Part 13

"Are you acquainted with Margaret Conway?"

"Why, of course you know--"

"I know nothing. I'm trying to find out. Answer the question. Are you acquainted with Margaret Conway?"

"Yes. I've known her ever since she was born."

"Is she the sort of woman who would or could do what she appears to have done in this case? Is it conceivable that she has left you in a crisis like that which you have gone through, without a word of reply to letters received from you? Is it probable? Is it even possible? Is it thinkable?"

"Apparently--"

"Oh, hang 'apparently.' Apparently the sun circles round the earth, but we know better. Apparently the moon is made of green cheese, but it isn't. Apparently you are a crass idiot, but in the ultimate analysis you are nothing of the kind. Now answer my question: Is it probable or even conceivably possible that under the circumstances of your trouble in Richmond, Margaret Conway, pledged as she was to be your wife, and possessed as she is of an exalted conception of womanly truth and honor, and saturated as she is with the courage of a proud race, the courage that does duty and dares consequences--is it conceivably possible that she has under such circumstances sat still and left unanswered letters received from you in your travail?"

"It seems unaccountable--" began Boyd, and his companion interrupted him:

"Nobody has asked you to account for that which could not have happened. I am asking you to search your own soul and say whether or not this thing can be true. If anybody should tell me that Boyd Westover had set up a counterfeiting plant in one of his barns and was busily 'shoving the queer,' would you expect me to go bothering about how such a thing could have come about? Would you not expect rather that I should give the story the lie without further ado? This is a like case. If you know Margaret Conway, you know she has not been guilty of this stupendous wrong. You have no right to go on acting as if she had been."

"You are right of course," Boyd replied, "so far at least as the principle is concerned. But how do you account for the facts?"

"It isn't my business to account for the facts. I know and you know that under the circumstances which arose in this case, Margaret Conway _did not leave unanswered any letter she received from you_. Either she did not receive your letters, or you did not receive her replies, or, more probably, both things happened."

"But how could that be? I--"

"I don't know. I'm not the proper person to ask. I'm going up to bed now, if you don't mind. I've said all I had in mind to say."

The conversation in the other porch was not like this, and yet in its way it was not unlike it.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself at the Magisters' to-day, Millicent," said Margaret as the two seated themselves in the porch. "I'm sorry I couldn't be with you, but you see old Judy was very low, and I really had to stay with her."

"Of course. Only it's all an astonishment to me--I mean the way in which you look after negroes who are ill."

"Why, of course we must do that--"

"Yes, I understand now, but I didn't. I thought you treated them as so many cattle. Of course I knew you looked after your own maids and other personal serving women, but I thought field negroes--"

"I know, dear. The whole system, is bad and I wish we were rid of it. But people up North always imagine that its worst possibilities are the daily facts, and we naturally resent that. We aren't angels by any means, but at least we are human beings. Never mind that now. Tell me about the dinner and the company."

"Well, I didn't see much of the company. The Judge and Mr. Towns, and the Judge's wife and the Commonwealth's Attorney talked hotly about law things that I didn't at all understand, so I talked mainly with Mr. Boyd Westover. Margaret, I'd like to spend my whole life listening to him talk. You see he's so big and strong, and yet so gentle and chivalric. He makes you feel that you ought to think yourself worth while, because he respects you so, and is so deferential to you. Why, even my poor little thinkings seemed to me of some account because of the way in which he listened to me and treated my utterances. I tell you, Margaret, he is the most perfect type of the gentleman I ever saw or dreamed of."

The night was starlit, but there was no moon as yet, for it was far past the full, and the porch was dark. Margaret Conway was grateful for the shadow. It hid her countenance and prevented self-revelation of a kind that must have filled her soul with humiliation and shame. It gave her time in which to recover her self-control. Presently she forced herself to say:

"Mr. Westover is certainly a good example of our best type of gentleman. You'll like him more as you become better acquainted with him, and fortunately you'll meet him again almost immediately. He's sure to be at the dance at Dr. Carver's over at Fighting Creek."

"Yes, he's to speak over there. Oh, Margaret, I wonder if I might hear his speech? Do they let women attend? You see he is so big and brave and manly and _so_ handsome. He's sure to make a speech worth listening to. Do you think I might get a chance to hear it?"

"Yes, dear, certainly," responded Margaret in a voice that in spite of her had something of hardness in it. "I will arrange that. You'll sit in a carriage on the outskirts of the crowd, and you can hear every word, unless--"

"Unless what, Margaret?"

"Oh, I was only thinking out loud. You see your carriage will be surrounded by half a dozen young men, all in love with you, all madly jealous, and all eager to win and hold your attention. If you can suppress them, you'll hear the whole speech."

"Tell me, Margaret, have you known him a long time?"

"Yes, all my life."

"I see," she answered. What she had in her mind was that the intimacy between these two was perhaps too close and too familiar to permit a softer feeling to grow up between them. "Otherwise," she reflected, "they would have been lovers of course. How could either of them help that?"

But she gave no utterance to the thought. She only subconsciously rejoiced that matters were as she supposed them to be.

"I don't think I can be with you over at Fighting Creek, Millicent," said Margaret after she had mastered herself and formed a plan.

"But why not? I shall not go if you can't," answered the girl with emphasis.

"Oh, yes, you will. I wish you to be there. You'll meet everybody in this whole region who is worth meeting. I wouldn't have you miss that on any account. Besides, I should get up a very unlovely reputation for selfishness, if I suffered you to miss such a festivity merely because I can't enjoy it with you."

"But why can't you, Margaret?"

"There are several reasons. For one thing my father is laid up with an attack of the gout, you know. That's why he turned back after he had started to Court to-day. He doesn't seem to be suffering much, but gout is treacherous, and I must be within call of him. Then again there are two or three cases of fever at the far quarters."

Then, as if fearing to have the sufficiency of her excuses too closely questioned, she hurriedly added:

"I've planned it all beautifully, Millicent. I'll send you over to Fighting Creek in The Oaks carriage. My maid shall go with you as escort, and I'll send for Carter Barksdale to go on horseback as your gallant outrider. You see Carter is only seventeen years of age, and he reads Byron and Shelley and Scott till he's saturated with romance. He's perfectly charming, and you'll enjoy his escort all the more because he's just old enough to fall madly in love with you at first sight, and just young enough to be afraid to tell you so. He's a Virginia type that I want you to meet. That sort of boy is at his best when he's seventeen and takes himself so seriously that he shrinks from the open declaration of the fancies he mistakes for passions. He will revel in a silent, unspoken, unrequited love for one as far removed from his approach as the northern star, 'of whose true, fixed, and resting quality' he will quote, 'there is no fellow in the firmament.' Of course, after he has thoroughly enjoyed the unspeakable wretchedness of a blighted passion, he will fall in love with the next young woman several years older than himself who comes in his way, and have the romance all over again."

"Margaret," said Millicent seriously and tenderly, "you are not happy to-night. You are cynical. Something has disturbed you. Don't you feel that you can tell me what it is and let me share your sorrow as freely as you let me share your more joyful moods?"

Margaret Conway was too inherently truthful to protest that she had no cause of unhappiness when she had. But, with an instinctive flinching from self-revelation, which every sensitive soul experiences at such a time, she carefully framed her speech for purposes of avoidance.

"I don't think I'm cynical, Millicent. I don't feel so. I meant only to be amusing in talking of something that always amuses me. It has always seemed to me funny that young men should be so desperately afraid of us young women even when we are trembling in holy awe of them. I've seen so much of that sort of thing. Sometimes it becomes tragical and spoils lives that do not deserve to be spoiled. I knew one case in which it was saved from doing that only by the impertinent interference of a very peculiar young woman."

"Oh, it's a story," exclaimed Millicent, "and a love story at that. Tell it please."

"It isn't much of a story, but I'll tell it. I had a governess whom I loved dearly and with reason. She taught me all I know, and--"

"She must have been a woman of wonderful acquirements then."

"She was and is, but such culture as I possess is not an adequate indication of her learning or of her capacity to teach. I owe her all I ever learned; I owe to my own indifference all the defects in my education."

There was something in Margaret's tone as she said this, that attracted Millicent's attention.

"She is certainly cynical, self-accusative, unsatisfied," she reflected. "She isn't happy, and it behooves you, Millicent Danvers, to find out the cause and remedy the condition if you can."

Without uttering that thought, she said:

"You aren't telling me the love story, Margaret, and I'm eager to hear that before I let Carter Barksdale fall in love with me. You see I'm young and wholly inexperienced, and I naturally want to learn how such things are conducted."

Margaret laughed lowly, as she thought: "A girl like you doesn't need lessons in the conduct of love affairs. To such as you, love,--like 'to write and read, comes by nature.'"

Then she resumed her story:

"Apart from her learning, Miss Jane was an altogether admirable woman, and very naturally our neighbor, Mr. Skipwith, fell in love with her. He came over here to see her every day for more than a year. He sent her flowers from his garden, and when the frosts put an end to that he built a green house, in order that he might keep on sending her flowers. But somehow he never could get up courage enough to ask for her hand, until one day Harriet Middleton brought about a crisis. Harriet was an English girl of peculiarly good family whose father had migrated to Virginia in search of health. Harriet was almost an old maid, though not quite. She was blunt and aggressive in manner, though as gentle and good as anybody could be when you came really to know her. She was quick and shrewd of observation, and it did not take her long to find out how matters stood between Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane. But the days and weeks went on and still there were no results. One evening when the moon shone dreamily through a soft haze, Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane sat here in the porch, while Harriet and I walked away through the orchard, by way of leaving them alone, and picking up some good apples. When we returned, the pair were sitting precisely as we had left them, at a respectful distance from each other, and both their attitude and their manner bore convincing witness that even the hazy moonlight had failed to bring about a crisis.

"Harriet's patience gave way. She stalked into the porch, with that horse-like tread that Englishwomen use for a walk, and, taking her stand between the two, said:

"'You two people love each other. You want to tell each other about it but you don't dare; so I'm telling you instead. Now that I've introduced the subject, perhaps you'll talk it out.'

"With that she passed on into the house, and a few weeks later Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane were married."

"And have they lived happily ever afterwards?"

"Indeed they have. They are well to do and very hospitable, and a pleasanter place to visit than the Skipwith plantation doesn't exist in Virginia."

"And Miss Middleton?"

"She's enjoying herself, bossing an insane asylum. She's only a patient there, but she believes she's the superintendent, and they let her give all the orders she thinks fit. Matilda," addressing a maid who at that moment appeared with some lemonade, "send for the carriage please, and send word that I want old Michael to drive me. Johnny is apt to go to sleep."

"But where on earth are you going to drive at eleven o'clock at night?" asked Millicent in wonder.

"Why, you know I have some fever patients out at the far quarters."

She was at pains not to say that she was going to visit them, though she half intended to do so. Her desire--imperative and passionate--was to separate herself from human companionship and think out the problems that beset her soul.

"But mayn't I go with you?"

"No, no, no. You might get the fever, and besides, you must get your beauty sleep. After you are married to--to some Virginia gentleman, and become the mistress of a plantation, you will of course look after your sick servants. Just now it is your duty to go to bed. There's an old novel 'Dunallan' on the dressing case in my room. Go in there and get it. It's the very sleepiest thing I ever saw in my life. Read half a dozen pages of it and you'll be sound asleep. Good night. I won't speak to you when I come back, lest I disturb your slumbers. Oh, by the way, tell Diana to put three candles on my candle stand and place it close to my bed. And tell her please to go to bed as soon as she gets things ready in our rooms. I shall not want her to-night, and she has had a hard day."

As she finished speaking the carriage drove up, with the white-haired old coachman Michael on the box. He had long ago ceased to have active duties of any kind to do, but when his "young missus" asked for him to drive her anywhere, at any time and under any circumstances, the loyal old servitor was ready and eager in response. He had driven Margaret's mother on her wedding journey to the mountain resorts. He had driven Margaret herself to her christening. He had grown old but never lax in the service, and now in his old age, when he was excused from all service, it was his chief joy to drive his "young missus" whenever she honored him by asking that he should do so.

On this occasion he saw clearly enough that Margaret was distraught, and when she entered the carriage he forbore to distress her with questions. He simply picked out the best roads and followed them. After awhile she spoke to him.

"I reckon you'd better drive to the far quarters, Uncle Michael. I ought to see the sick ones."

"Dey ain't sick, Miss Margaret. Leastways dey ain't sick enough for you to go botherin' 'bout 'em. Dey's jes' a sufferin' dere own calamities. Dey stole a shoat night before last an' gorged on it all night. 'Course dey had a fever yestiddy an' to-day. Don't you go a botherin' 'bout dem no 'count niggas, Miss Margaret. Jes' you let ole Michael pick out de roads fer you and drive you 'bout, comfortable like."

With this reassuring release from obligation, the girl sank back among the cushions as the late rising, gibbous moon came up from the horizon, and abandoned herself to thought.

She was a woman, young, strong, passionate; she cherished still that dream of love which had so recently inspired and illumined her life. She could not understand why or how it had been snatched away by circumstance. It was hard for her to believe that all she had hoped for and held dear had been banished from her life by a final, arbitrary, inexplicable decree of fate.

"And yet," she reflected, "it is so. Between Boyd and me there is a great gulf fixed, and nothing can furnish a bridge across it."

Then another thought occurred to her.

"Suppose I should write to Boyd and ask him for an explanation?

"No, I could not do that without sacrificing that pride of womanhood without which a woman is nothing and worse than nothing. No, that can never be. I wonder why he does not himself offer an explanation and seek a restoration of old relations? No, that can never be. It would involve such a sacrifice of manhood as is inconceivable. There is never any explanation possible, never any solution to this riddle, never anything."

She sat still for awhile, not thinking at all. Suddenly she reflected:

"After all it is his happiness that I care for. My own is of no consequence. He is a man, and it will be easy for him to transfer his affections. Men are not like women in that way. Millicent will make a fitter wife for him than I ever could. He will be happy with her, and as for me--well, it doesn't matter. I have my duties and my occupations. The rest is of no consequence. He shall love Millicent and marry her, and may be, when I'm an old, old woman, he and I will come to understand each other again, at least so far that neither shall accuse the other of treachery."

With a mind attuned to the great renunciation, she called to Michael and bade him drive back to The Oaks.

XXVI

MOONLIGHT RESOLUTIONS

Millicent Danvers was a frank, open-minded young woman, almost childlike in her simplicity of soul in every case where candor was met with equal candor. But her childlikeness included a child's subtle instinct as to the moods and motives of others, and where affection prompted her scrutiny she was not often at fault in her judgments of human conduct.

When Margaret, refusing her company, drove away that night Millicent knew perfectly that her friend's spirit was disturbed in some unusual way, for until then these two had been comrades in every such expedition, and Margaret had been the one most insistent that they should be so.

"I want you to see every phase of our Virginia life," she had many times said, "so that when you go back to Boston you may know what there is in it to approve, what to admire, what to condemn, and what merely to laugh at. For I'm sure there is much in it that must strike Northern people as ludicrous. Anyhow I want you to see it all and understand all of it. Then I'm not afraid to trust our life and our ways and our impulses to your hands for explanation and exposition to people who are ignorant of them or know them only by prejudiced hearsay."

The events of this day, and especially Margaret's own conduct had been so different from all this as to awaken curiosity and compel attention. Both the curiosity and the attention had a deep and sincere affection for their prompting.

When Margaret drove away and the late rising, gibbous moon appeared above the tree tops and shone softly through the windows of Millicent's southeast room, the girl sat down there by a casement to wonder, to conjecture, to "guess," and, better still, to "think this thing out to the end."

"There is something wrong with Margaret," was her first thought. "She is disturbed and distressed, and she isn't the kind of person to be disturbed and distressed without adequate reason. Why didn't she go over to the Court House with me this morning and dine at the Magisters'? She intended to do so. She and I had planned it all out, and she had accepted Mrs. Magister's invitation. It was only at the last moment that she decided to stay and nurse her father's purely mythical gout. It was only five minutes before that that a note had come from Mrs. Magister, saying that Mr. Boyd Westover had come down out of the mountains and that she should 'compel' him to be one of her dinner guests. I wonder if that news brought on the attack of gout, and decided Margaret to stay at the Oaks and nurse it?

"Then again it is clear that Margaret does not expect Mr. Westover to visit her in the near future. I wonder why? His plantation adjoins this, and everybody says the two families have been intimate for generations. There must be some special reason. In fact there is. Somebody told me to-day that Colonel Conway had refused to join in the nomination of Mr. Westover, and that the fact is injuring Mr. Westover's canvass. I wonder what it means? Naturally Mr. Westover and Margaret should be sweethearts, and after a while they should marry each other. I wonder why things haven't gone that way? May be they have been too intimate in their childhood. No, that isn't the solution. It doesn't explain Margaret's care to avoid Mr. Westover. It doesn't explain her plan to send me to Fighting Creek without her. It doesn't explain her drive to-night. It doesn't explain anything. If they were mere intimates, too intimate to think of love, Mr. Westover would be a frequent guest at The Oaks and the relations of the two would be comradely."

She paused for a while in the formulation of her thinking into orderly phrases. Then she reflected:

"When I mentioned Margaret to him at dinner to-day he distinctly winced. Every time I have mentioned him to her to-night, she has turned the conversation to other subjects."

There was another long pause in the formulation of her thought. At last her common sense asserted itself and she said to herself:

"Millicent Danvers, you are treading upon dangerous ground, and you must get off it as quickly as possible. There has been a love affair between Margaret and Westover. You can't shut your eyes to that fact or pretend not to see it. Some break has come, but such breaks may be repaired, and it is your function to repair this one."

A wave of melancholy swept over her soul as she thought of this. She mightily admired Boyd Westover, and she had even dreamed a little dream with regard to him. She was a proud maiden in her way and as she searched her heart there in the moonlight, she decided that she had not suffered herself to fall in love with Westover.

"How could I?" she challenged herself to answer. "I have met him but once. The thing is absurd. Besides, no self-respecting young woman gives her love to any man until he asks for it. No, of course I'm not in love with Mr. Westover. It is nothing but admiration that I feel for him."

Then, as she looked out into the tree-studded house grounds, where all nature seemed to sleep in the soft haze of the moonlight, she added to her thought:

"But it would be easy for such a man to change a woman's admiration into love by a phrase, a word, a look into her eyes. Thank God he has not yet looked into my eyes in that way, and, God being my helper, he never shall. After all,--well, after all there are only a few men in the world that--well, anyhow, it isn't so terrible a thing to be an old maid, and I'll do my duty in this case if the stars start from their courses, as a consequence." Then she laughed under her breath, and jeered in mocking fashion at the absurdity of her thought:

"Of course the stars will do nothing of the kind. That was a bit of heroics, and I'm not a heroine of romance. I'm only a simple, honest, Boston girl. I love Margaret dearly, and I'm resolved to do all I can to bring about a reconciliation between her and Mr. Westover, for I'm satisfied there is need for something of the sort. That's sane and sensible at any rate, and the stars have nothing to do with it."