Part 2

"If we have become such strangers, Boyd, that you must put a handle to my name, I'll give you all your honors and address you as 'Boyd Westover, Esq., M. A., University of Virginia.' You are to call me just 'Margaret,' please, as you've always done, if you wish to be just 'Boyd' to me."

As she spoke the words all the winsomeness he remembered in the girl came back again, but it did not dissipate the stately dignity that had grown upon her with her ripening womanhood. It was perhaps at that moment that he fell in love with her. Of that he could never be sure, but he knew now that his love for her was the one supreme passion of his life. That knowledge had come to him at the moment when he first realized her danger out there in the pasture. He recalled now the impulse that had prompted him in his half mad determination to let no obstacle stand in the way of his reaching her in time for rescue. He remembered the horror that had rended his very soul as he saw the maddened bull lift the mare and her rider and fling them from his gory horns. He knew now that he had done and dared in those maddening moments, not with the humane impulse to save an imperilled life that must come to every man with blood in his veins, but actuated by his passionate love's instinct of self-preservation.

As he ministered to her after her return to the porch, all these memories were awakened in him by a certain change that had come over her, a shyness that was not quite reserve, but yet resembled it. He was too little acquainted with the ways of women to understand this or to estimate it aright. It did not occur to him that the revelation he had made to her by his passionate caress as she lay half conscious in his arms might explain her impulse of reserve. He was too scantily versed in the impulses of womanhood to understand that after such a manifestation of his love womanly modesty must stand upon its defence until such time as he should see fit to give more formal and definite expression to his purpose.

Yet to that caress he attributed the change. It was only that he misinterpreted its meaning. The thought came to him that he had mortally offended her, that she resented his act in the only way possible to her so long as she must remain a guest in his mother's house, and that upon her release from that restraint she would banish him forever from her presence and her acquaintance.

So severely did all this torture him that on the second day of her convalescence the impulse to make an end of suspense overcame him, banishing for the moment all considerations of prudence and all regard for conventionalities. He had read to her for an hour, and when the book was finished, he observed a certain restlessness on her part, for which he suggested one or two remedies, only to have his suggestions negatived. Presently she said:

"It is only that I need exercise, I reckon. I think I'll try to walk a little, up and down the porch." She rose with some difficulty, he taking her hand in assistance. But no sooner was she on her feet than she relaxed her grasp upon his hand, and, as he did not relax his own so readily, she seemed to shake it off. The act was not an impatient one, but he mistook it for such. Instantly he faced her, asking:

"Why did you do that, Margaret? Why have you tried in every way to show me that my presence is disagreeable to you? What have I done to offend you? Tell me, and I'll quit the plantation at once and stay away so long as you remain. I have a right to know. Tell me!"

For answer the young woman looked at him in silence but with tear drops glistening in her eyes. At last she said:

"You have done nothing that you ought not, I reckon--nothing to offend me. Oh, Boyd, I'm not angry with you--I can never feel that way. I owe my life to you, but that isn't it. I don't know what it is. May be it's just because I'm weak--or may be just because."

With that the tears released themselves and trickled down her cheeks. She could not restrain them and she made no effort to hide them. She simply stood there facing him and letting the honest tears flow unrestrained.

There was no need of second sight to foretell the result. Nothing in all the world so unseats a man's resolution as the vision of the woman he loves in tears. Boyd Westover was a full-blooded young man and he acted after his kind. He took the unresisting girl in his arms and passionately embraced her. Words on either side were unnecessary. Love is quick to understand. But the words came also, after a space--words of love beyond recalling, words of the kind that make or mar human lives and set Destiny its tasks.

III

A WOMAN'S WORD

Those were halcyon days that followed, while Margaret lingered at Wanalah. The barriers were broken down now between these two; the vexing suspense was over and the most precious certainty that human kind can know had taken its place.

And there was not the embarrassment of others' knowing. No word of their awakened love had been spoken, or could be spoken until Margaret's return to The Oaks should impose upon her lover the duty of announcing their understanding to her father and invoking his sanction of their troth. Until that time should come they were not "engaged" and might pass their days and nights under one roof without offending even Virginian propriety. Convention had no claim to control over them in those blissful intervening days.

But the shadow of it fell on the morning of the day when Margaret was to journey homewards in company with her maid.

"I will visit Colonel Conway at The Oaks to-morrow," Boyd promised as the pair strolled through the garden during the morning hours that alone remained to them now.

"I wonder how he will receive the news--our news, Margaret?"

"How he will receive it? Why, of course he--"

"He's rather rigid, you know, in his views of propriety, and I've sinned against light in that respect. You see I addressed you in my own home, and not only so, but at a time when you were not able to run away."

Margaret laughed half below her breath.

"That was very terrible of course," she said in an amused tone. "But I see a way out of it, Boyd."

"Of course you do. That's feminine instinct. But tell me about it."

"Why, it's simple enough. If Father finds fault with that, you can take it all back and say it all over again at The Oaks."

Boyd smiled over the conceit, but he was not reassured by it. The case was one in which the least shadow of uncertainty seemed more than he could endure.

"Oh I forgot," the girl went on, teasingly; "perhaps it wouldn't be agreeable to you to rehearse the scene."

Boyd said not a word in reply, but he managed in another way to convince her that her doubt on that point was unfounded. When she had readjusted the "flat" that she wore as headgear--it had somehow become disarranged--she put jest aside, saying:

"I think we needn't fear anything of that sort, Boyd. My father is apt to make distinctions, just as other people are. If he disliked you or disapproved of you, he would make trouble of course; but as it is I reckon he will brush the thing aside and scold about the idiocy that makes such silly rules."

She paused in her speech for a space. Then she added, in a tone which the young man afterwards recalled in doubt and distress:

"At any rate it makes no difference. Nothing can make any difference--now."

"Tell me, please," he said gently, "just what you mean by that."

"I am not a women to love lightly, or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing and to trifle with it is blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do--even if it were crime itself--could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever."

He drew her to him in a tender embrace, but spoke no word in reply. Speech in such a case must be an impertinence. Presently she went on:

"That is what I meant, Boyd. I have promised to be your wife. I shall keep that promise if the stars fall. I have no doubt my father will cordially give his consent; but if it should be otherwise, it will make no difference--I shall keep my promise."

How those words came back in after time to Boyd Westover! And how he pondered them in amazement and bitterness of soul!

IV

THE BEST LAID PLANS

Margaret was right in her anticipations regarding Colonel Conway's attitude. He highly approved of the young man upon whose gallantry in rescue he had enthusiastically and incessantly descanted in all companies. He was in no mood to find fault with the slight lapse of Boyd Westover from conventional propriety. He liked the way in which Boyd presented his case, neither justifying his conduct by argument nor offering excuses for it, but treating it as a matter of manhood necessity.

"I suppose I should not have addressed Margaret when I did," he said in manly fashion; "I ought to have waited, but under the circumstances I couldn't help myself. Hang it, Colonel, there are times when a man must do things he ought not."

"Right, my boy, altogether right, absolutely right, eternally right," was the enthusiastic response. "It's blood that flows in your veins--hot blood--and not tepid milk and water. Why, sir, I courted Margaret's mother as we hung to the gunwale of a capsized sailboat, and I've been proud of it all my life, sir. A mollycoddle would have waited for her to comb her hair and put on dry clothes while he was making up pretty speeches for the occasion. That's the mollycoddle's way. The man's way is to tell the girl he loves her, whenever the right moment comes, and leave the dry clothes and the pretty speeches for another time. So don't apologize, don't fret, don't give the thing another thought. You shall have Margaret's hand with her father's blessing whenever you and she choose to fix upon the day. I'll pack The Oaks with the best of good company; there shall be feasting and--oh, by the way, there's one little formality I suppose you'll have to go through. There's Margaret's aunt,--my sister Betsy, you know. It'll be best all around if you treat her with distinguished consideration. She's apt to stand upon her dignity, and I've always found it best to recognize the fact, gracefully. It ministers to peace and comfort. I think you and Margaret had better present yourselves to her together, and do the thing up with all the formalities. It will not be necessary to mention to her the little slip you've been confessing to me. She'd probably take it seriously. It's a way she has. You can just let her think the thing occurred here to-day. You and Margaret can go out into the garden after dinner, and when you return present yourselves to Betsy and tell her about it as if it had just happened."

With the reassurance of the solemn words Margaret had spoken the day before, Boyd Westover had no great fear of anything "Aunt Betsy" might say, but he was disposed to humor Colonel Conway, and besides he foresaw that life at The Oaks might be pleasanter for Margaret with the old lady's approval than without it. So the little diplomatic stratagem was carried out so successfully that Aunt Betsy--always chary in the bestowal of praise--said to Margaret that night:

"If you must marry,--and I suppose you must,--I'm glad you're to marry a young gentleman who observes the courtesies of life and knows how to treat his elders with proper respect. I rather approve of Mr. Boyd Westover."

"Thank you, Aunt Betsy," Margaret answered, concealing a smile. "You don't often say so much in praise of a young man."

"Of course not. In these days it's not easy to find young gentlemen who deserve any praise at all. Manners are so dreadfully lax nowadays. Even you shock and distress me frequently, in spite of the pains I've taken to train you properly."

"Why, Aunt Betsy, what have I been doing now? Is it something dreadful?"

"From my point of view it is. You spoke of Mr. Boyd Westover just now, by implication at least, as a 'young man.' A young lady doesn't associate with 'young men'; those whom she recognizes are young _gentlemen_."

"If you'd seen him encounter that bull and snatch me from under his horns, Aunt Betsy, I reckon you'd have thought him a good deal of a man."

"No--a good deal of a gentleman rather. The distinction is important, my dear, though I can't make you see it. And besides he's so polite to his elders, especially ladies. I was never more respectfully treated in my life. He's just like the young gentlemen of my time. Of course when he addressed you he sank upon his knees--"

"He certainly did nothing of the kind," Margaret answered hotly. "If he had I should have spurned him with contempt. No man who respects himself would bend his knee to any woman."

"I wish you would say 'gentleman' and 'lady'--and especially wouldn't call yourself a 'woman,' Margaret. It's positively shocking. But it's so with everybody in these degenerate days--even well-bred young girls, and Heaven is my witness that I've tried hard, to raise you well. When did he address you the first time?"

"There was only this one time," Margaret answered, dreamily, as she recalled the scene on the porch.

"Do you mean, Margaret, that you accepted him the first time he asked you?"

"Yes, Aunt Betsy, why not? I loved him."

"Margaret, you shock me; worse than that, your conduct grieves and afflicts me. Haven't I told you a thousand times that no lady ever forgets her dignity so far as that?"

"I haven't counted the times, Aunt Betsy, but probably your estimate of a thousand isn't far wrong. It is more than five hundred at any rate."

"Margaret, you trifle, and I'm not accustomed to be trifled with."

"I beg your pardon, Aunt Betsy. I didn't mean to trifle. Listen to me seriously now. I hold the love of a man and a woman to be the holiest thing on earth. I regard all trifling with it as blasphemy, and I think all your rules and conventionalities concerning it silly and sinful nonsense. If there is ever a time when a woman should be honest and truthful it is when the man she loves tells her of his love and asks for hers in return. There, I have shocked you dreadfully, I know, but you forced me to do it. I have spoken the truth as my soul sees it."

Without another word the high-strung girl quitted the room. It was the first time in her life that she had "broken bounds" with her aunt, and her self-assertion astonished even herself. But she did not and would not repent of it. Love had brought to her a new dignity of womanhood, that was all.

During the week that followed Boyd Westover found himself a busier man than he had ever been before. He was up at dawn to set going the day's work in the crops, and not long after sunrise he was apt to appear at The Oaks where Margaret awaited his coming for their early morning ride. After breakfast with her he returned to his fields, but by four o'clock he was at The Oaks again for dinner. His evenings were spent in his own chamber, where he toiled over papers until far into the night, in an effort to master every detail of the financial condition of the Wanalah estate.

When he had done so, he asked for a conference with Colonel Conway, to whom he explained his plans.

"I find that the interest charged on nearly all the notes my father gave is higher than it ought to be; on some it is positively extortionate. My father was an optimist, I suppose, and he seems to have fallen among thieves--money lenders, I should say."

"One and the same thing," said the elder man. "I know their kind. I'm myself a victim. Go on."

"Well, as I figure it out, the excessive interest the estate is paying--I mean the amount of interest in excess of a reasonable rate--eats up about half the tobacco crop every year, and I've decided to stop it, just as we stop the depredations of the worms and grasshoppers."

"Good! But how?"

"Why, I'm going to Richmond, and perhaps to the North if necessary, to find some one who will take a single mortgage loan for the whole amount of the estate's debts, a loan carrying a reasonable rate of interest. With the proceeds I'll cancel all the present debts, and thereafter the estate will have but one creditor, pay a moderate interest and devote every dollar of surplus earnings to a steady reduction of the principal. I've figured the whole thing out, and with ordinarily fair crops and a reasonable style of living, I can extinguish the entire debt in ten years or less."

The two went together over the figures, and the older man, who was both shrewd and experienced, pronounced the plan entirely sound and feasible. It remained only to find the bank, insurance company, or other financial institution that would make the loan.

In search of that, Boyd Westover set off almost at once for Richmond. As he rode away after parting with Margaret he turned in his saddle and gaily waved her a last adieu, quite as if the parting were expected to be for months or years instead of for the brief tale of days the youth assigned to it.

V

PLEASANT DREAMS AND AN UGLY AWAKENING

Boyd Westover sat in his hotel room about nine o'clock in the evening. Papers, mostly memoranda, lay scattered about upon his table, while some large sheets were spread out before him. On these he was making calculations.

He was a thorough-going person by nature and habit, and he was making careful estimates of the several offers he had secured for the making of the desired loan on Wanalah plantation, in an effort to determine which of them he might most wisely accept.

Finally he said to himself:

"The Milhauser offer is the best, or will be if I can persuade the agent to accept a mortgage instead of the deed of trust he wants. Perhaps I can. He didn't make the condition peremptory, and he clearly wants to secure the loan as an investment. I'll see him in the morning. No, by the way, he said I'd find him at home this evening if I should want to see him. I'll walk out to his house now."

Turning to the table he took up one of the memorandum sheets and read at top the number of the agent's house in far upper Broad Street.

"It's almost out of town," he muttered. "Must be out beyond Richmond College. But the walk will do me good, and I'll sleep better if I can get the thing settled to-night."

He put an extinguisher over the camphene lamp, and set out without overcoat or wrap of any kind. It was a warm, cloudy summer night, and the Virginians rarely wore overcoats even in winter. They were horsemen, all of them, and even the lightest overcoat is a burden and a nuisance to one riding on horseback.

As he walked up Grace Street beneath the spreading shade trees, it began to rain, not heavily but steadily. Westover was too well accustomed to the out of door life to think of turning back because of a drizzle, but as the rain increased he turned up the collar of his coat and drew his soft felt hat down over his eyes. Presently he stopped under a street lamp and consulted a paper which he drew from his pocket. Some detail of the negotiation had escaped his mind and he stopped thus to refresh his memory.

As he stood there under the lamp with his back turned away from the sidewalk Sam Anderson, an acquaintance of his own, passed, and recognizing him called out:

"Hello, Boyd! Reading a love letter by the light of a street lamp in a soaking rain? You'd better go indoors somewhere unless you want to imagine tear drops punctuating the tender missive."

Boyd turned and made some careless reply. The two separated--Boyd going on up Grace Street and turning north to Broad, while Anderson hurried down town.

The incident was utterly trifling in itself, but it was destined to exercise a baleful influence upon Boyd Westover's life.

It was nearly an hour after midnight when the young man presented himself again at the hotel office and asked for his key. The night clerk observed that he was soaked and dripping, for the rain was falling in torrents now, and suggested the need of a little fire in Boyd's room. The fire was ordered, as the night had grown chill in spite of the season, and by the time he had got himself into dry clothes, the blaze of the soft coal had made the room so cheerful that the young man decided to write letters before going to bed. One of them was addressed to Colonel Conway, and in it Boyd announced his success in arranging the loan, setting forth the terms secured and going minutely into detail. In the other, which was addressed to Colonel Conway's daughter, he told again of his success, giving no details at all, but setting forth his rosy anticipations of the coming time--now not far away--when she should be "my lady of Wanalah."

The letter to Colonel Conway was a long one of necessity; that to Margaret was much longer without any necessity at all. But even the longest letter must come to an end sometime, and at last, about four o'clock in the morning, Boyd Westover crept into bed, a man altogether happy in the present and confidently hopeful of the future. And why not? Fortune was bringing him its richest gifts. Love was already his and the future held out to him an assured promise of happiness and peace in the plantation life he loved. Now that he had succeeded in arranging his financial affairs to his liking, he had no vexing problems to wrestle with, no cause of anxiety of any kind. With Margaret for his wife, with an ample sufficiency of this world's goods, he had only to conduct his plantation affairs, to entertain his friends, and to keep company with his books.

It was of all this he dreamed when he sank to sleep.

When he awoke a constable stood by his bedside, with two of his assistants a few feet farther away.

"Sorry, sir," said the constable. "I don't like to wake a gentleman, sir, and still less in a case like this. If it was only a common criminal, sir, I shouldn't mind, but with a young gentleman, my duty ain't no ways a pleasant job."

"What do you mean, you ruffian?" angrily asked Westover springing out of bed. "Why do you presume to--"

"'Taint presumin' I reckon," answered the constable, "when I've got this fer my authority. Read it, sir, and see."

Boyd hastily glanced at the paper. It was a warrant for his arrest on a charge of burglary.

He laughed a little, as he proceeded to dress, saying:

"Of course this is a ludicrous mistake, but you are not to blame for it. Those who are will have to answer for their blundering. I'm ready. Take me to the magistrate."

"He don't git up this soon in the mornin', sir. He was woke up to 'tend to this thing, an' he wa'n't in no pleasant frame o' mind 'bout it nuther. I reckon he'll lay abed late this mornin' to make up his lost sleep, like. I don't reckon he'll show hisself in court till 'long 'bout noon."

"Where will you take me, then?"

"I reckon it'll have to be the lock-up, sir."

"The lock-up? You mean a jail?"

"Well jail's the straightaway name fer it, but we mostly calls it lock-up. Seems softer like."

"Now my man, listen to me. You have no right to put me in jail. Your warrant merely directs you to arrest me and bring me to court. It says nothing about locking me up in jail. I tell you there's some absurd mistake about this thing, and when I'm brought before the magistrate it will all be cleared up. You can detain me until then without putting a jail indignity upon me. Stay here at the hotel with me. Go with me to breakfast, leaving your men on guard outside. When the time comes take me before the magistrate. In the meanwhile I'll send for my lawyer and find out what's to be done."

The constable ran his eye over the muscular young man, and shook his head.

"Can't be did," he replied. "You mout make up your mind to break away, and I don't brag o' stren'th enough to handle a limber twig like you."

"Well then, you can bring your men with you into the dining room and keep them with you."