had in mind to say."
The conversation in the other porch was not like this, and yet in its way it was not unlike it.
"I hope you enjoyed yourself at the Magisters' to-day, Millicent," said Margaret as the two seated themselves in the porch. "I'm sorry I couldn't be with you, but you see old Judy was very low, and I really had to stay with her."
"Of course. Only it's all an astonishment to me—I mean the way in which you look after negroes who are ill."
"Why, of course we must do that—"
"Yes, I understand now, but I didn't. I thought you treated them as so many cattle. Of course I knew you looked after your own maids and other personal serving women, but I thought field negroes—"
"I know, dear. The whole system, is bad and I wish we were rid of it. But people up North always imagine that its worst possibilities are the daily facts, and we naturally resent that. We aren't angels by any means, but at least we are human beings. Never mind that now. Tell me about the dinner and the company."
"Well, I didn't see much of the company. The Judge and Mr. Towns, and the Judge's wife and the Commonwealth's Attorney talked hotly about law things that I didn't at all understand, so I talked mainly with Mr. Boyd Westover. Margaret, I'd like to spend my whole life listening to him talk. You see he's so big and strong, and yet so gentle and chivalric. He makes you feel that you ought to think yourself worth while, because he respects you so, and is so deferential to you. Why, even my poor little thinkings seemed to me of some account because of the way in which he listened to me and treated my utterances. I tell you, Margaret, he is the most perfect type of the gentleman I ever saw or dreamed of."
The night was starlit, but there was no moon as yet, for it was far past the full, and the porch was dark. Margaret Conway was grateful for the shadow. It hid her countenance and prevented self-revelation of a kind that must have filled her soul with humiliation and shame. It gave her time in which to recover her self-control. Presently she forced herself to say:
"Mr. Westover is certainly a good example of our best type of gentleman. You'll like him more as you become better acquainted with him, and fortunately you'll meet him again almost immediately. He's sure to be at the dance at Dr. Carver's over at Fighting Creek."
"Yes, he's to speak over there. Oh, Margaret, I wonder if I might hear his speech? Do they let women attend? You see he is so big and brave and manly and so handsome. He's sure to make a speech worth listening to. Do you think I might get a chance to hear it?"
"Yes, dear, certainly," responded Margaret in a voice that in spite of her had something of hardness in it. "I will arrange that. You'll sit in a carriage on the outskirts of the crowd, and you can hear every word, unless—"
"Unless what, Margaret?"
"Oh, I was only thinking out loud. You see your carriage will be surrounded by half a dozen young men, all in love with you, all madly jealous, and all eager to win and hold your attention. If you can suppress them, you'll hear the whole speech."
"Tell me, Margaret, have you known him a long time?"
"Yes, all my life."
"I see," she answered. What she had in her mind was that the intimacy between these two was perhaps too close and too familiar to permit a softer feeling to grow up between them. "Otherwise," she reflected, "they would have been lovers of course. How could either of them help that?"
But she gave no utterance to the thought. She only subconsciously rejoiced that matters were as she supposed them to be.
"I don't think I can be with you over at Fighting Creek, Millicent," said Margaret after she had mastered herself and formed a plan.
"But why not? I shall not go if you can't," answered the girl with emphasis.
"Oh, yes, you will. I wish you to be there. You'll meet everybody in this whole region who is worth meeting. I wouldn't have you miss that on any account. Besides, I should get up a very unlovely reputation for selfishness, if I suffered you to miss such a festivity merely because I can't enjoy it with you."
"But why can't you, Margaret?"
"There are several reasons. For one thing my father is laid up with an attack of the gout, you know. That's why he turned back after he had started to Court to-day. He doesn't seem to be suffering much, but gout is treacherous, and I must be within call of him. Then again there are two or three cases of fever at the far quarters."
Then, as if fearing to have the sufficiency of her excuses too closely questioned, she hurriedly added:
"I've planned it all beautifully, Millicent. I'll send you over to Fighting Creek in The Oaks carriage. My maid shall go with you as escort, and I'll send for Carter Barksdale to go on horseback as your gallant outrider. You see Carter is only seventeen years of age, and he reads Byron and Shelley and Scott till he's saturated with romance. He's perfectly charming, and you'll enjoy his escort all the more because he's just old enough to fall madly in love with you at first sight, and just young enough to be afraid to tell you so. He's a Virginia type that I want you to meet. That sort of boy is at his best when he's seventeen and takes himself so seriously that he shrinks from the open declaration of the fancies he mistakes for passions. He will revel in a silent, unspoken, unrequited love for one as far removed from his approach as the northern star, 'of whose true, fixed, and resting quality' he will quote, 'there is no fellow in the firmament.' Of course, after he has thoroughly enjoyed the unspeakable wretchedness of a blighted passion, he will fall in love with the next young woman several years older than himself who comes in his way, and have the romance all over again."
"Margaret," said Millicent seriously and tenderly, "you are not happy to-night. You are cynical. Something has disturbed you. Don't you feel that you can tell me what it is and let me share your sorrow as freely as you let me share your more joyful moods?"
Margaret Conway was too inherently truthful to protest that she had no cause of unhappiness when she had. But, with an instinctive flinching from self-revelation, which every sensitive soul experiences at such a time, she carefully framed her speech for purposes of avoidance.
"I don't think I'm cynical, Millicent. I don't feel so. I meant only to be amusing in talking of something that always amuses me. It has always seemed to me funny that young men should be so desperately afraid of us young women even when we are trembling in holy awe of them. I've seen so much of that sort of thing. Sometimes it becomes tragical and spoils lives that do not deserve to be spoiled. I knew one case in which it was saved from doing that only by the impertinent interference of a very peculiar young woman."
"Oh, it's a story," exclaimed Millicent, "and a love story at that. Tell it please."
"It isn't much of a story, but I'll tell it. I had a governess whom I loved dearly and with reason. She taught me all I know, and—"
"She must have been a woman of wonderful acquirements then."
"She was and is, but such culture as I possess is not an adequate indication of her learning or of her capacity to teach. I owe her all I ever learned; I owe to my own indifference all the defects in my education."
There was something in Margaret's tone as she said this, that attracted Millicent's attention.
"She is certainly cynical, self-accusative, unsatisfied," she reflected. "She isn't happy, and it behooves you, Millicent Danvers, to find out the cause and remedy the condition if you can."
Without uttering that thought, she said:
"You aren't telling me the love story, Margaret, and I'm eager to hear that before I let Carter Barksdale fall in love with me. You see I'm young and wholly inexperienced, and I naturally want to learn how such things are conducted."
Margaret laughed lowly, as she thought: "A girl like you doesn't need lessons in the conduct of love affairs. To such as you, love,—like 'to write and read, comes by nature.'"
Then she resumed her story:
"Apart from her learning, Miss Jane was an altogether admirable woman, and very naturally our neighbor, Mr. Skipwith, fell in love with her. He came over here to see her every day for more than a year. He sent her flowers from his garden, and when the frosts put an end to that he built a green house, in order that he might keep on sending her flowers. But somehow he never could get up courage enough to ask for her hand, until one day Harriet Middleton brought about a crisis. Harriet was an English girl of peculiarly good family whose father had migrated to Virginia in search of health. Harriet was almost an old maid, though not quite. She was blunt and aggressive in manner, though as gentle and good as anybody could be when you came really to know her. She was quick and shrewd of observation, and it did not take her long to find out how matters stood between Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane. But the days and weeks went on and still there were no results. One evening when the moon shone dreamily through a soft haze, Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane sat here in the porch, while Harriet and I walked away through the orchard, by way of leaving them alone, and picking up some good apples. When we returned, the pair were sitting precisely as we had left them, at a respectful distance from each other, and both their attitude and their manner bore convincing witness that even the hazy moonlight had failed to bring about a crisis.
"Harriet's patience gave way. She stalked into the porch, with that horse-like tread that Englishwomen use for a walk, and, taking her stand between the two, said:
"'You two people love each other. You want to tell each other about it but you don't dare; so I'm telling you instead. Now that I've introduced the subject, perhaps you'll talk it out.'
"With that she passed on into the house, and a few weeks later Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane were married."
"And have they lived happily ever afterwards?"
"Indeed they have. They are well to do and very hospitable, and a pleasanter place to visit than the Skipwith plantation doesn't exist in Virginia."
"And Miss Middleton?"
"She's enjoying herself, bossing an insane asylum. She's only a patient there, but she believes she's the superintendent, and they let her give all the orders she thinks fit. Matilda," addressing a maid who at that moment appeared with some lemonade, "send for the carriage please, and send word that I want old Michael to drive me. Johnny is apt to go to sleep."
"But where on earth are you going to drive at eleven o'clock at night?" asked Millicent in wonder.
"Why, you know I have some fever patients out at the far quarters."
She was at pains not to say that she was going to visit them, though she half intended to do so. Her desire—imperative and passionate—was to separate herself from human companionship and think out the problems that beset her soul.
"But mayn't I go with you?"
"No, no, no. You might get the fever, and besides, you must get your beauty sleep. After you are married to—to some Virginia gentleman, and become the mistress of a plantation, you will of course look after your sick servants. Just now it is your duty to go to bed. There's an old novel 'Dunallan' on the dressing case in my room. Go in there and get it. It's the very sleepiest thing I ever saw in my life. Read half a dozen pages of it and you'll be sound asleep. Good night. I won't speak to you when I come back, lest I disturb your slumbers. Oh, by the way, tell Diana to put three candles on my candle stand and place it close to my bed. And tell her please to go to bed as soon as she gets things ready in our rooms. I shall not want her to-night, and she has had a hard day."
As she finished speaking the carriage drove up, with the white-haired old coachman Michael on the box. He had long ago ceased to have active duties of any kind to do, but when his "young missus" asked for him to drive her anywhere, at any time and under any circumstances, the loyal old servitor was ready and eager in response. He had driven Margaret's mother on her wedding journey to the mountain resorts. He had driven Margaret herself to her christening. He had grown old but never lax in the service, and now in his old age, when he was excused from all service, it was his chief joy to drive his "young missus" whenever she honored him by asking that he should do so.
On this occasion he saw clearly enough that Margaret was distraught, and when she entered the carriage he forbore to distress her with questions. He simply picked out the best roads and followed them. After awhile she spoke to him.
"I reckon you'd better drive to the far quarters, Uncle Michael. I ought to see the sick ones."
"Dey ain't sick, Miss Margaret. Leastways dey ain't sick enough for you to go botherin' 'bout 'em. Dey's jes' a sufferin' dere own calamities. Dey stole a shoat night before last an' gorged on it all night. 'Course dey had a fever yestiddy an' to-day. Don't you go a botherin' 'bout dem no 'count niggas, Miss Margaret. Jes' you let ole Michael pick out de roads fer you and drive you 'bout, comfortable like."
With this reassuring release from obligation, the girl sank back among the cushions as the late rising, gibbous moon came up from the horizon, and abandoned herself to thought.
She was a woman, young, strong, passionate; she cherished still that dream of love which had so recently inspired and illumined her life. She could not understand why or how it had been snatched away by circumstance. It was hard for her to believe that all she had hoped for and held dear had been banished from her life by a final, arbitrary, inexplicable decree of fate.
"And yet," she reflected, "it is so. Between Boyd and me there is a great gulf fixed, and nothing can furnish a bridge across it."
Then another thought occurred to her.
"Suppose I should write to Boyd and ask him for an explanation?
"No, I could not do that without sacrificing that pride of womanhood without which a woman is nothing and worse than nothing. No, that can never be. I wonder why he does not himself offer an explanation and seek a restoration of old relations? No, that can never be. It would involve such a sacrifice of manhood as is inconceivable. There is never any explanation possible, never any solution to this riddle, never anything."
She sat still for awhile, not thinking at all. Suddenly she reflected:
"After all it is his happiness that I care for. My own is of no consequence. He is a man, and it will be easy for him to transfer his affections. Men are not like women in that way. Millicent will make a fitter wife for him than I ever could. He will be happy with her, and as for me—well, it doesn't matter. I have my duties and my occupations. The rest is of no consequence. He shall love Millicent and marry her, and may be, when I'm an old, old woman, he and I will come to understand each other again, at least so far that neither shall accuse the other of treachery."
With a mind attuned to the great renunciation, she called to Michael and bade him drive back to The Oaks.
XXVI
MOONLIGHT RESOLUTIONS
Millicent Danvers was a frank, open-minded young woman, almost childlike in her simplicity of soul in every case where candor was met with equal candor. But her childlikeness included a child's subtle instinct as to the moods and motives of others, and where affection prompted her scrutiny she was not often at fault in her judgments of human conduct.
When Margaret, refusing her company, drove away that night Millicent knew perfectly that her friend's spirit was disturbed in some unusual way, for until then these two had been comrades in every such expedition, and Margaret had been the one most insistent that they should be so.
"I want you to see every phase of our Virginia life," she had many times said, "so that when you go back to Boston you may know what there is in it to approve, what to admire, what to condemn, and what merely to laugh at. For I'm sure there is much in it that must strike Northern people as ludicrous. Anyhow I want you to see it all and understand all of it. Then I'm not afraid to trust our life and our ways and our impulses to your hands for explanation and exposition to people who are ignorant of them or know them only by prejudiced hearsay."
The events of this day, and especially Margaret's own conduct had been so different from all this as to awaken curiosity and compel attention. Both the curiosity and the attention had a deep and sincere affection for their prompting.
When Margaret drove away and the late rising, gibbous moon appeared above the tree tops and shone softly through the windows of Millicent's southeast room, the girl sat down there by a casement to wonder, to conjecture, to "guess," and, better still, to "think this thing out to the end."
"There is something wrong with Margaret," was her first thought. "She is disturbed and distressed, and she isn't the kind of person to be disturbed and distressed without adequate reason. Why didn't she go over to the Court House with me this morning and dine at the Magisters'? She intended to do so. She and I had planned it all out, and she had accepted Mrs. Magister's invitation. It was only at the last moment that she decided to stay and nurse her father's purely mythical gout. It was only five minutes before that that a note had come from Mrs. Magister, saying that Mr. Boyd Westover had come down out of the mountains and that she should 'compel' him to be one of her dinner guests. I wonder if that news brought on the attack of gout, and decided Margaret to stay at the Oaks and nurse it?
"Then again it is clear that Margaret does not expect Mr. Westover to visit her in the near future. I wonder why? His plantation adjoins this, and everybody says the two families have been intimate for generations. There must be some special reason. In fact there is. Somebody told me to-day that Colonel Conway had refused to join in the nomination of Mr. Westover, and that the fact is injuring Mr. Westover's canvass. I wonder what it means? Naturally Mr. Westover and Margaret should be sweethearts, and after a while they should marry each other. I wonder why things haven't gone that way? May be they have been too intimate in their childhood. No, that isn't the solution. It doesn't explain Margaret's care to avoid Mr. Westover. It doesn't explain her plan to send me to Fighting Creek without her. It doesn't explain her drive to-night. It doesn't explain anything. If they were mere intimates, too intimate to think of love, Mr. Westover would be a frequent guest at The Oaks and the relations of the two would be comradely."
She paused for a while in the formulation of her thinking into orderly phrases. Then she reflected:
"When I mentioned Margaret to him at dinner to-day he distinctly winced. Every time I have mentioned him to her to-night, she has turned the conversation to other subjects."
There was another long pause in the formulation of her thought. At last her common sense asserted itself and she said to herself:
"Millicent Danvers, you are treading upon dangerous ground, and you must get off it as quickly as possible. There has been a love affair between Margaret and Westover. You can't shut your eyes to that fact or pretend not to see it. Some break has come, but such breaks may be repaired, and it is your function to repair this one."
A wave of melancholy swept over her soul as she thought of this. She mightily admired Boyd Westover, and she had even dreamed a little dream with regard to him. She was a proud maiden in her way and as she searched her heart there in the moonlight, she decided that she had not suffered herself to fall in love with Westover.
"How could I?" she challenged herself to answer. "I have met him but once. The thing is absurd. Besides, no self-respecting young woman gives her love to any man until he asks for it. No, of course I'm not in love with Mr. Westover. It is nothing but admiration that I feel for him."
Then, as she looked out into the tree-studded house grounds, where all nature seemed to sleep in the soft haze of the moonlight, she added to her thought:
"But it would be easy for such a man to change a woman's admiration into love by a phrase, a word, a look into her eyes. Thank God he has not yet looked into my eyes in that way, and, God being my helper, he never shall. After all,—well, after all there are only a few men in the world that—well, anyhow, it isn't so terrible a thing to be an old maid, and I'll do my duty in this case if the stars start from their courses, as a consequence." Then she laughed under her breath, and jeered in mocking fashion at the absurdity of her thought:
"Of course the stars will do nothing of the kind. That was a bit of heroics, and I'm not a heroine of romance. I'm only a simple, honest, Boston girl. I love Margaret dearly, and I'm resolved to do all I can to bring about a reconciliation between her and Mr. Westover, for I'm satisfied there is need for something of the sort. That's sane and sensible at any rate, and the stars have nothing to do with it."
She had been reading an essay entitled, "The Great Renunciation," and she was full of its spirit, almost a devotee to the impulses it sought to inspire. But as she recalled it she laughed.
"That had to do with the great religions of the world. It didn't refer to the case of a sensible girl who finds herself particularly attracted by a young man at a first meeting and decides that she will not let him fall in love with her because she realizes that the best loved friend of her life is, or has been or ought to be his affianced wife. Millicent, I'm ashamed of you. After all the instruction you've had as to the conduct of life and the behavior of young women, this thing is ridiculous."
Nevertheless there was sadness in that inexperienced heart of hers, as she saw the carriage reënter the house grounds, and herself hastened to bed lest her friend should discover her vigil. But if hers had not been the great renunciation, at least it had been a resolution of loyalty and good faith, and perhaps in the eyes of the angels the two things are very nearly the same. Her exacting New England conscience at any rate was satisfied, so that it let her sleep, just as Margaret's Virginia conscience—different in kind but equally exigent in its demands—permitted slumber, sweet and refreshing, to come to her.
When the morning came these two met, each intently resolved to render to the other the supreme service of sacrifice, and neither dreaming of the other's thought. But in all human affairs circumstance has its part to play, and while it cannot alter purposes it often plays havoc with results. It was so in this case. Things happened, and the happening was more decisive than the moonlight meditations of a pair of maidens could possibly be.
XXVII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JACK TOWNS
Boyd Westover had the excellent mental habit of attending carefully to more than one thing at a time.
Just now he had the election on his hands, and with it some problems of personal dignity and repute that required his closest attention. But he also had Wanalah plantation to look after, and in view of his long absence he felt that home affairs were pressing.
Accordingly he was up before the dawn, on the morning after his arrival, and for half an hour after dawn he waited, not at all patiently, for the coming of his overseer, to whom he had sent a summons over night to be with him "at the crack of day." Then instead of waiting longer, he mounted his horse and rode away on a tour of inspection.
It was well after sunrise when he returned to find the overseer hitching his horse to the rack.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wilkinson," he said; "I had hoped to see you this morning."
"I'm sorry, sir, but Î was very tired last night."
"So was I. I had walked all through the night before. Never mind that now. I wanted to see you at dawn. The sun is now half an hour high. That means that you have wasted an hour and a half of my time, and my time is just now precious."
"I'm very sorry, sir—"
"Don't bother to apologize. I can't waste any further time listening to excuses. Why are you seeding the Gaston field in wheat? I directed otherwise, you know."
"Well, sir, the fall has given us good weather, and we can get in that two hundred acres as well as not."
"But how about harvesting it?"
"Oh, I'll manage that."
"Yes, by making the negroes work by moonlight, as you did last summer to the everlasting shame of Wanalah plantation, and just as you made too many hogsheads of tobacco and too many barrels of corn to the hand. I have told you before and I tell you now that I will not have the hands over-worked. Is the Gaston field seeded?"
"No, sir. We begin on that to-day."
"Don't seed it. Let it lie fallow."
"But my gracious, Mr. Westover,—"
"Never mind about your gracious. I tell you not to seed that field. And another thing: You planted seven hundred thousand hills of tobacco last year. I want you to write it up in your hat that four hundred thousand is Wanalah's limit. I want you to understand that this plantation is not run for money. If it supports itself, giving a decent living to the whites and blacks on it, I shall be satisfied. If it doesn't quite do that, I'll find a way in which to make up the deficiency. Now I want you to give all the negroes on the plantation a whole holiday to-morrow. I understand there's to be a big picnic with all-day preaching over at Mount Moriah church, and I want everybody on the plantation to attend it. By the way, Bob!" calling to a passing negro, "go at once and tell old Joe I want him to kill two sheep—good fat ones—three shoats and four turkeys this morning; tell him to hang 'em in the ice house as soon as they're dressed, and send them over to Mount Moriah early to-morrow morning. Do you hear?"
"Yassir!" responded Bob, his mouth already watering for the share he expected to eat of the good things thus promised.
"And, Bob, tell Uncle Joe to take them over there himself and say that Mas' Boyd Westover hopes the folks will have a good time and get as much religion as they need."
"But, Boyd," said Jack Towns, who had sleepily strolled into the porch, "don't you think—"
"No, decidedly not, Jack. You see Wanalah is the plantation nearest to Mount Moriah, and it's the natural base of supplies for a meeting there. If I don't furnish the provender they'll steal it out of my pasture, my pig pen and my turkey yard. I very much prefer that they should get the things honestly, and it costs me no more."
Then, returning to business, he said to the overseer:
"You understand the general spirit of my instructions, Mr. Wilkinson, and I beg you to bear it in mind. I'll give more specific orders from time to time, as they are needed."
"But what about me?" answered the overseer. "I've got a reputation for makin' more tobacco to the hand an' more wheat to the acre an' more corn on top o' that than any other man as oversees a plantation anywheres for forty mile around here."
"Well, what of it?"
"Well, it's this a ways. I ain't a-goin' to lose a reputation I prides myself on. Ef you don't want your niggers worked fer all they's worth, perhaps you'd better look out fer another overseer."
Westover flushed angrily, more at the tone than at the words, and answered instantly:
"Perhaps I had. At any rate I will. I shall not renew my contract with you for another year."
The Virginians were very tolerant of insolence on the part of a negro. Usually they treated it as badinage, quite harmlessly and humorously meant. But insolence on the part of an overseer was always taken seriously and instantly resented. The overseers constituted a pariah class, for whom there was tolerance only so long as they "minded their manners."
As the overseer lingered in hope of some modification of the sentence he had brought upon himself, Westover impatiently turned upon him, saying:
"I think I have nothing more to say to you, Mr. Wilkinson, and I wish to talk with Mr. Towns. You may go now."
As the man walked down the road that led to the outer gates, he muttered:
"I'll git back at him for that. He's a sneak-in' abolitionist. I'll be over at Fighting Creek to-morrow, seein's he's made it a holiday here."
"Now I want to talk with you, Jack," said Westover when the man was well out of earshot.
"So I understood you to say to Mr. Wilkinson; and you may go on and talk to me till the cows come home, if it amuses you to do so, but if you expect me to talk back in any rational way, you've simply got to wait till after breakfast. When I've had two cups of coffee, the best part of a roe herring, three or four slices of cold ham, a wedge or two of hot light bread, some beaten biscuit, and one of your belated cantaloupes, I shall begin to appreciate the fact that I have a brain. Till then I decline to consider myself a rational being. Go on and talk, if you want to."
"I will," answered Westover, passing into the house. To one of the dining-room servants he said:
"Serve a pot of coffee to Mr. Towns immediately, do you hear? Is it ready?"
Half a minute later Cilla appeared in the porch bearing a tray with coffee and its accessories daintily arranged upon a napkin. The servants at Wanalah had not yet lost their memory of the training they had received in youth.
"There," said Westover, "saturate your soul and stimulate your system with coffee. And by the way, there's a frost-bitten tomato sliced up to deceive your eyes and your appetite. How long before breakfast, Cilla?"
"It's a-bein' brung in now," answered the serving girl, "all but the hot buckwheat cakes, an' them'll come a little later."
It was the custom of the Virginians to talk freely at table, paying no heed whatever to the presence of their servitors. Accordingly, as soon as Jack Towns began to discover his brains again, under the influence of a breakfast that might have made a chatterer of the Sphinx itself, the two talked of plans.
"My first endeavor," said Westover, "will be to compel Colonel Conway to declare himself. To that end, as soon as breakfast is done, I shall send him a letter that will require a response of some sort. You see, Jack, his attitude is far more hurtful to me than the most aggressive antagonism on his part could be. Everybody knows that the Westovers and the Conways have been the most intimate friends possible throughout generations past. If he and I had had a quarrel, everybody would understand. But we have had no quarrel, and so nobody understands and everybody wonders. If he believes I was guilty down there in Richmond—"
"He can't think that, unless he's an idiot of extraordinary capacity for the lunatic misinterpretation of facts," interrupted Towns.
"Perhaps not. Still, I remember hearing a 'Pennsylvania Dutch' magistrate declare from the bench that 'Nodings is possible mit Gott,' and so it may be that, he believes that. If so he has a perfect right to express his belief. All I ask is that he shall say what it is he has against me."
"Stuff and nonsense! Rot and rubbish! Scammony and gamboge! Moonlight, music, love and flowers! Transcendentalism and green cheese!" exclaimed Jack Towns, multiplying words as a man of oratorical habit is apt to do. "You know perfectly well that he believes nothing of the sort. Recall our conversation of last night."
"I remember it perfectly, and that is why I'm going to write to Colonel Conway this morning. It may open the way to an explanation."
"It may, of course. But if I were in your place I'd write to Margaret instead."
"How can I? I have written to her again and again, and she has not answered. Self-respect forbids me—"
"I quite understand. It was self-respect that caused a cat to lose an eye in a scrimmage rather than explain to the other cat that the fence he was sitting on was the personal property of his own master. Never mind. If you won't write to Margaret, write to her father by all means. It may provoke a crisis of some sort, and that is the one thing to be desired just now."
But Boyd Westover was not destined to send that letter. He toiled over it half the day and more. He wrote it in forty different forms. He used up more letter paper than had been consumed at Wanalah during a year or more past, but he could not get the thing into a shape that would do. Finally he threw down his pen and turning to Jack Towns said:
"The trouble is, Jack, that when I try to formulate my complaint there isn't a thing to challenge or question. Colonel Conway has not been here to call upon me, but I cannot decently complain of that. He has refused to join with others in nominating me, but that too was his right and I cannot question it. The whole thing is so negative that really there isn't a point I can mention as a ground of complaint."
"Yes? Well—"
"Yes, well, what? Why don't you say something?"
"I will. I'll say that you're irritable to-day. You showed it your confab with your overseer, who is a very worthy man with an exaggerated notion of the work a field hand ought to do in a day. You showed it at breakfast, when you complained because the buckwheat cakes didn't make their appearance precisely on time. Is there anything else you'd like me to say?"
"Yes. What am I to do in this matter, by way of bringing about a tolerable situation?"
"Why, nothing, of course. I could have told you that this morning, but you wouldn't have believed it then. Now that you've exhausted your literary capacity and most of the Wanalah stationery in a futile effort to do the impossible, it may be worth my while to say to you that in a case of this kind there is nothing you can do except await events with due respect for your own dignity. Shut up your desk and send for some horses. Let's have a gallop before dinner time. And by the way, I'd like to ride that young iron gray mare you've got in your stables. She impresses me so favorably that I should buy her if she belonged to anybody who would sell."
"Why, when did you inspect her, Jack? I hadn't a thought—"
"I know you hadn't, but while you've been busy at your desk, trying to accomplish the impossible, I've been down to the stables and had the mare out for inspection. She's a beauty and, so far as I know the points of a horse, she has all of them that are worth while. She's a Red Eye of course?"
"Yes—Red Eye and Nina. She's Nina's own colt. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. If you'll stay with me, making Wanalah your home till this confounded election is over,—just to keep me sane, you know,—the mare shall be yours, as a souvenir of your safe return from the Rocky Mountains."
"Done!" exclaimed Jack. "But if I have to club you by way of keeping you sane, you won't too greatly mind, will you?"
"Not in the least. It's the clubbing I want. Really, Jack, I often think I haven't quite grown up and never shall. I have my full complement of inches, of course, and I can be dignified upon occasion, but when it comes to emotional things, somehow—"
"Somehow you're nothing but a romantic, sentimental boy. I've heard you quote Keats and Shelley when an arithmetic or a geography would have been much more to the purpose. I was born that way myself, and so you see I understand your malady and sympathize with you, but as for myself I've worked a complete cure."
"How did you manage it, Jack?" asked Westover in amused anticipation.
"Oh, easily enough. I have cultivated catholicity of taste in the matter of girls. You know all sentimentality in men has its ultimate origin in their attitude toward women. Now in sentiment, as in everything else, moderation is desirable and excess is destructive. Realizing that fact I have cultivated moderation, by falling madly in love with every pretty young woman I have met, and with some pretty old ones also. But as one encounters a rapid succession of pretty young women, the habit of falling in love with each of them is a securely protective agency. You see I never have time to become idiotically in love with one young woman before meeting another who knocks all that out of my head. To-day's girl rescues me from yesterday's. It's a case of one nail driving out another."
"You are the worst cynic I ever knew, Jack."
"Perhaps I am. But I see the boys are here with the horses. Let's be off and away, forgetting philosophy and girls and pessimism and moonlight and molasses candy for a time at least. Is that a quarter of shoat Cilla is toting from the ice-house? In verity it is, and a decent respect for its succulent attractiveness should prompt us to arm ourselves and meet it with an appetite. So here goes for a good hard gallop, with stiff fences by the way."
XXVIII
THE EVENTS OF A DAY
Only once had Westover been interrupted during his hours of laborious and futile effort to write his letter to Colonel Conway. Jack Towns, being an ideal guest, had occupied himself with books, strolls, and other silent means of passing the time, so that his host had been in no way reminded of his existence. But the weather had not been so unobtrusive a guest. Considerably before noon there came a squall which for ten or fifteen minutes threatened destruction to everything movable about the place. It unroofed a cellar door at the back of the house. It carried away the shed of a tobacco barn, and curiously enough one of the cook's pigs, which she was bringing up luxuriously on "pot liquor and kitchen stuff," disappeared during the brief hurricane. Whether the obese porker was really blown away, as most of the house servants stoutly contended, or whether it was that some colored person with an appetite had simultaneously seized the opportunity and the pig and got away with both, was a point never accurately determined.
Boyd Westover cared nothing for damages that might be repaired, but he was sorely distressed by the wreckage of a favorite mimosa tree that flourished near one corner of the porch. He even quitted his writing, when the little squall had passed away, and with Jack Towns's very inexpert assistance, attempted some repairs. But when there arose the question of sawing off a broken limb, he abandoned the undertaking, saying:
"We'll leave that till Carley Farnsworth comes. He's due here to-day to see some of my people who are ill. He's a much better horticulturist than either of us, Jack, and besides he's a surgeon and will know better how to give the poor tree a chance to grow into symmetry again."
Then, as he sorrowfully contemplated the torn and broken mimosa, he muttered:
"I shouldn't have cared half so much if the squall had blown away every barn I've got. The ruin of that tree is all that it means to me."
He little dreamed what other and immeasurably greater consequences were to come to him as the result of that brief atmospheric disturbance, but he was destined, after a time, to find out.
When the two friends returned from their ride of a dozen miles or so, bringing with them a pair of wild turkey gobblers shot upon the flush, they found Carley Farnsworth in the hall, as the broad passageway through a Virginia house was called, very busily writing upon small slips of paper, of which he had prepared a considerable number before beginning to write. He was too busy to give more than a scant greeting to his friends, but in lieu of greater cordiality he handed one of his written slips to each, saying:
"Read that, and don't interrupt me, please. I'm expecting a messenger every moment."
On each of the slips was written:
"I am authorized by Colonel Robert Conway to add his name to the list of those who urge Mr. Boyd Westover's election.
"(Signed) Don Carlos Farnsworth."
As Westover and Towns looked wonderingly at each other, after reading the slips, Carley Farnsworth threw down his pen, exclaiming:
"There! that's fifty. Talk will do the rest."
Then, filling and lighting a long-stemmed pipe, he said to the others:
"Something has happened. Don't ask me what it is, for I don't know. Yonder comes Dick Ventress, and the slips are ready for him. He has a pot of gum stick'em in his pocket and he's going to paste those slips to all the nominating placards within twenty miles between now and to-morrow morning. They'll set everybody talking, and talk will do the rest."
When Dick Ventress had received the papers and galloped away, Carley vouchsafed some small and exceedingly unsatisfying explanation.
"Something has happened at The Oaks," he said. "I don't know what it is, but when I got there to-day to attend Miss Margaret's sick people, I found everybody agitated, Miss Betsy in something like collapse, and Colonel Conway littering up the house with the torn fragments of letters he'd been trying to write but couldn't. I gave him something to quiet his nerves, and suggested that in his state of mind perhaps literary endeavors were unadvisable. Presently he exclaimed: 'I'll arrange the whole thing. I'll write a letter to you.'
"With that he set to work and wrote this."
He offered a sheet of paper on which was written:
"Dr. D. C. Farnsworth.
"My dear Sir:—
"When you asked me to join you and others in nominating Mr. Boyd Westover for Senator, I felt bound to decline, for reasons which I did not, because I could not, offer. Through very distressing and to me embarrassing circumstances, I now discover that I have been acting under a misapprehension. There are peculiar circumstances which forbid me to explain myself further. I cannot do so without injustice to others. But so far as Mr. Boyd Westover is concerned I earnestly desire to make such atonement as is still possible. To that end I hereby authorize you to add my name to the list of those who urge Mr. Boyd Westover's election. You are free to make this public in any and every way that may seem to you desirable. If it were possible, I should myself announce it from the platform at Fighting Creek to-morrow. As it is I authorize you to do so in my absence. I beg you to use all the influence you can command to spare me the necessity of explanation in this case. I cannot explain. The situation is the most distressing one possible to me. I place it and myself in your hands, and I am always, my dear Dr. Farnsworth,
"Your sincere friend,
"Robert Conway."
"There you have the whole story, so far as I know anything about it," said the Doctor.
"I must say," said Jack Towns, "it is a very manly effort to make reparation under difficulties."
"Yes," answered Westover, "and that is characteristic of Colonel Conway. I'd gladly sacrifice the election in exchange for the privilege of reading that note. He is altogether a man, and I must meet his manliness as a man. I'll write to him at once."
"He does not invite that," said Jack Towns.
"On the contrary he forbids it," added Carley Farnsworth, "and I forbid it in his name. Your impulse is manly and generous, Boyd, but you see he has asked me to use all the influence I can to spare him the necessity of explaining. A note from you would simply compel an explanation at his hands. It was to avoid that that he tore up all the letters he tried to write to you to-day. It is to avoid that that he doesn't mount his horse and ride over here to shake hands with you and tell you about this thing, whatever it is. It is to avoid that that he is going to absent himself from the meeting at Fighting Creek to-morrow, leaving me to announce his change of mind in his stead. What do you think, Jack?"
"Oh, there's only one thing to think. Until Colonel Conway shall see fit to open direct communication with Westover of Wanalah, it will be an extreme and unpardonable impertinence for Westover of Wanalah to address any personal communication to him. Circumstances forbid it. Courtesy forbids it. Consideration, conscience, common sense, convenience, convention, custom,—everything that begins with a 'c' or with any other letter of the alphabet,—forbids it."
"I suppose you two are right," answered Westover, "but to a man of my temperament it seems an ungracious thing not to recognize in some personal way the courtesy Colonel Conway has shown me. My impulse is to write to him and thank him."
"Well, under the circumstances you mustn't," said Carley Farnsworth, "and you're lucky, Boyd, to have sane friends to advise and control you."
"I reckon I am. But really, Carley, what do you suppose has happened over at The Oaks?"
"I am doing no supposing. It may be anything or nothing. We Virginians—all but Jack Towns and me—are so emotional, so sentimental, so chivalric if you prefer the term, that I long ago ceased my efforts to make a diagnosis of things of that sort. I only know that the Colonel is wrought up to a pitch that requires the remedy of going to bed, and that everybody else at The Oaks is correspondingly wrought up. Everybody except that thoroughly admirable Boston girl, Miss Danvers. She has a head, and she keeps it poised above her shoulders. If I hadn't an entirely satisfactory wife of my own in prospect, though not yet in possession, I should be strongly tempted to persuade that girl to stay south of Mason and Dixon's line. As it is, I really think some other fellow ought to do that as a service to Virginia society. Miss Danvers is a true blue, a thoroughbred. She has character, manners, breeding, beauty, simplicity, honesty, sincerity, loyalty, good sense, and all the other qualities that go to make a woman admirable. She is the only person who knows what the ruction over at The Oaks was, and she's the only one there capable of handling the situation sanely. She seems to have everybody there well in hand, and to be controlling all of them wisely. She has a persuasive gift that astonished me when she actually got Colonel Conway to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon, and induced Margaret to do the same thing as a precaution against a nervous breakdown that was clearly threatened. I had ordered both those goings to bed, with all the authority of a medical adviser, but to no purpose. When I spoke to that Boston girl about it, she answered gently but confidently: 'If you think that advisable, Doctor, I will see that it is done,' and by Jove she did the trick so promptly that before I left I saw them both in bed, and gave each of them a sleeping potion that will keep them quiet for many hours to come."
Under ordinary circumstances, Jack Towns would have declared his purpose to go over to The Oaks at once and make love to the Boston girl. For some reason, on this occasion, he shrank from all jesting. He had talked for an hour with Millicent Danvers on the evening before. He wanted now to talk with her for another hour, but, contrary to his custom, he said nothing of his purpose. He went to dinner with the other two, and after the dinner was done he slipped away to the stables, mounted the superb mare that was now his, and rode away to The Oaks.