Part 4

“Why, who in the neighborhood does not?” she said, settling herself in the saddle. “Not to know you would be to argue one’s self very much unknown in this neighborhood. Now give me the lamb. Thank you so much. Come, Laurin. Good-by, Miss Herrick.” She placed the lamb carefully against her side, whistled to the hound, and started off at a round trot. Her figure, in its trim Quorn-cloth habit, came into bold relief against the vivid sky. He watched admiringly the long supple waist as it swayed to the motion of the horse, the bold graceful sweep of the shoulders, and high carriage of the small head. He had read so much concerning the gathers and gilt braid of the Virginian horsewoman that it struck him as something entirely strange, the fact that Miss Mary Erroll should wear a neat, well-cut habit, and a chimney-pot hat. He also recalled that her saddle was all that it should be, and that instead of the gold-and-ivory-handled cutting whip which he had been led to expect, she carried a light but sturdy crop.

“By Jove! how she rides!” he said to himself.

“Don’t I ride as well?” came the soft monotone of Virginia at his ear.

He answered her, still with his eyes on the vanishing figure of the girl in the Quorn-cloth habit. “You ride like an Arab,” he said. “She rides like--like--like an Englishwoman.”

“You don’t think I ride as well,” said Virginia, in an indescribable voice, turning away. She was filled with an unreasoning, unchristian, wholly uncivilized desire to mount Bonnibel, overtake, and spatter Miss Mary Erroll with as much mud as possible. Suddenly she turned and came back to Roden. “I--I--I s’pose you think a gyrl oughtn’ to ride straddle?” she said, with an unusual hint of timidity in her rich tones.

“Oh, I don’t know that there’s any harm in it,” he said, carelessly. Again she stood away from him. A feeling of utterly unreasonable anger and rebellion was swelling in her heart and straining her throat. Was it against Miss Mary Erroll or against Roden? She could not herself have told. One fact was entirely apparent to her: he did not deem what she did or did not do things worthy his consideration.

“I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel!” she said, passionately, between her locked teeth, as she went blindly on through the furze and briers. “I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel--straddle or no straddle!”

It was not until three days later that she found out from her father the fact of Roden’s having been to call (nominally) upon the lamb of Miss Mary Erroll.

“The beauty of the question air,” ended that modern Solomon, as he filled his white clay pipe--“The beauty of the question air, that thar gyrl cert’n’y is goin’ to lead that young fellar a darnce. They say she’s got it down ter a fine p’int.”

“What?” said Virginia, curtly.

“Why, coquettin’--hyah! hyah! _That’s_ the darnce she’ll lead _him_. ’N’ they sez, moresomever, as how th’ English fellars takes to her like the partridges ter th’ woods--plague ’em!--’count o’ her w’arin’ boots like a man, an’ skirts at harf-marst when she goes out on hawseback. Lawd! I cert’n’y do ’spise ter see a woman hitched onter th’ side uv er hawse like a pecker-wood a-stickin’ ter rer tree-trunk!”

Virginia came and leaned on the back of his chair, picking some bits of straw from his many-hued waistcoat. “You don’t think it’s any harm for a girl to ride straddle, do you, father?” she said, slowly.

“Harm!” said old Herrick, twisting about in his chair to look up at her--“_harm!_” He set his pipe firmly between his teeth, and pushed out his underlip with an expression of entire scorn. “Is there any harm in a hoppergrass hoppin’?” he questioned. “G’long! don’ talk none o’ yo’ nonsense ter me!”

This, however, did not entirely satisfy her on the question in point.

Roden was not a little astonished to meet her, as she returned from giving Bonnibel her morning gallop, in a very fair imitation of Miss Mary Erroll’s habit, and an old pot hat that had evidently belonged to some one of the previous Englishmen.

“Why, what a swell you are!” he said, pleasantly, joining her. “But how does Bonnibel like the change?”

“It don’t make any diff’r’nce how she likes it,” said Miss Herrick, curtly, adding hastily, with a swift change of manner, “She r’ared once or twice at first, but that’s all.” Then she stopped suddenly, and stepped around in front of him. “How--how does it look--really?” she said, with a shamefaced and comprehensive downward glance at her skirt.

“It looks awfully well,” Roden assured her--“awfully well. How tall and strong you are, Miss Virginia!”

“I’ve got a right good mustle,” she said, showing her handsome teeth in one of her rare and vivid smiles. “Mornin’: I’ve got a heap to do.”

Roden watched her as she stalked away with her splendid swinging stride, thinking vaguely of her beauty and its absolute waste in her position. “She’ll marry some ‘po’ white’ who talks as much like a nigger as her own father,” he thought, half regretfully; “have a lot of children, and end by smoking a pipe--ugh!” He then went to call, for the third time that week, upon Mary Erroll. The visit ended by their going for a ride, and just as they neared the gates of Caryston a smart shower came pelting down the eastern slope of Peter’s Mountain.

“Do come in and wait until this is over,” he said, urgently, bending from his horse to open the long gray gate, which was now proudly supported on strong hinges. “Miss Herrick will chaperon us.”

“Why, of course I’ll come,” she said, amazed, in her Southern freedom, that he should pause to question the propriety of her so doing. At one o’clock in the day, and with her little darky henchman mounting guard, what possible objection could any one find? She ran up the stone steps with a pretty clattering of her boots, and Roden threw wide the doors of the great hall. She was delighted with everything; got on a chair to examine the great moose-head; struck some chords on an old harp that she discovered in a dark corner; made friends with the collie and one of the Persian cats, who came purring up from the recess of a distant window; looked over his collection of curious weapons; and on finding that he had spent some years of his life in Mexico, questioned him about his experiences there with a pretty assumption of almost motherly interest.

“Can’t you say some--some Mexican?” she said. “I should so like to hear it.”

“I love you, most beautiful of maidens,” said Roden, lazily, in the Mexican patois.

“What does that mean? It sounds enchanting.”

“It means enchantment.”

She leaned suddenly forward and looked at him with her bright, soft, childishly chaste eyes. “Mr. Roden,” she said, sweetly, “if I were not very sure you were only laughing, I should accuse you of trying to ensnare my simple country soul with a spurious sentimentality.”

Roden roused himself from his lounging position in one of the big hall chairs with a jerk. An expression half of amusement, half of guilt, crossed his handsome sunburnt face. “You are very unjust,” he said. “I am certainly not laughing, and I couldn’t be sentimental if I tried.”

“Oh! oh!” she said, with her pretty Southern accent. “How very, how rudely unflattering!”

“I meant I would not have to try to be so--with you,” said Roden, dexterously mendacious.

“How very, how rudely untruthful!”

They were here told by Popocatepetl that “lunch dun rade-y.”

Roden’s meals were generally presided over by Virginia, and she came forward to meet him now with a little silver dish of apples in one hand, evidently utterly ignorant of the presence of Mary Erroll. She stopped short, half-way across the room. A shadow as definite and sombre as the shadow from a brilliant cloud upon a laughing grass-field in May settled over her face.

“I’ll have to fix another place,” she said, curtly, and turned her back upon them in order to do so.

Miss Erroll expressed herself charmed with her luncheon. She ate bread and honey with all the gusto of the queen of nursery lore, taking off her riding-gloves and showing long, flower-like hands, that were reflected as whitely in the polished mahogany of the round table as the pale primroses which adorned its centre.

Virginia moved about noiselessly. All at once she stopped beside Roden, and put one hand heavily on the back of his chair. He looked up in some surprise. Her eyes were flashing under her bent brows, like the “brush fires” of her native State under a night horizon.

“I’ll wait on _you_,” she said, in a smothered voice--“I say I’ll wait on _you_, _but I won’t wait on her_.” She dashed down his napkin, which she had lifted from the floor, and strode with her swift, noiseless movements to the door.

“Virginia!” said Roden, aghast--“Virginia!”

“I don’t care!” cried the girl, passionately, swinging open the heavy door--“I don’t care! I ain’t anybody’s nigger!”

She rushed out tempestuously, dragging from one or two rings the heavy portière, which with a native incongruity hung before the door itself.

“How vulgarity will crop out!” said Roden, rising to shut the door. “That poor little girl has behaved so well until to-day!”

That evening, as he sat writing in a little room opening into the dining-room, Virginia entered, and came and stood beside him. He did not look up. She had annoyed him a good deal, and he was not prepared to yield the forgiveness for which he felt she had come to plead. She stood there some moments quite silent, then reached over his shoulder and dropped something on the table before him.

“You said th’ other day you wanted one for the silver. There ’tis,” she said. She turned before he could speak, and left the room.

Lifting the crimson mass from the table, he saw that it was an old-fashioned purse of netted silk, secured by little steel rings. He recalled a speech which he had made a day or two ago concerning the inconvenience of modern purses as regarded silver currency. He started up and opened the door, calling the girl by name two or three times. No one answered, and he went down the hall and into Herrick’s room.

The overseer was there, whittling something by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp. Aunt Tishy was there, grumbling to herself about “folks cuttin’ trash all over de flo’ fur her ter break her pore ole back over.” The raccoon was very much there, as he seemed to be having a fit just as Roden entered. But there was no Virginia. Her spinning-wheel stood idle in its corner; her heavy boots were drying in front of the wood fire; there was a book, face down, upon the deal table--a book which she must have been reading, as no one else at Caryston besides Roden ever glanced between the covers of one.

He lifted it, expecting to find some Dora-Thornesque romance of high life. It was a condensed copy of “Youatt on the Horse,” and beneath it was a racing calendar for ’79. Alas! alas! even this discovery told nothing else to this otherwise discerning young man. He smiled as he put down the volumes, thinking that the little Virginian was bent on making him acknowledge her a superior horsewoman in all respects.

He then inquired of Herrick as to the whereabouts of Virginia. Neither the girl’s father nor Aunt Tishy could tell him.

“If you’ll lend me a pencil I’ll just leave a note for her,” he said, feeling instinctively that she would not care to have a message in regard to her little gift left with her father or the old negress.

He scribbled a few words on one of the fly-leaves of the racing calendar, tore it out, folded it securely, and handed it to Herrick.

“Please give that to your daughter when she comes back,” he said. “Good-night,” and left the room.

Old Herrick waited until he heard the distant clang of the dining-room door; then he settled his spectacles very carefully upon his large nose, pushed out his underlip, and unfolding the little note, thrust it almost into the flame of the lamp while reading it.

“‘DEAR MISS FAGINIA’ (Humph!),--Many thanks fur yo’ beeyeutiful purse. I will alluz keep hit. Very truly yours,

“‘J. RODEN.’”

“Humph!” ejaculated Herrick again--“humph!”

He set one long, knotty hand back down against his side, and turned the bit of paper about scornfully between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, regarding it the while over his spectacles. “Humph!” he said for the fourth time.

IV.

It was one o’clock on that same night Virginia Herrick leaned with round bare arms on the table, above which hung a little oblong, old-fashioned mirror in a warped mahogany frame. The one candle on a little bracket at her right hand, brought out the clear tones in her face and throat and arms, and dived vividly into her masses of loosened hair; beyond her was a background of vague shadows; she looked from the tarnished mirror like a painting from its frame. Her eyes were sombre and heavy under their dark lids. The light falling down upon her sent long delicate shadows trembling upon her cheeks--shadows such as are made by the bending of summer grasses across a woman’s white gown, and which in Virginia’s case were cast by her thick, curled lashes.

She had taken off the waist of her homespun dress, and the folds of her much-gathered chemise assumed a silvery tone in the concentrated light. The contrast between the dead white of the stuff and the living white of her neck and arms was as perfect as when Southern peach-trees, blossoming before their time, are seen next day against vast fields of snow.

One of the Persian cats leaped with soft agility upon the table, and passed purring between the girl and her fair image in the dingy glass; she swept him from her way with one sure motion of her strong bare arm, and returned to her intent scrutiny of her own face.

The time passed on. A rat began an intermittent nibbling in the old wainscoting of the room; sharp, sudden noises were heard overhead; the fire died out in tinkling silence; a heavy shroud of semi-transparent tallow wrapped the one candle. Two o’clock had sounded through the hollow depths of the old house some time ago. Suddenly she spoke. “I wisht I knew ef I war pretty,” she said. Then, with passionate reiterance, “I _wisht_ I knew ef I war pretty.”

The cat, hearing her voice, leaped again beside her, as if to answer; again she swept him to the floor. The soft, cushioned thud of his feet against the bare boards sounded quite distinctly upon the silence, so alert to catch every noise. “Oh, I wisht--I _wisht_ I knew ef I war pretty,” she said once more.

Poor little savage, you are pretty indeed--with a prettiness which civilization would give many of its privileges to possess. So, I doubt not, were fashioned the wood-nymphs of old, with strength and with health and with grace beyond all power of reproduction--even so have they gazed deep into their woodland lakes; and the lakes, did they not answer? Who but Beauty was ever mother of such curves and tints?

This time she put another question. “I wisht I knew ef--it--pleased--_him_.”

She had yielded up her secret to the old mirror, and to Hafiz--what better confidants? The one had no tongue; the other a tongue used only for lapping unlimited supplies of Alderney cream.

With a sudden movement she leaned forward and blew out the sputtering candle. She did not wish even her own eyes in the mirror to pry upon her.

Three days later Roden and Usurper figured in a hurdle race of some note in the neighborhood.

This Usurper was by King Tom, out of Uarda, and as rank a brute as ever went headlong at his hurdle, often taking off nearly a length too soon. Virginia, who had seen him day after day at his work, ventured timidly to suggest to Roden that one of the lads should ride the horse. He laughed, and told her he had thought her above that very ordinary failing of women--nervousness. She said nothing more, turning short on her heel with the customary dissenting movement of her fine shoulders.

These races were to be quite a swell affair, and there were a good many carriages outside of the course. Miss Erroll and her mother, sunk deep in an old-fashioned landau, talked to Roden as he leaned on the side of the carriage, very brown and gallant in his racing-togs.

Virginia was seated on Pokeberry, not three yards off. She watched curiously each movement of Miss Erroll, dwelling with strained, wondering eyes upon her pretty wrinkled gloves; her close-fitting corsage of white serge; her little dark-red velvet toque; her parasol, a vivid arrangement of cream-color and red, which made a charming plaque-like background for her fair face; she also noticed the posy of blue and white flowers which was pinned on the left side against the white bodice of Miss Erroll. Roden’s colors were blue and white. Virginia herself had a little knot of white and blue hyacinths on her riding-habit; she jerked them out with a savage movement, tossed them on the ground, and carefully guided the hoofs of Pokeberry upon them.

All unconscious was she that in her eyes, blue now with anger, and her cheeks so white with pain, she wore his colors whether she would or not.

There were two races before the one in which he rode. Then he went off to be weighed, and Virginia dismounted from Pokeberry, and gave a little nigger a cent or two to hold the mare.

She went and leaned against the railing, waiting for the start. All went well enough until the finish. Roden came sweeping down the homestretch in an easy canter, Usurper well in hand and going game as a pebble, and one more hurdle to jump.

Virginia held her breath; she had a horrible certainty that Usurper would refuse that last hurdle, or do something equally idiotic. Roden sent him at it in fine form. There was a second of expectancy, a smart crash, and then Usurper, scrambling heavily to his feet, tore off down the course, leaving a mass of blue and white half under the débris of the hurdle. The brute had not risen an inch, and had flung Roden headfirst into the hurdle, himself turning a complete somersault.

On came the other horses, ten of them, in full gallop. Mary Erroll stood on her feet, with a little broken cry. Some men, until now paralyzed with astonishment and horror, started forward; but swifter than all, unhesitating, strong of arm as of nerve, Herrick’s daughter, diving beneath the rail, rushed out into the middle of the track, and seizing the senseless man beneath his arms dragged him by main force out of the way of the coming horses. The hoof of one of them, however, struck her on her left shoulder, taking a good bit of flesh and cloth clean away as though with a knife.

There was a good deal of blood about Roden’s head--some at first thought that he was seriously injured. They carried him into a tent and sent for a surgeon. In an hour he was all right, however, and wrote a few words upon some little ivory tablets, sent him by Miss Erroll for that purpose, to assure her of his entire recovery. Mary then sent to ask if Miss Herrick would not be so very kind as to come and speak to her. The girl came, sullenly enough, touching from time to time the bandages about her left shoulder, as though restless under even so slight a restraint.

“I want to thank you so very, very much,” said Mary, in her sweetest voice. She leaned far out of the landau and held out her hand to Virginia.

“What a’ _you_ thankin’ me fur?” demanded the girl, fiercely, stepping backward from the extended hand. “_You_ ain’t got nothin’ to thank me fur--have you?” she ended, with a sudden change from aggressiveness to appeal infinitely pathetic.

A swift red had dyed Mary’s face at the first reception of her kindly meant advances. It faded out now, leaving her very pale.

“Every one who is a friend of Mr. Roden ought to thank you, if they do not,” she said, with great dignity. “I am sorry I spoke, since it has been so disagreeable to you. Good-morning.”

Virginia was dismissed--she felt it. The knowledge went scorching through her veins as kirsch through the veins of one not accustomed to its fire. She hated the girl with a mad, barbaric impulse, which was as much beyond her control as its tides are beyond the control of the ocean; she felt an animosity to Miss Erroll’s very hat, to her pretty parasol with its bunch of red velvet ribbons on the bamboo handle. She would have liked to seize and tear them to pieces, as a humming-bird tears the flower which has refused its honey. A red mist rose to her eyes. The Erroll carriage and its occupants seemed to be melting away and away in a golden haze. She stepped backward, keeping her eyes on it, as a fascinated bird looks ever on the serpent that has charmed it.

“I hate her--I hate her--I hate her,” she said, back of her teeth, not fiercely, as she had at first spoken, but with a dull assertiveness.

She refused several offers from kindly neighbors who would have driven her home. She could ride quite well, she said, without using her left arm.

The evening was lowering and purple towards the north-east, full of vague shadows and noises of homeward creatures. The west was aglare as with floating golden ribbons from some mighty, unseen Maypole behind the luridly dark mountains.

The slanting light touched the crests of the clods in a newly ploughed field to her left with a vivid effect, remindful of the light-capped wavelets on an evening bay. Farther on it was long, glistening stalks of fodder which caught the level gleaming from the west, as might the rifles of a regiment that has been ordered to fire lying down. The fresh green hollows of the hills were full of a palpable golden ether, like cups of emerald brimmed with the lucent amber drink of other days.

A leather-winged bat brushed against her cheek, flying heavily into some broom-straw just beyond. She saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing beyond the dark hours ahead of her, the heavy aching of her heart, and its loud monotonous beating, to which she unconsciously set words as one does to the iterant chatter of a clock.

“Yes, he loves her--yes, he loves her,” so it seemed to say, over and over, again and again. Almost she could have torn it from her breast and flung it from her, had not it been sacred to her for the love of him with which it was filled. Think of it; try to imagine it. A woman fully developed, heart and body full of the South from bright head to nimble feet, as the South is full of beauty; free as the birds that cleaved her native air with strong, untiring wings; unlearned in all emotion whether of love or of hate; not weary in sense or perception; untutored, unknowing, uncivilized--and loving for the first time in all her one-and-twenty years of living!

There was no analysis here, no picking to pieces of little emotions, no skewering of butterfly passions to sheets of paper from the book of former knowledge. No comparison between then and now--between now and what might possibly have been had the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope of existence assumed a certain difference of juxtaposition. She loved him. Why she loved him, how she loved him, she could no more have told you than she could have told the names of the different elements which composed the tears with which her hot eyes brimmed.

It was seven o’clock of that same evening. Roden, restless and feverish, flung from side to side on an old leathern sofa in the library. There were no candles, but a great fire of chestnut-wood sought and found all such points as were capable of illumination in the sombre old room--the brass claw feet of the tables and chairs, the great brass hinges of the rosewood bookcase, the glass knobs on an old writing-desk in one corner, Roden’s eyes and hair as he lay listlessly resigned for a moment or two staring into the noisy labyrinths of the flames.