Part 15

"I am doing no supposing. It may be anything or nothing. We Virginians--all but Jack Towns and me--are so emotional, so sentimental, so chivalric if you prefer the term, that I long ago ceased my efforts to make a diagnosis of things of that sort. I only know that the Colonel is wrought up to a pitch that requires the remedy of going to bed, and that everybody else at The Oaks is correspondingly wrought up. Everybody except that thoroughly admirable Boston girl, Miss Danvers. She has a head, and she keeps it poised above her shoulders. If I hadn't an entirely satisfactory wife of my own in prospect, though not yet in possession, I should be strongly tempted to persuade that girl to stay south of Mason and Dixon's line. As it is, I really think some other fellow ought to do that as a service to Virginia society. Miss Danvers is a true blue, a thoroughbred. She has character, manners, breeding, beauty, simplicity, honesty, sincerity, loyalty, good sense, and all the other qualities that go to make a woman admirable. She is the only person who knows what the ruction over at The Oaks was, and she's the only one there capable of handling the situation sanely. She seems to have everybody there well in hand, and to be controlling all of them wisely. She has a persuasive gift that astonished me when she actually got Colonel Conway to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon, and induced Margaret to do the same thing as a precaution against a nervous breakdown that was clearly threatened. I had ordered both those goings to bed, with all the authority of a medical adviser, but to no purpose. When I spoke to that Boston girl about it, she answered gently but confidently: 'If you think that advisable, Doctor, I will see that it is done,' and by Jove she did the trick so promptly that before I left I saw them both in bed, and gave each of them a sleeping potion that will keep them quiet for many hours to come."

Under ordinary circumstances, Jack Towns would have declared his purpose to go over to The Oaks at once and make love to the Boston girl. For some reason, on this occasion, he shrank from all jesting. He had talked for an hour with Millicent Danvers on the evening before. He wanted now to talk with her for another hour, but, contrary to his custom, he said nothing of his purpose. He went to dinner with the other two, and after the dinner was done he slipped away to the stables, mounted the superb mare that was now his, and rode away to The Oaks.

XXIX

THE WORK OF A WILD WIND

This is the story of what the wind-storm did at The Oaks, to disturb the usual placidity of life there.

It was Aunt Betsy's custom, as it was that of many or most other women in Virginia, to write a multitude of "notes" each day, some of them filling six or eight sheets of paper, with criss-crossings to make them seem undecipherably interesting, and to despatch them by young negroes on bare-backed horses to their more or less neighborly destination. A statistical economist once made a careful reckoning by which he convinced himself that this practice cost the planter families of Virginia about seven and one-half times the amount they contributed in stamps to the postal revenues of the nation.

It was the practice of the young women of the plantations to write all these letters before breakfast. It was Aunt Betsy's more leisurely practice to write them whenever she pleased, and she usually pleased to write them between ten o'clock in the morning and the one o'clock hour that was sacred to the luncheon known in Virginia as "snack."

On the morning of the happening at The Oaks, the day being sufficiently warm, Aunt Betsy brought out her desk--an oblong box which when opened offered a slanting writing surface, with spaces below its lids for letter paper, envelopes, and papers of every kind. Women usually laid these so-called "desks" upon their laps and managed somehow to write there, as no man ever could have done. But it was Aunt Betsy's habit also to retire into the house now and then upon occasions of real or imagined necessity, and in anticipation of such interruptions she always had a slender-legged stand at hand--a thing "drunkenly artistic," as Boyd Westover had once said--upon which to place her desk whenever she was minded to suspend her writing for a while.

On the morning in question she had a gown in course of construction by her seamstresses, who were working in the back porch with a room opening off it which her modesty used for purposes of "fitting" and "trying on."

She had therefore frequent occasion to suspend her writing.

It was during one of her most exigent fits of trying on that the squall struck the place. As a good deal of thunder and lightning accompanied the weather disturbance, and as Aunt Betsy was possessed of that sort of cowardice concerning thunder and lightning which persons so afflicted call "nervousness," she promptly shut herself up in a dark closet and remained there until the squall had passed away.

But with the first onset of the wind the frail table on which she had left her open desk toppled over; the desk was whirled out into the grounds and dashed against a tree with a force that instantly reduced it to splinters, while its contents--correspondence and curl papers alike--were scattered, if not to the four winds, at least to the one wind which was blowing with demoniacal fury.

Margaret and Millicent who had just returned from a morning stroll rushed frantically, picturesquely and, in an unconscious way, gracefully, to the rescue. The desk was in fragments and far past praying for; but by a deal of scurrying the two girls and some of the house servants managed to collect the scattered papers and place them upon a table within, while Aunt Betsy was still ensconced in her dark closet, waiting for the last rumble of the thunder to cease. As Millicent deposited her share of the spoils upon the table, she looked at Margaret with frightened eyes and said:

"Please send everybody out of the room but you and me."

For Millicent had not yet accustomed herself to talk freely in the presence of servants as if they were deaf, dumb, and blind, incapable of understanding what might be said in their presence and therefore incapable of repeating it. That habit of the Virginians had its origin probably in two facts: they never said anything that they were afraid to stand by; and the negro was not, in law or in fact, permitted to testify against a white person. In the courts his testimony was barred by statute; in social life it was even more absolutely barred by convention. No negro ventured to report anything he had heard white people say, and if he had done so, no white person would for one moment have listened to him. To have done that would have been to invite and incur absolute and eternal ostracism.

But Millicent, brought up in a totally different atmosphere, could never accustom herself to this, and so she asked to have the servants dismissed from the room before saying what she had to say about the papers in her hand. Margaret smiled at the request, but after the revelation was made she rejoiced that it had been preferred and acted upon.

When the servants had left the room, Millicent held out a handful of letters that she had picked up in the wild scramble of rescue.

"There is something wrong here, Margaret," she said in her open, honest way. "Some of these are unopened letters addressed to you--letters that bear stamps and post marks, letters that have come through the mail. These others are sealed letters addressed in your handwriting to Mr. Boyd Westover. They are stamped, but they bear no postmarks. They have never been mailed."

She stood silent for a moment, rigid with an indignation that she knew not how to express in words.

Meanwhile Margaret stood looking at the letters, dazed, pale to the lips, paralyzed. Then she looked from the letters to Millicent and the girl thought she was dying or already dead, so white was her face at first and so livid a moment later.

With the womanly instinct of ministry, reinforced by a passionate impulse of friendship, Millicent passed around the table, threw her arm about the stricken girl and gently forced her to lie upon one of the broad lounges or settees, or whatever else they should be called, that in those days invited repose in every dining room and every hallway of the plantation houses.

With that ready appreciation of necessity which is characteristic of womanhood, she went to the sideboard, poured a thimble glass of sherry and compelled Margaret to drink it. Then she tinkled a bell and when the servant appeared gave quick, concise orders for the summoning of Margaret's maid and other strong-armed servitors.

"You must get your mistress to bed at once," she commanded, "and send some one to summon Dr. Farnsworth quickly. He's at the lower quarters."

But Margaret, rising to a sitting position, promptly negatived all this. Sustained by wrath, indignation, resentment of insult, and by outraged pride, she forced upon herself the calm control that for the moment she had lost, though only for the moment. With that instinct of race, that courage, that self-mastery that had been always a precious possession of the Conways, she dismissed the superfluous servants who had hastened to her upon hearing that she was in trouble, and assumed control of the situation.

"Thank you, Millicent, dear, for bringing those letters to me. They are mine, and I will dispose of them. Diana, bring me my desk, please."

When the desk was placed before her she selected a sheet of paper and an envelope as calmly as if she had meant to send a note to Hallie Harvey or any other girl friend, asking her for the proper count of stitches in a piece of fancy knitting work.

Then she wrote upon the sheet of paper, this note:

"Aunt Betsy:--Your desk was blown out into the grounds and wrecked, during the squall. We have gathered up the fragments of the desk and rescued all the widely scattered papers. I am sending you all of them that in any way belong to you. Those that belong to me I am keeping. I send you this note, instead of seeing you in person, because your maid tells me you have gone to bed.

"Margaret."

She sent the note, sealed, by the hand of a maid, and she sent with it the entire paper contents of the wrecked desk, except the unopened letters of Boyd Westover to herself and her own unopened letters to him. These she gathered together into a bundle which she thrust into her corsage.

Then she turned to a servant and gave the order:

"Send to the stables for saddle horses for your Miss Millicent and me. We are going for a ride."

To Millicent she said under her breath: "You must go with me, dear. I must control myself or I shall not be able to carry this thing through to the end with dignity. I must have a dash on horseback. You don't mind, do you, dear?"

"Mind? _I mind_, Margaret? Why, you know that I would ride to the ends of the earth with you and for you, even under ordinary circumstances. Now that you're in trouble, of course I am ready. I don't know the facts--though I guess some of them--and I don't understand all that these things mean, but I know you have been wronged, outraged, placed in a false position, humiliated by some trespass upon your privacy or your personality, and I am here to stand by you till the wrong is righted, the outrage undone, and the humiliation lifted from your spirit. I'll do anything, everything--oh, Margaret, you don't know how I love you or how eager I am to help you!"

Margaret looked at her with loving and teary eyes. Presently she said:

"I know it all, dear. And yet you Yankees are supposed to be cold and calculating and hard. How utterly mistaken people are in their judgments! But here are the horses. We'll have a spin, and then--"

She paused as if in doubt and apprehension. Presently she added:

"And then I must confront my father. He is the proper person and he must set this thing right."

After a brisk gallop of half a mile, Margaret reined her horse down to a walk, and entered into conversation with her friend.

"I feel, Millicent," she began, "that I ought to take you completely into my confidence, and tell you all that this thing means. Your loyalty and your affection deserve that. But there are reasons which I cannot explain that forbid so full a confidence. I am going to tell you all I can, and I want you to believe and know that whatever reserves I practise are practised solely for your sake."

"But how can that be, Margaret? Of course you are to tell me as much or as little as you please, but--"

"I see. I can't explain. I can only say that if I practise reserve at all, it is only because of my tender affection for you. Can you believe that blindly, without explanation? And will you?"

"I believe whatever you tell me, Margaret, and I do not wish to hear anything that for any reason you do not wish me to hear."

"Thank you, dear," said the agitated girl as she again pressed her horse to his paces; "God help me if I'm wrong!"

There was so strong a suggestion of tragedy in the girl's tone that Millicent felt herself called upon to interfere with Margaret's purpose, which she instinctively understood and which seemed to her scarcely less than suicidal. She said nothing so long as the horses were moving swiftly. When they resumed the walk, she turned to her companion and asked:

"Do you believe in my friendship, Margaret, and do you trust its loyalty so far as to forgive an impertinence in its behalf?"

"I certainly do, Millicent. I could never--"

"Listen, then, and don't interrupt. I know far more about this matter than anybody has ever told me. My woman's instinct has instructed me. It may be in error as to details, but I am right as to the essentials, and in such a case it is the essentials alone that need be considered. I'll tell you the story of the situation as I understand it. You are not a woman to love lightly, or lightly to forget."

Margaret well nigh fell from her horse as she heard her own passionately uttered words thus repeated in merely explanatory fashion, but in a moment she realized that this was purely a coincidence. Millicent had chosen the words for herself; she could not have heard them as a quotation.

"There may be many fancies to a woman like you, but there can be only one passionate, self-giving, all-surrendering love. It is commonly said that there is no such thing as self-sacrificing loyalty or friendship between women--that while we may heroically sacrifice ourselves for the love of a man we never sacrifice that love in loyalty to a woman. It is a slander on our sex. I accepted it as true until very recently; indeed I saw many things to confirm it. I know better now."

She paused for a considerable time, but Margaret did not prompt her to go on. Perhaps she foresaw what was coming, and at any rate she saw clearly that there was struggle and disturbance in Millicent's mind.

After awhile the girl resumed:

"The one love of your life, Margaret, is for Mr. Boyd Westover. It began long before you knew it and it will last as long as you live. Now I am going to make a shameful confession," she added. Then she broke into a gallop, but when the horses resumed a moderate pace she did not make the confession. Perhaps she shrank from it. Perhaps she deemed it unnecessary. Perhaps she thought its making might tend rather to complicate than to simplify the problems in hand. However that may be, she made no further reference to the matter, but took up her parable where she had laid it down.

"Something, I don't know what--yes, I do, but I don't know why--has come between you and Mr. Boyd Westover. I am not blind, and I think I am not stupid. There were unopened letters there from him to you, and other unopened letters from you to him. Without asking anybody any questions I know that for some reason somebody has sought to cut off communication between him and you. I see clearly that that purpose has been accomplished, and I see that as a consequence he has been thinking you fickle and treacherous, as women so often are, and you have been thinking him disloyal and dishonorable."

"No, no, no," interrupted Margaret. "I have never accused him of disloyalty or dishonor, even in my wildest moments of perplexity and distress. I have never for one moment doubted his honor. It is only that I have been unable to conjecture why he left me in silence, when in fact he was writing great, manly, loving letters to me every day. Oh, Millicent, it was cruel, and I can never forgive--"

She did not need mention the name.

"You haven't read Mr. Westover's unopened letters," suggested Millicent.

"No, I have no right now. They were written in the past, when he loved and trusted me. He might not wish me to read them now. He might not feel in the same way toward me now that he did then."

"That's stuff and nonsense, I think, Margaret. I really do. If I were you I should read the letters carefully. Then I should sit down and write to Mr. Boyd Westover, enclosing the letters you wrote to him at that time and explaining how all the trouble had come about."

"That would never, never do. It would be throwing myself like a cast-off garment at his feet. It would be asking him to renew relations that he may have been glad to forget."

"You say that, Margaret, but you don't believe it. Neither do I."

"I think, Millicent, you don't understand our conventionalities down here. It would be impossible for any Virginia girl, under such circumstances, to take the initiative in reopening relations. That is the prerogative of the gentleman in the case."

"But when the gentleman doesn't know the facts, and the woman does, what then?"

"That makes no possible difference."

"You are right on one point, Margaret. I do not understand your conventions, nor do I in the least sympathize with them. They are shams and falsities, as all conventionalities are, and they are cruel beyond measure. They decree that where a mistake has been made and the woman discovers it, she must let wreck and ruin overwhelm two lives--her own and that of the man she loves--rather than send to him a simple and easy explanation of the mistake that has made the trouble. No, I do not understand such conventions. What are you going to do?"

"I'll place the whole thing in my father's hands, and he shall do what he will with it."

"And as to the one who has wrought all this mischief?"

"My relations with my Aunt Betsy will be changed. Come! We must hurry back to the house. I want my father to know what has happened."

They trotted on for a space, when suddenly Millicent reined in her horse and Margaret stopped in company, for Millicent had come to a complete halt in the roadway. For a moment the two confronted each other without a word, for Millicent, sitting on her horse with compressed lips and set jaw, did not at first explain herself. After a while she said:

"I cannot sit idly by and see two glorious young lives wrecked when a next to nothing would save both. I am a Yankee, of Boston, but so was Paul Revere. Let me have those letters. Ask me no questions, but let me ride as Paul Revere did!"

For a moment Margaret hesitated. The temptation was very great, but she put it aside.

"That would never do, Millicent," she said. "I understand your loving loyalty and I am grateful for it, but that would never do. To Mr. Westover you would be my emissary, no matter what you might say. It would be the same as if I went to him myself."

"Is your decision final, or may I argue the matter?" Millicent asked.

"It is final," Margaret answered, and not another word was spoken during the remainder of the homeward journey.

XXX

WHAT HAD HAPPENED AT THE OAKS

That little jaunt on horseback that Margaret, with her friend, took by way of steadying her nerves, was perhaps a mistake. If she had gone to her father at once, while "Aunt Betsy" was making herself comfortable in bed, the impulsive old gentleman would have been off on a journey to Wanalah within five minutes, and his intent to explain and make reparation would have accomplished its purpose instantly.

But Margaret went riding instead, and no sooner did "Aunt Betsy" learn of the fact than she made a quick recovery from her illness, and almost before the two young women were out of sight of the house, "Aunt Betsy," tearful and in every other way appealing, was closeted with Colonel Conway. She thus gained the distinct advantage of being first on the ground. Her tears and her agitation appealed strongly to the protective instinct of the chivalric old soldier. She told him in her own way what had happened, diverting his attention from her own misconduct by lamentations and copious weepings and protestations that in all she had done she had sought only to protect the honor and dignity of the family and to prevent Margaret--"an unformed girl"--from compromising herself in her ignorance of the world.

It would be too much to say that she convinced her brother of the righteousness of her conduct. Tampering with letters--even without reading them--was to him a point of special sensitiveness, and there were other matters involved which he could in no wise reconcile with his conceptions of honorable conduct. But he recognized the weakness of women as a palliation of misconduct, and his sister's tearful appeals to him for the protection of her dignity affected him in the tenderest part of his nature.

He was profoundly displeased with her, but she was his sister, nevertheless, and he was her natural protector. It was his duty and his desire to spare her, so far as might be possible, but he felt also the obligation to censure and correct her.

"You have done a gravely improper thing, Betsy," he said, with sternness and tenderness struggling for mastery in his tone. "Indeed what you have done is unpardonable, inexcusable,--except that as a woman you did not know the enormity of your act."

"That is the main point, Robert," she interrupted, "and I beg you to bear it in mind. All I did was done with good intentions. I am naturally solicitous for the honor of our family, and I--"

"And you did a dishonorable thing in that behalf," he said with severity in his tone. "In your desire to protect the family name you did a thing that would forever subject it to shame, if it should become known."

"That is it, Robert. It mustn't become known. I depend upon you, as the head of the family, to prevent that. Blame me as severely as you will, but don't expose me, don't subject me to criticism and scorn! Oh, Robert, I beg you to protect me!"

"I'll protect you of course," he replied, "but you have made it difficult and exceedingly embarrassing for me to do so. I have my own conscience to reckon with. You have made me do things, in ignorance of the facts--I may as well be frank and say you have deliberately deceived me into the doing of wrongs for which I know not how to atone or even apologize. If you were not my sister, if you were not under my protection, if I could be indifferent to your feelings--my course would be simple and easy. A frank, manly statement of the facts would exonerate me. As it is--"

"As it is, Robert, you cannot subject your sister to humiliation. You _must_ protect me from shame. You must take pains that what has happened shall never be known outside this house!"

It was at this stage of the conversation that Margaret entered. "Aunt Betsy," confident that she had secured herself, said:

"I will leave you to talk with your father, Margaret, if you desire."