Chapter III

Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and controlling guests that none might resist.

Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people who formed the little _coterie_ at Wheatlands (there was among them a widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's notions upon many points.

Claggett, dismissed with a _douceur_, the liberality of which consoled that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by train that day.

Vance had been told that breakfast would be at nine; and, awakened at half-past seven by a bird on the bough in his window, he abandoned himself to a lazy review of his impressions of the family. Of his Cousin Eve he had seen little more than what has already been told. After filling her place at a bounteous supper-table, where the talk was chiefly absorbed by the three gentlemen, she had vanished, in company with the widowed cousin, and was invisible thereafter--the men sitting together till midnight in the large, raftered hall, with a fire in its wide chimney, that served the old bachelor for a general living-room.

Vance could not remember to have seen a face of finer lines, a manner of finer courtesy, than that of his seventy-year-old host, who, in spite of the rust of desuetude in worldly ways, carried his inbred gentility where all who approached him might profit by it.

That he was a politician went without saying; and, indeed, the talk once directed in the channel of national government had kept there until they separated. On a claw-footed table holding a lamp beside Mr. Lloyd's easy chair, covered with frayed haircloth, Vance saw lying a crisp new Review of English publication, and all about were piled newspapers and magazines, while shelves displayed row upon row of the antique, tawny volumes that had made up the complete library of a country gentleman in the days of old Josephus's grandfather.

Around the hearth, coming and going with every opening of many doors, gathered dogs of fine and varied breeds. One old patriarch of a St. Bernard, who attached himself particularly to the stranger, had remained close to Vance's feet, and gravely escorted him to bed.

In his kinsman, Guy Carlyle, a handsome man of fifty odd years, who in a military youth had been noted for deeds of daring that rang through the army of Northern Virginia, but had long since resigned himself to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, Vance saw the origin of Eve's rare beauty. He also became aware that, of a large family of sons and daughters born to the now widowed Colonel, Eve was the sole survivor; and it did not need the expression that irradiated her father's face when her name was touched upon to show in what estimation she was held by him.

The tinge of melancholy in Mr. Carlyle's manner had, however, no effect like repression of the cordial friendliness he extended to the newcomer. Vance had gone to rest with a feeling that he had conferred a genuine favor upon his two elders by according to them, as he had, his company.

Spite of these conditions of good-fellowship, he awoke next morning conscious that there was one under the roof with him who had the power (and no desire to withhold it) to make him far from comfortable; to puzzle him, to banter him, to pull him up with a jerk at the moment he might feel that he was getting reasonably ahead with her; to punish him, it would appear, for some offence he could not own to having committed.

It was very clear that Eve thought him a poor fellow, mentally and morally; that, apart from her specific grudge against him, of nature unknown, she was not in the least inclined to pay tribute to his position, fashion, culture, wealth,--the appendages of Vance Townsend's personality people around him had always been disposed to make so much of. In the firmament of American society, he took himself to be a planet of first importance. In other lands, he had enjoyed more than a reasonable share of social success. Why should he here, for the first time in his life, feel like a man coming in fancy costume to a dinner where all the other guests wore plain clothes?

It must be the doing of that girl. She it was who, with a few words, a cool glance or two that appeared to read his soul, had brought him into this strait; and Vance was still young enough to feel himself flame with resentment of her. Then fell upon his mental ear the soft cadence of her voice, asking his pardon for having possibly misjudged him, and his anger passed.

As from Eve he went on to think of Kitty Ainger, now Mrs. Crawford, Vance was surprised at the freedom from soreness the reflection left upon his mind. Mrs. Crawford, he even reflected, was really an admirable woman--just the wife, as everybody had said, for a rising fellow like Crawford, who would surely reach the top! She had shown her good sense in taking him. Was it possible Vance had ever thought anything else?

On a table near the bed lay the contents of a pocket emptied overnight--among them a folded paper, inscribed with the latest and most satisfactory draft of his verses to Kitty. This he now seized, and, upon re-reading it, a flush that was not of tender consciousness overspread his face. Regardless of the loss to the world of poetry, ignoring the recurrent efforts that Calliope had witnessed, he deliberately tore it up, and went to the open window prepared to scatter the tiny remnants upon a matin breeze.

A view of wide green plains, with here and there a clump of noble trees, of soaring blue hills beyond them, all shining in the morning sun, met his eye; and almost directly beneath his window were a couple of horses, of which one was bestridden by old Josephus, in a nankeen coat and venerable Panama hat; the other, little more than a colt, was held by a negro and saddled for a woman's use.

"Lady-love! Lady-love, I say!" called out the old gentleman, in a voice of Stentor.

"Coming, coming, come!" gaily answered somebody; and in a moment Vance's Cousin Eve appeared.

Springing lightly upon the segment of an enormous tree that served as horse-block, she dropped into her saddle, and devoted herself to subduing the juvenile remonstrance of her steed.

With the fragments of his effusion to Kitty Ainger still in hand, Vance felt a curious sensation, as though the old world had suddenly become young and beautiful and tuneful; and then, from his ambush, he heard Josephus say:

"I'd half a mind to rouse up our visitor, and take him with us to see the sheep in Six-Acre Lot. The ride before breakfast would have given him a good idea of the way my land lies."

"O Cousin Josey, I am so thankful you did _not_!" answered Eve, with sincerity unmistakable.

"Tut, tut, my dear child," began Mr. Lloyd, rebukingly; but Eve, who just then succeeded in starting her colt in the right direction, was off and away, sending back a trill of laughter to her ancient cavalier, who made good speed to follow her.

The new conviction of his folly in having agreed to remain under the same shelter with Miss Carlyle did not prevent Mr. Townsend from making his appearance with an excellent appetite at the breakfast-table, whither he was duly escorted by Bravo, the old dog he had found outside his bedroom door waiting to take him in charge.

With Bravo and another dog or two at heel, Vance had walked off his pique over dew-washed slopes of short, rich grass to a summit near the house, to be joined on the return by Colonel Carlyle, who had strolled out to meet him.

Breakfasts at Wheatlands were justly considered the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of old Josey's cook. Vance, helping himself to quickly succeeding dainties seen for the first time, cast a mental glance backward to the egg and a cup of tea that formed his accustomed meal at home. Half-way in the repast, Eve, who had been changing her habit to a pretty cotton gown, slipped into place between her father and the widow, who was pouring out the coffee.

"What! What!" said Cousin Josey, detecting her absence from a seat at his side, that would have brought her face to face with Townsend. "My Lady-love desert me like that? Come back, little runaway, and see your Cousin Vance taste his first mouthful of a Wheatlands ham!"

Thus adjured, Eve could but take the seat indicated; and Vance, who had determined to be no longer oppressed by so small and pink a person, bestowed on her an openly admiring glance that angered her anew.

"We must leave you to Eve's mercies this morning, Mr. Townsend," observed their host, at the conclusion of the repast. "Carlyle and I have promised to ride over to the County Court to hear a case tried, and to call on the Judge, who is an old college chum of the Colonel's. We shall be home to dinner at two, and you young people must entertain each other until then."

"Could you not manage not to show so plainly what you feel?" asked Vance in his cousin's little ear, as they left the table. "Pray believe that I am not a party to the infliction put upon you."

They had strolled bareheaded out under the trees shading the lawn about the house.

"Shall we never have done quarrelling?" said Eve, wearily. "Just as I think I begin to feel kindly toward you, something happens, and I break down again."

"Were we not moderately successful last night, when I assumed to be somebody else?" he asked.

"Yes; that is better. I will treat you as I would any other man stopping here--any one not of your exalted class, I mean."

"That was a quite unnecessary taunt. But I will allow it to pass if you agree for to-day--until the gentlemen return--to treat me as you would Mr. Ralph Corbin, for example."

"What do you mean?" she asked, quickly. "Ralph is the dearest, most obliging cousin I have, and I impose upon him dreadfully. If he were here, I should begin by sending him indoors to fetch my hat and parasol from the hall rack, and a new magazine I left in the window-seat, and tell him to call the dogs to come with us--What! _you_ can't intend to condescend to wait upon a mere girl, a country cousin?"

He was off and back again with the articles demanded, showing no enmity in the smile offered with them to her acceptance. But he did not at once surrender the periodical, or until he had satisfied himself of the contents of the page held open by a marker of beaten silver.

"You don't mind my looking at what you read?" he asked.

"If you like. It is some verses--_not_ what _you_ would care for, in the least, but they have given me great pleasure."

A glance showed him that his suspicion was correct. The stanzas in question had been written by him some months before, and sent, unsigned, to the editor.

"Will you tell me what you fancy in these?" he said, with fine indifference of manner.

"Why does one like a flower, or worship a star? They suit me, I suppose, and I am learning them by heart."

His own heart throbbed with a schoolboy's glee and pride. But he said nothing, and walked beside her light figure, in the round of garden and orchard, bringing up in the stable-yard. Here, a space paved with grass-grown cobblestones was bounded on three sides by frame structures, now, in their decay, as gray and as fragile-looking as hornets' nests.

"And the little house built of limestone, with one window, was put up in Colonial days, for refuge in case of an Indian raid. Mr. Lloyd will tell you one of his best stories, about an adventure of his ancestor in there, when three white men successfully resisted a band of red-skins. Perhaps our aboriginal anecdotes would bore you, however. If so, give us only a little hint, and we desist. Now, shan't we go in and see your horses?"

She lifted the latch; Vance followed her, past stalls where the occupants gave her immediate recognition, to those in which his own pair were comfortably ensconced. Merrylad, ungallant fellow, would have none of the young lady, but at the touch and voice of his master, turned his beautiful head sidewise to lay it upon Vance's shoulder with affection.

"I am, at last, an illustration of the legend, 'Some one to love me,'" he said, laughing. "So you thought I had forsaken you, old man? Not I, my beauty. Gently, gently, you are too demonstrative."

"I can't imagine life without horses and dogs; can you?" she said, with the quickly growing comradeship of a child. "There; I was determined that Merrylad should let me stroke his neck!"

From the stables, whose inmates seemed to have put them upon a better footing, they passed again under the pink-blossomed arcades of an apple-orchard, to pause beside a curious indentation, like a dimple, in the turf.

"Just here," began Evelyn,--"but I shall not tell you, unless you promise to be properly impressed,--a sad fate overcame a dishonest negro servant of Mr. Lloyd's ancestor. He--the servant, I mean--was a fellow much given to acrobatic feats, and was accustomed to divert his master's guests by tumbling and turning cart-wheels. One day, he robbed old Mr. Lloyd's money-chest, and filling his pockets, went out in the orchard, and testified his glee by standing on his head."

"What happened? Evidently something of a supernatural nature."

"The earth opened, and out came a great hairy red hand," said Eve, "(I am telling it to you as my nurse told it to me) and 'cotched him by de hayde, and drawed him down.'"

"What evidence do they offer of this event?"

"That is the thrilling part. About fifty years ago, when the present owner was just of age, some men at work in this place dug up a treasure of golden 'cob-coins,' clipped here and there to regulate their value, as the custom was in olden days. And there, wedged in the earth where the gold lay scattered, was the skeleton of a man standing upon his head!"

"Proof positive," said Vance, laughing.

"I thought I should convince you. As an actual fact, the coins brought six hundred dollars at the Philadelphia mint, and the money was distributed among the finders."

"Imagine how many darkeys have stolen out here, since, to work at night with pick and shovel! I suppose that accounts for the depression of the sod."

"I myself found a George II. coin in the garden yesterday. See! If I were to give it to you, do you think it would bind you to continue to be 'some one else,' during the rest of your stay with us?"

He took the bit of copper she held out, wondering, as he had done the night before, whether this kindly mood meant coquetry, then deciding it was but the frolic spirit of a wholesome and untrammelled youth not to be restrained. Whatever it meant, he would profit by it. A creature so bright, so impulsive as this, his new-found cousin, was not within his ken, even if the occasional prick of her wit did keep him in an attitude of self-defence.

"Her cheeks are true apple-blossoms," he found himself murmuring, irrelevantly, as he pursued her through the tunnel of orchard boughs. "But her lips--what? Ah! bard beloved, I thank you--'Her mouth a crimson flower.' That's it. 'Her mouth a crimson flower.'"

"What are you talking about, back there?" exclaimed his guide, turning sharply to call him to account.

"Did I speak aloud? I was--ah--only wondering where we are going to bring up?"

"Do I tire you? Perhaps you are not used to walking. Never mind; we shall soon reach the graveyard, and then you can sit upon the stone wall and rest."

"I think I can last to the graveyard," meekly said the young man, whose tramps in the Alps and Dolomites and Rockies had included of "broken records" not a few.

"Now, you are laughing at me," she said, suspiciously. "But you know I have never heard of you except as a lounger in clubs and a leader of _cotillons_."

Vance thought it useless to protest.

They now reached an enclosure under a grove of maples, where, motioning him to sit upon a low wall tapestried with moss and fern and creepers, she perched upon the gnarled root of a tree, and, opening her book, prepared to become absorbed in it.

"Suppose you read aloud to me," he suggested, with cunning aforethought.

"This?" she said, doubtfully, surveying his verses. "Oh, no; I think not. You would hardly care for _this_. It is something quite out of your line, don't you see? The writer gives expression to a perfectly straightforward, yet eloquent, expression of a true man's true feeling, about a thing of every day. It is not only that the words are lovely and the sentiment is noble, but the measure ripples like a stream--Why, what is the matter with you? One would think you know the author."

"I am afraid, upon reflection, that I _do not_ know the author," he said, drawing back into his shell.

"If you did, I should get you to thank him for me for this," she resumed. "They say authors are always disappointing to meet, after one has idealized them through their writings. But _he_ would not be. No; I would trust him, through everything, to be a noble gentleman. Of course he is unworldly. I believe he lives in a remote Territory, and despises petty conventionalities of society, especially those in New York. And I think he never even heard of that dreadful 400 of yours."

Vance, smiling at her girlish nonsense, felt himself, nevertheless, lapped in the Elysium of her speech.

Then her mood changed to pathos, as she told him the story of "Cousin Josey's" single episode of love, ending in the mound beside them, where slept the old man's bride-betrothed of seventeen,--a ward of his mother,--who had died of a tragic accident, forty years agone.

"And every day, since, he has come here. See, there are fresh wood-violets upon her breast. And the dear old man has never thought of such a thing as giving her a successor. Now, let us go. There are lambs to show you, and a lot of other things."

The passing cloud was gone from her April face. She was again radiant, and in some bedazzlement of mind he arose and followed her.

* * * * *

Townsend's acquaintance with his Virginia cousins had, as might have been expected, prolonged itself into a visit to Carlyle Hall; and he was on the eve of departure, after a stay of two weeks in that delightful refuge, before he realized how much his fancy had begun to twine around the place and its inmates.

Sentiment for the young creature who was its ruling spirit he did not admit, other than the natural tribute of his age and sex to hers. Nor did he give her credit for more than temporary feeling on any point disconnected with her strong local attachments. Her father, her home, and those she grandiosely called her "people"--meaning, he supposed, the individuals indebted to Providence for having been born within the limits of her State--were the objects of Eve's warm affection.

Vance felt sure her courteous thought of him was the result of only transmitted consideration for a guest. So soon as he should quit the pleasant precincts of the Hall, he feared he must put aside his claim to even this consideration. This condition of affairs worried our young man more than he cared to admit to himself. To no one else would he have confessed that the fortnight had been spent by him in a daily effort to impress upon her a personality widely different from her conception of it. Now, at the end of his enterprise, he was conscious that he had not advanced in the endeavor; and this last evening in her company was correspondingly depressing to his _amour propre_.

They were sitting together in a window-seat of the drawing-room, looking into an old-world garden with box walks, a sun-dial, and a blaze of tulips piercing the brown mold. From the western sky, facing them, the red light was vanishing, and in the large, dim room a couple of lamps made islands of radiance in a sea of shadows. In the library, adjoining, sat the Colonel, reading, his strong, handsome head seen in profile from where they were.

Sounds of evening in the country, the sweet whistle of a negro in the distance, alone broke the spell of silence brooding over the old house. Vance hesitated to further disturb it, the more so that Evelyn had been in a mood of unusual graciousness. Nor did he, in truth, feel prepared to broach the discussion of certain things he had put off until now.

"To-morrow," he said at last, with a genuine sigh, "I shall be on my way northward, and this beautiful, restful life will be among my has-beens."

"Too restful, I'm afraid," she cried, in her brusque, schoolgirl fashion. "Your Aunt Myrtle always speaks of Virginia as nothing but a 'cure,' which she is clearly glad to have accomplished and lived down."

"It has been a cure for me in another sense. I wonder if you know what you have done for me?"

"I?"

"Yes. Don't fence with me now. For once, believe in your cousin, who is, after this, going to leave you for a long time in peace. Tell me; when I shall have gone, and that big, comfortable 'spare room' is put in order again for the next guest, shall you sometimes think of the subject of your missionary labors in the past two weeks?"

"But I have never undertaken to reform you," she said, in a vexed tone. "It is absurd for you to think I imagined myself capable of that. The best I could hope for was that your visit should pass without our coming to open conflict. Papa could tell you I promised him to try that this should be so."

"Then I am indebted to your father for the modicum of personal consideration you have vouchsafed me?"

"And Cousin Josey--yes," she answered, with startling candor. "At the same time, I must say, I like you now better than I believed I ever could. It makes me wish with all my heart I could trust you."

Vance felt a sting that was not all resentment, or all pain. The expression of her eyes, so fearless, so intense, waked in him a feeling that, in the moment they had reached, he desired nothing so much in all the world as to win this "mere girl's" approval. The color deepened in his face, as he said:

"And yet you have given the author of those verses, who happens to be myself, credit for something in which you could place faith?"

"You--_you_?" she exclaimed, starting violently. "Ah no! Don't destroy my ideals."

"This may be wholesome, but it is certainly not pleasant," he said, praying Heaven for patience.

There was nothing of her customary light spirit of bravado in the manner in which, after a pause, she next spoke to him.

"I hardly know how--for the sake of others, I mean, not on my own account--to ask if it is possible you have not, in connection with me, given a thought to one who was my daily, intimate companion all of last winter."

"That!" he interrupted, with a dry laugh. Why not arraign her for the wreck of me?"

"You understand me, I see," she said, with meaning. "Let me say this, then: that I hold a trifler with women's hearts to be the most despicable of characters. A man who is too indolent or too infirm of purpose to deny himself the pleasure he gets from watching his progress in a girl's affections is an offender the law mayn't reach, but he deserves it should. That he makes his victim old before her time, in his gradual, refined disappointment of her hopes, may not count for much, in your estimation. But--but--oh! I could not have believed it of the person who wrote those verses!"

There were tears in her honest eyes, a tremor in her young voice. Save for these, Vance, who had walked away from her a dozen steps, would have continued to put distance between himself and this "angel at the gate."

As it was, he controlled himself sufficiently to return and say, in a hard, strained voice:

"I shall not attempt to change your estimate of me. But I am glad you have given me an opportunity to tell you that on the day I saw you first, I went directly from my aunt's house to ask Katherine Ainger to be my wife. Some day, when you are older, and know more of the world, and take broader views of poor humanity, all these things may seem to you different. Then you may, perhaps, admit that, with all my faults, I could never be such a cad as you have pictured. In the little time that we are together now, please, let us say no more about it."

He walked away, joining the Colonel, to engage that unsuspecting gentleman in an exhaustive discussion of politics.

Eve sat for awhile in her dusky corner, absorbed in thought. She had decided to say a few words to him, before he should go, that might contribute to her relief rather than his. But Vance gave her no opportunity to speak any words to him, except those of conventional farewell. Betimes, next morning, he took leave of his cousins; and the Virginia episode was over.

After he had left, Eve locked herself in her room, and gave way to a burst of tears.