Part 12

"From Boston?" he reflected. "I suppose she'll have gold-rimmed spectacles and talk philosophy. I never met a Boston girl, so this will be a new experience. After all, I suppose women are very much alike, no matter where they come from. Doubtless this one has pulses, just as other girls have, and perhaps I shall be able to put my finger on them. At any rate it will interest me to try. My opportunities promise to be good. Major Magister and the Judge and Jack Towns and the Commonwealth's Attorney are sure to fall foul of each other over abstruse law points that the rest of us know nothing about, and that will leave mine hostess and the Boston maid to me."

It was in this mood of pleasurable but by no means enthusiastic anticipation that Westover entered the home of his host, half an hour after the jury had returned a verdict of "not guilty," in the case of Jack Towns's client--a verdict that was based rather upon the absence of evidence that Jack Towns had succeeded in excluding than upon the evidence actually presented at the trial.

XXIV

A PERFECT WOMAN--AND A MAN

When his hostess presented him to Millicent Danvers, Westover could scarcely believe that this was the young woman he had been invited to meet. He had constructed a portrait of her in his imagination and she did not satisfy any of the details of the picture. He had expected to find her tall, bony, Roman-nosed, and sallow. She was instead of moderate height, plump, with delicately moulded Grecian features, and a complexion of pink and white that had no suggestion of sallowness in it. He had expected spectacles; instead he found a pair of gray-blue eyes that looked into his own with candor and fearless trustfulness, like those of a child of four or five years of age, and yet with the confidence and courage that come only of good breeding allied to perfect innocence. He had prepared himself to meet an aggressive, self assertive manner; instead he found all the shyness of young girlhood, all the modesty of maiden inexperience, allied with a frank, self-respecting truthfulness that was fearless because of its confidence of right intent.

They talked, of course, about the young woman's impressions of Virginia.

"It is lovely," she said. "You know it is all a surprise, an astonishment to me."

"How so? Would you mind explaining that?"

"I cannot exactly explain it. You see it's like a pleasant dream. You know it made you happy while you were dreaming it, and you know it makes you happy after you're awake, but you can't tell just what it was you dreamed or just why it made you happy. It is so elusive that you can't grasp it and put it into words. I'm still dreaming Virginia, and I know I shall never be able to tell anybody why the dream is so delicious. I try to think it out sometimes, but I can't. Whenever I make up my mind that it is because of this thing or that, I say 'No, that isn't it.' I suppose it's a thousand little things put together. But tell me about this election of yours. I'm talking too much about myself and my thoughts."

"No, you are not. The election doesn't interest me, and what you've been saying does. Go on, please. You had more in your mind."

"How can you know that?" she asked in genuine surprise.

"Because you spoke of 'a thousand little things.' I wish you would tell me about a dozen of them, or even half a dozen."

With a world of childlike seriousness in her wide open eyes the girl responded:

"I suppose I ought not to have said a thousand. That was an exaggeration, and exaggeration is as bad as any other kind of fibbing, isn't it?"

"In some cases, yes--in some, no. Certainly it was not so in this case. Your phrase carried to my mind precisely the thought you had in your own, and so it was perfectly truthful."

"I'm glad you think so. I try always to tell the truth."

"So I should imagine. Now will you not go on and tell me some of the things that please you in our Virginia life? Is it so different from your life up North? You see I have never been North."

"Oh, yes, so different! I think most of us up North are good people, just as I suppose most people are everywhere. But there's a difference--a something, I don't know just what. Yes, I do, too, in part at least, though I'm not sure I can put it into words. We live within ourselves, and you don't. We love our friends and are kind to them, but we aren't close to them, as people down here are. It is because we are shy, I suppose. Our attitude toward money values is different. I don't know that our people care more about money than you do, but--well, we take it into account as you do not. But that isn't what I mean. There is a certain graciousness in your ways of living, a warmth, a color--I don't know what to call it--that fascinates me. We are scrupulously polite to each other; you are cordially courteous instead. I suppose that too is because we are shyer than you are. We shrink from self revelation as you do not. I think we are really as warm-hearted as you Virginians are, but we are more reserved."

"You are doubtless right. I've observed that temperamental peculiarity in the Northern men I've met. At the University there was a young man from Boston who became my chum under rather peculiar circumstances, and I studied him closely. Because of a certain delicacy of constitution which rendered your Boston winters dangerous to his health, he was sent to the University of Virginia instead of Harvard. He didn't know our ways, and as a 'Yankee'--you know how unjustly that word has come to have evil significance with us--he was a good deal shunned, and things were said, and--well, it so came about that he and I became chums and occupied a room together on the lawn."

"Yes, I know," she answered dreamily, as if recalling a story. "But you are suppressing the truth, Mr. Westover."

In an astonishment that well nigh made him spring from his chair, he asked:

"How do you know that?"

"Our hostess is rising," she replied with a calm dignity that was fascinating to the young man. "We ladies must leave you gentlemen to your wine and cigars."

"I do not take wine," he replied, "and as for cigars I shall gladly give them up in favor of a further conversation with you. If you permit, I will quit the table with you."

"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."