Part 5

It was half an hour later. The leaping flames had settled as in sleep upon a bed of red-gold coals; a little ever-ascending spiral of gray-white smoke escaped from a cleft in the end of one of the half-burned logs. The old chimney-place was like a vivid picture set in the dark wall. Its yawning black throat, heavily clogged with soot, was tinged faintly for some way up by the glow from the lurid mass on the hearth. The great iron fire-dogs, at least four feet in height, were connected from shaft to shaft by a chain in grotesque suggestion of the Siamese twins. The much-burnt bricks had assumed opaline tones, in rosy grays and greenish-yellows, beneath the intense heat and light. On the hearth-rug the collie lay stretched, his ruffled legs every now and then executing an unavailing canter, as in his dreams perchance he chased a soaring buzzard.

They were all three asleep--the fire, the collie, Roden. A soft crooning wind, conducive to slumber, sighed at the doors and windows, vibrating every once in a while with sonorous minor cadences.

Suddenly the incessant monotone was snapped, as it were, to silence. The door leading into the library had been opened; some one entered cautiously, stood still; then the door was again closed noiselessly.

The person who had entered crept forward a pace or two. It was Virginia. She had not yet taken off her riding-habit, and the bandages were yet about her shoulder. Some dark stains here and there told where the blood had soaked through. As she came forward, nearer to the rich lambency of the fire, her white face borrowed some of its roseate flush, but the lines of pain, mental and physical, were traced as with a fine chisel about the sombre mouth and eyes. Stealing past the foot of the sofa on which Roden lay, she stood a moment looking at him. Her crossed wrists pressed each other hard against her bosom, her long fingers drawing the stuff of her habit in wrinkles with the tenseness of their grasp upon it. Her breast rose and fell, impatient, eager, behind the close prison of her arms, as some woodland thing so held might seek to be free. All at once she sank down to her knees upon the hearth-rug, lifting both hands to her bent face, and rocking herself to and fro with wild, swaying movements of her supple body. The collie raised his head with a drowsy curiosity, and let it fall heavily again upon the floor. The varying monody of the wind had begun again through the chinks in the closed door.

At last she lifted her head, letting her clasped hands fall loosely into her lap. A sudden flame showed her with an added vividness the face of Roden as he lay in tired unconsciousness upon the old lounge. She moved nearer to him, still on her knees; then again lifting her hands to her bosom, leaned forward and gazed upon him as though one should drink with the eyes. Her great braids, ruffled and half unplaited, followed the lithe curves of her back with glittering undulations, as of two mated golden serpents. So passed some moments.

Presently, as though uneasy, even in the far-off Land of Nod, beneath those moveless, hungry, beautiful eyes, the young man stirred, and muttered something in his sleep. Swift and noiseless as a cat she leaped backward into the folded shadows; but he did not wake. Once more she came forward. With a stealthy movement she drew out a little pair of scissors from the bosom of her dress; then bending over, lifted, with the touch of a butterfly upon a flower, one of Roden’s much-tossed curls. There was the sharp hiss of steel through hair, and the soft brown semicircle lay in the girl’s palm. She lifted it to her lips with the gesture of one who, half starved, suddenly finds bread within his grasp; then turning, she stole out again, even as she had entered.

V.

Roden was not able to leave the house for many days. During this time Virginia waited upon him, sang to him, brought into service her every power of amusement.

She coaxed her perverse “mammy” to teach her new darky songs by reading endless chapters in the Bible. All her spare time was spent in setting them to appropriate accompaniments. She would sit and recount absurd anecdotes to him by the hour in her slow, sweet monotone, as unsuggestive of anything humorous as can well be imagined. Sometimes she fetched her spinning-wheel and spun as she talked. He felt vexed with himself that he could not sketch her as she sat plying the dull blue thread with her nimble fingers. Her homespun dress dropped naturally into those broad, generous folds beloved of sculptors. She had a clear, placid profile, which always found shadows sufficiently willing to serve as background for its pale beauty. Her head was noble in its contours, and as graceful in its startled, listening movements as that of a stag. Roden did make several attempts to fix her upon paper, but ended always with a contemptuous exclamation and a hurried, clever drawing of a steeple-chase, or Bonnibel, or some other equally horsy subject.

One day he happened to mention that as a lad he had played tolerably well on the violin. Virginia rose at once, saying that she thought there was one in the attic.

She took a candle, and went up the little corkscrew staircase that led into the roof of the house--a dark, dusty, cavernous place, smelling of mould and old books. There were many hair-covered trunks studded with brass nails, heaps of old saddles and harness, fire-dogs, brass and iron, a disused loom.

The corners of the room were veiled in a thick and rustling obscurity, suggestive of parchment and rats. Onions and red peppers adorned the ceiling.

Virginia set down the candle on one of the moth-eaten trunks, and lifted the lid of a second.

A fine cloud of little white particles flew out into her face, as impalpable, as easy of escape, as impossible to recapture, as the contents of Pandora’s box. The girl thrust in her long brown arm, and drew out a bunch of white ostrich feathers.

They were shedding their delicate moth-nibbled filaments like snow upon her dark gown and the bare floor of the attic. She drew them caressingly through her fingers as though in pity; it seemed to her sad that things so charming should have so common a fate. She then stooped, and after a little searching drew out the violin.

She was about to shut down the lid of the trunk when something caught her eye--a bunch of cherry-colored ribbon, which burst from beneath a mass of moth-eaten gray fur, like a sudden flame from covering ashes.

She reached down and pulled it out; but lo! it was not only a knot of ribbons; something more followed--a sleeve of heavy antique silk, stiffly brocaded in red and gold flowers on a cream-hued ground. Then came more ribbons, a mass of fine lace, a scarlet petticoat. The girl put down the violin, held up this relic of the Old Dominion, and shook it out somewhat contemptuously. A little parcel fell from the musty skirt--a pair of slippers with high red heels and little red rosettes. As she looked, a sudden change came over the girl’s face, a sudden flash of resolve, a quick suffusion of bright color. She seized the little shoes, bundled them again into the dress, and drew her own homespun skirt over the whole. Then, tucking the violin under her arm and lifting the candle, she ran at a perilously hurried pace down the contorted stair-way and into her own room.

She closed and locked the door, laid the dress and violin on the bed, and still standing up, pulled and tugged at one of her heavy shoes until it came off in her hand, discovering one of her shapely feet in its blue yarn stocking. But, alas! Virginia present could not get her foot into the slipper of Virginia past. She sat down on the edge of the bed in mortified vanquishment, and turned the pretty, absurd thing about in her strong hand. Then once more she tried to put it on. She found that by squeezing her toes into the toe of the slipper she could manage to walk, as there was no restraint at the back of the foot. She then lifted and put on the dress. It would not meet by several inches about her splendid young bosom, and the waist gaped at her derisively from the little mahogany-framed mirror. She was, however, determined. She hid these defects as best she might, by snipping away bunches of the cherry-colored ribbon here and there, and pinning them in reckless profusion above the gap in the bodice. My lady of the time of George the Third must have been shorter than this damsel of the first year of President Cleveland’s administration. The stiff, flowered skirts stopped short at least three inches above her instep. Virginia had fortunately very commendable ankles, and peeping thus from the mass of mould-stained red and yellow frillings, they looked as sleek and trim as the neck of a bluebird peeping from autumnal foliage.

She tilted the little glass forward by means of one of her discarded shoes thrust behind it, and darted a shamefaced glance at her transformed self. Bravo! bravo! Miss Herrick! You are worthy of that famous name. So hath Abbey oft drawn Julia, plenteous in her shining skirts and tresses, beribboned, beautiful. Ah! what eyes! what lips! what an exquisite expression, half of self-conceit, half of timid uncertainty! What a throat for a dove to envy, supporting the face kissed brown by the sun, like an orchid whose stem is fairer than its flower! Snood up that banner of golden hair, my good Virginia; twist it about with the string of little shells you yourself gathered last summer; make yourself as lovely as possible, my little fawn, for the sacrifice. The gods have demanded it from time immemorial--a band of fair maidens every year to appease the Minotaur Despair. Good-by, Virginia; good-by; good-by. Never again will that dim green glass reflect such looks from you. Do not forget the violin. Was it not for him that you went to fetch it? Is it not for him that you have forced your strong young body into the curveless dress of 1761? Is it not all for him? And even unto the end will it not be for him?

Roden, conscious only of her presence by the unusual rustling of her skirts, looked up questioningly. When he saw her, who she was, he started to his feet, his lips parting in an expression of utter amaze. It was as though one of the bepowdered Caryston dames had stepped from her massive gilt frame in the hall without and confronted him. He could say nothing but her name, in varied tones of astonishment, inquiry, and approval.

She stood before him on her high heels as uncertain as a child learning to walk, smoothing out the much-creased folds of her gay attire with restless, nervous fingers, the stringless violin in her other hand. “I--I--I look a awful fool--don’t I?” she said, laughing not very merrily. “I--feel ’s ’f I’d sorter got roots to my feet in these shoes.” She thrust out one foot, in its incongruity of yarn stocking and Louis Quinze slipper, tilted it to one side, and regarded it in apparent absorption.

Roden was only thinking what a charming picture she made tricked out in all this red and gold of other days. She stood there before him like a beautiful present, clad in the garments of a past as beautiful. He felt a strange sensation of having stepped back into the time of Henry Esmond and the Virginians. He glanced down at his wrists, half expecting to see lace ruffles spring to adorn them, under the magic of the hour.

“You pretty child!” he said at last, “what on earth made you think of getting yourself up in this style?” But he knew that she was more than pretty. He would have liked to tell her so, only he was always very careful what he said to this little Virginian; and florid compliments, though perfectly adapted to the period of her costume, would smack of the familiar when considered under the lights of the nineteenth century.

He wondered at the radiance in her suddenly lifted face. How could he know that at last the so often asked question nearest to her heart was answered, and answered by him? He thought her pretty!

“I brought you the violin,” she said, turning away with an effort. “I reckon I’d better go ’n’ take off these things. They cert’n’y do look foolish--don’t they?”

“No, don’t,” said Roden. “You ought to humor an invalid, you know. You are so awfully nice to look at in that queer old gown.”

Dimples that he had never before seen, just born of joy, stole in and out about the corners of the girl’s red lips. She was more even than beautiful; she was enchanting. How ever had she come by all those old-time airs and movements? Had she perchance imbibed the spirit of the past with the air of the old house where she had always lived? Did some of those old _grandes dames_ lean from the walls at night to teach her that subtle, upward carriage of the head?

He forgot all about the violin, and stood looking at her in wondering absorption.

“I--I’ve got a new song for you,” she said, presently, in a low voice. She seated herself sidewise at the piano, as though diffident of the furbelows that composed the back of her novel attire, striking at the same time noiseless chords with her left hand.

“You said you liked Scotch songs. I found this one in a old book that b’longed to my mother. She was Scotch. Mus’ I sing it?”

“Please do,” said Roden.

Thus encouraged, she sang to him in the following words:

“I hae a curl, a bricht brown curl, A bonny, bonny curl o’ hair, An’ close to my heart it nestles warm, But its brithers dinna ken it’s there.

“I stole my curl, my silk-saft curl, My bonny, bonny curl o’ hair, An’ a’ the nicht it sleeps upon my heart, But its master doesna ken it’s there.

“O bricht, bricht curl! O luvely, luvely curl! O curl o’ my bonny, bonny dear! I wad that again ye waur shinin’ on his head, But I wad that his head waur here!”

Now although Roden had often before heard her sing, he was conscious of a sound in her voice to-night which was utterly new to him--a sound so marvellous, so altogether exquisite, so melting sweet, that he was almost afraid the beating of his heart would prevent some of its beauty from reaching him. There was in it a divine fulness which he had never before heard in a human voice. It was like the sea on summer nights. It was like the distant wind in many leaves. It was like the eternal complaint of the voices of the fields on April noons. It filled him with a sense of peace and unrest at the same time. It thrilled him and possessed him utterly. Blind that he was, however, no faintest inkling of what had produced this divine result came to his mind. He was touched, but touched only as he would have been by any other voice as perfect.

“My dear little girl,” he said, bending over and kissing her smooth brow with one of his rash impulses, “we must see what can be done with that voice. I am thinking that you will add to the honor of your name some day, Miss Herrick.”

She started to her feet. It was as though her very heart’s blood had risen to meet his lips. A delicate, vivid rose-color dyed all her brow and temples. “How do you mean?--how do you mean?” she said, in a rough, shaken whisper, holding both hands against her heart as though afraid it would leap from her body.

“Never mind what I mean just now,” he said, with the smile of a wiseacre; “and, Virginia, since you have sung that song so charmingly, I am sure that you will be glad for me about something which I am going to tell you.”

Glad? Was she not always glad for anything which gave him joy? Had she not read her eyes almost sightless, night after night, in mastering that strange horse lore which would enable her to help him in his enterprises? She came nearer, in bright expectancy; lifted her face to meet his looks and words.

“Yes,” she said; “please tell me. I know I’ll be glad--I cert’n’y will.”

“I am engaged to be married,” he told her. “I am engaged to be married to Miss Mary Erroll, and--I want you to be the first to congratulate me, Virginia.”

He could recall nothing afterwards but the swift withdrawing of her hands from his. He could not even remember how she had left the room. She seemed to vanish as though in reality she had been but a wraith summoned up by fancy from days long fled.

But Virginia? Ah, Virginia! Out, out, out into the night she sped on supple, unshod feet. She had torn off those queer little parodies of shoes at the hall door, and held them now mechanically to her breast as she ran.

The air, redolent with peach-blossoms and hyacinths just born, rushed to meet her from the dark jaws of the east, as though some leviathan should breathe with a sweet breath upon the night May earth. There was no moon in the lustrous blue-gray of the heavens, but the stars seemed trying to atone for her absence by their multitudinous shining.

As Virginia dashed on past a clump of box-bushes, her skirts brushing the stiff leaves set them rattling, and woke the nested birds to querulous complaints. Her feet were wet with the night grasses, and bruised with the pebbles of the carriage-drive. She reached the lawn gate, opened it, and rushed through. On, on, across a field of grass, close-cropped by the not fastidious sheep, who, warmly folded on a neighboring hill-side, still nibbled drowsily between their slumbers such luscious blades as were within their reach.

She came at last to a little enclosure set about with evergreens and almost knee-deep in withered grass. Her eyes, grown accustomed to the wan light, could make out two little hillocks, as it were, formed within by heaped-up earth, and clasped by the tangled herbage. Underneath their sometime verdant rises slept the first twain who in Virginia bore the name of Caryston. Side by side, so had they lain, in death together as in life they had been. Virginia knew well this their self-chosen resting-place. Here on summer afternoons would she come to knit. Here she always brought the first spring flowers, and here she had always placed boughs of white and purple lilacs every day while they lasted. She had dreamed and wondered and enjoyed here, and here she came to suffer, as from some subtle instinct a man turns to his childhood’s home to die.

Just outside the wicket gate the daffodils were all in plenteous blossom, as though day, for once relenting, had dropped an armful of gold into the lap of night. On a locust-tree near by a mocking-bird trilled and warbled. She cast herself face down upon one of the graves, clasping it about with her bare arms, as one clasps a proven friend in time of trouble. She had spoken no word as yet. She suffered as keenly, as dumbly, as any creature, wild or tame, to whom there is no soul. But all at once a cry broke from her, then over and over again, “O my God! O my God! O my God!”

The sobbing piteousness of this desolate prayer as it tore its way from the depths of her wild heart--who shall write of it? Not I--not I--even if I could. She was a savage; she suffered like a savage. Will any say there was no justice in it? It is something, is it not, to be capable of passion such as that? She suffered beyond most people, men and women, it is true; but was she not in that much blessed above them?

She lay there until the dawn looked whitely above the eastern hills upon the waking earth. In her quaint old dress one might have thought her the tortured ghost of the woman who had so long slept in peace below the grass-hidden mound. She staggered, when at last she rose to her feet, and fell for a moment upon her knees. There was a sense of vagueness that possessed her. She did not seem to care now, somehow. She wondered if they would be married at the little church in the neighborhood, and if they would let her come. She thought _he_ would. She thought that she would not mind much seeing it. Of course they would live here. She would see them together every day. Well, what of that? She was surprised in a dull way that it did not affect her more. Then she remembered that she had not made any bread for him, such as he liked, the night before. Well, it was a pity; but it was too late; it wouldn’t have time to rise now. She must think of something else. Morning came on apace, clad all in translucent beryl-colored robes, and brow-bound with gold and with scarlet.

The birds were waking and chattering, as women chatter over their morning toilets. Some more hyacinths had bloomed in the night, and there was a great clump of iris, that she had not noticed the day before, on the hill-top. A cardinal-bird, sweeping downward like a flame fallen from some celestial fire, made his morning bath in the hollow of a tulip-tree leaf--a relic of vanished winter filled by kindly spring with fragrant rain.

As she neared the lawn gate she saw some one leaning over it. A swart, red-kerchiefed figure, clad in a dress whose stripes of blue and white circled her large body as its hoops a barrel. It was Aunt Tishy. She pushed upon the gate, jamming her stout proportions uncomfortably in her haste to reach the girl.

“Gord! Miss Faginia, whar _is_ you ben? An’ gret day in de mawnin! what dat you got on, anyhow? Gord! Gord! ef de chile ain’ jes ez wet ’s ’f she’d ben caught in de Red Sea wid Phario. Honey, whar _is_ you ben, in the name o’ Gord? Tell yo’ mammy. Is you been see a harnt? What de matter wid my baby? Gord! Gord! dem eyes sutney _is_ ben look on suppn dradeful. Po’ lamb! po’ lamb! Look at dem little foots, an’ de stockin’s all war offen ’em same as de rats dun neaw ’em. Ain’ yo’ gwine tell yo’ mammy, my lady-bug? Come ’long so. Mammy kin ’mos’ kyar yo’ ter de house.”

Virginia submitted listlessly to the old black’s blandishments. She was not sorry to have Aunt Tishy’s massive arm about her. Her feet ached and smarted; there was a sharp pain in her side when she drew her breath, and that dreadful feeling of being a thing just born, a creature who had no past, still held her in its numbing grasp.

Aunt Tishy took her into the big kitchen--an out-house consisting of one room, and a fireplace in which one might have roasted a whole ox. It was lined on two sides with great smoke-darkened pine presses. The other walls and the ceiling had once been white, but were now stained the color of a half-seasoned meerschaum pipe. The two windows had casements with diamond-shaped panes of dingy glass set in lead. Enormous deal tables stood here and there. From the surrounding gloom came the glimmer of brightly polished tin, as brilliant in its effect as the glint of a negro’s teeth from the dusk of his face.

Aunt Tishy, having seated her nursling in an old wooden rocking-chair, dragged a basket of chips and shavings from the capacious ingle-nook, and set about making the fire. She first scooped away the yet warm ashes of yesterday with her shapely yellow-palmed hands. Negroes generally have well-formed hands and remarkably pretty finger-nails. Then she began laying a little foundation of shavings and lightwood splinters; here and there she stuck a broad locust-chip. When these preparations were all completed she went out to “fotch a light,” she said, assuring Virginia of her speedy return.

In a few moments she was back, carrying a handful of live coals in her naked palm, having first sprinkled a few ashes over it for protection. With these she kindled the fire, which soon made a busy clamor in the hollow throat of the old chimney.

Once more she disappeared, returning with a bundle of things in her arms: a big shawl, Virginia’s shoes and stockings, and her homespun dress.