Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the
declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the
following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man
and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and
controlling guests that none might resist.
Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay
at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away
home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people
who formed the little _coterie_ at Wheatlands (there was among them a
widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been
unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's
notions upon many points.
Claggett, dismissed with a _douceur_, the liberality of which consoled
that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would
not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave
of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the
vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their
relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from
the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his
relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned
upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to
the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by
train that day.
Vance had been told that breakfast would be at nine; and, awakened at
half-past seven by a bird on the bough in his window, he abandoned
himself to a lazy review of his impressions of the family. Of his
Cousin Eve he had seen little more than what has already been told.
After filling her place at a bounteous supper-table, where the talk
was chiefly absorbed by the three gentlemen, she had vanished, in
company with the widowed cousin, and was invisible thereafter--the men
sitting together till midnight in the large, raftered hall, with a
fire in its wide chimney, that served the old bachelor for a general
living-room.
Vance could not remember to have seen a face of finer lines, a manner
of finer courtesy, than that of his seventy-year-old host, who, in
spite of the rust of desuetude in worldly ways, carried his inbred
gentility where all who approached him might profit by it.
That he was a politician went without saying; and, indeed, the talk
once directed in the channel of national government had kept there
until they separated. On a claw-footed table holding a lamp beside Mr.
Lloyd's easy chair, covered with frayed haircloth, Vance saw lying a
crisp new Review of English publication, and all about were piled
newspapers and magazines, while shelves displayed row upon row of the
antique, tawny volumes that had made up the complete library of a
country gentleman in the days of old Josephus's grandfather.
Around the hearth, coming and going with every opening of many doors,
gathered dogs of fine and varied breeds. One old patriarch of a St.
Bernard, who attached himself particularly to the stranger, had
remained close to Vance's feet, and gravely escorted him to bed.
In his kinsman, Guy Carlyle, a handsome man of fifty odd years, who in
a military youth had been noted for deeds of daring that rang through
the army of Northern Virginia, but had long since resigned himself to
the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, Vance saw the origin of Eve's
rare beauty. He also became aware that, of a large family of sons and
daughters born to the now widowed Colonel, Eve was the sole survivor;
and it did not need the expression that irradiated her father's face
when her name was touched upon to show in what estimation she was held
by him.
The tinge of melancholy in Mr. Carlyle's manner had, however, no
effect like repression of the cordial friendliness he extended to the
newcomer. Vance had gone to rest with a feeling that he had conferred
a genuine favor upon his two elders by according to them, as he had,
his company.
Spite of these conditions of good-fellowship, he awoke next morning
conscious that there was one under the roof with him who had the power
(and no desire to withhold it) to make him far from comfortable; to
puzzle him, to banter him, to pull him up with a jerk at the moment he
might feel that he was getting reasonably ahead with her; to punish
him, it would appear, for some offence he could not own to having
committed.
It was very clear that Eve thought him a poor fellow, mentally and
morally; that, apart from her specific grudge against him, of nature
unknown, she was not in the least inclined to pay tribute to his
position, fashion, culture, wealth,--the appendages of Vance
Townsend's personality people around him had always been disposed to
make so much of. In the firmament of American society, he took himself
to be a planet of first importance. In other lands, he had enjoyed
more than a reasonable share of social success. Why should he here,
for the first time in his life, feel like a man coming in fancy
costume to a dinner where all the other guests wore plain clothes?
It must be the doing of that girl. She it was who, with a few words, a
cool glance or two that appeared to read his soul, had brought him
into this strait; and Vance was still young enough to feel himself
flame with resentment of her. Then fell upon his mental ear the soft
cadence of her voice, asking his pardon for having possibly misjudged
him, and his anger passed.
As from Eve he went on to think of Kitty Ainger, now Mrs. Crawford,
Vance was surprised at the freedom from soreness the reflection left
upon his mind. Mrs. Crawford, he even reflected, was really an
admirable woman--just the wife, as everybody had said, for a rising
fellow like Crawford, who would surely reach the top! She had shown
her good sense in taking him. Was it possible Vance had ever thought
anything else?
On a table near the bed lay the contents of a pocket emptied
overnight--among them a folded paper, inscribed with the latest and
most satisfactory draft of his verses to Kitty. This he now seized,
and, upon re-reading it, a flush that was not of tender consciousness
overspread his face. Regardless of the loss to the world of poetry,
ignoring the recurrent efforts that Calliope had witnessed, he
deliberately tore it up, and went to the open window prepared to
scatter the tiny remnants upon a matin breeze.
A view of wide green plains, with here and there a clump of noble
trees, of soaring blue hills beyond them, all shining in the morning
sun, met his eye; and almost directly beneath his window were a couple
of horses, of which one was bestridden by old Josephus, in a nankeen
coat and venerable Panama hat; the other, little more than a colt, was
held by a negro and saddled for a woman's use.
"Lady-love! Lady-love, I say!" called out the old gentleman, in a
voice of Stentor.
"Coming, coming, come!" gaily answered somebody; and in a moment
Vance's Cousin Eve appeared.
Springing lightly upon the segment of an enormous tree that served as
horse-block, she dropped into her saddle, and devoted herself to
subduing the juvenile remonstrance of her steed.
With the fragments of his effusion to Kitty Ainger still in hand,
Vance felt a curious sensation, as though the old world had suddenly
become young and beautiful and tuneful; and then, from his ambush, he
heard Josephus say:
"I'd half a mind to rouse up our visitor, and take him with us to see
the sheep in Six-Acre Lot. The ride before breakfast would have given
him a good idea of the way my land lies."
"O Cousin Josey, I am so thankful you did _not_!" answered Eve, with
sincerity unmistakable.
"Tut, tut, my dear child," began Mr. Lloyd, rebukingly; but Eve, who
just then succeeded in starting her colt in the right direction, was
off and away, sending back a trill of laughter to her ancient
cavalier, who made good speed to follow her.
The new conviction of his folly in having agreed to remain under the
same shelter with Miss Carlyle did not prevent Mr. Townsend from
making his appearance with an excellent appetite at the
breakfast-table, whither he was duly escorted by Bravo, the old dog he
had found outside his bedroom door waiting to take him in charge.
With Bravo and another dog or two at heel, Vance had walked off his
pique over dew-washed slopes of short, rich grass to a summit near the
house, to be joined on the return by Colonel Carlyle, who had strolled
out to meet him.
Breakfasts at Wheatlands were justly considered the _chefs d'oeuvre_
of old Josey's cook. Vance, helping himself to quickly succeeding
dainties seen for the first time, cast a mental glance backward to the
egg and a cup of tea that formed his accustomed meal at home. Half-way
in the repast, Eve, who had been changing her habit to a pretty cotton
gown, slipped into place between her father and the widow, who was
pouring out the coffee.
"What! What!" said Cousin Josey, detecting her absence from a seat at
his side, that would have brought her face to face with Townsend. "My
Lady-love desert me like that? Come back, little runaway, and see
your Cousin Vance taste his first mouthful of a Wheatlands ham!"
Thus adjured, Eve could but take the seat indicated; and Vance, who
had determined to be no longer oppressed by so small and pink a
person, bestowed on her an openly admiring glance that angered her
anew.
"We must leave you to Eve's mercies this morning, Mr. Townsend,"
observed their host, at the conclusion of the repast. "Carlyle and I
have promised to ride over to the County Court to hear a case tried,
and to call on the Judge, who is an old college chum of the Colonel's.
We shall be home to dinner at two, and you young people must entertain
each other until then."
"Could you not manage not to show so plainly what you feel?" asked
Vance in his cousin's little ear, as they left the table. "Pray
believe that I am not a party to the infliction put upon you."
They had strolled bareheaded out under the trees shading the lawn
about the house.
"Shall we never have done quarrelling?" said Eve, wearily. "Just as I
think I begin to feel kindly toward you, something happens, and I
break down again."
"Were we not moderately successful last night, when I assumed to be
somebody else?" he asked.
"Yes; that is better. I will treat you as I would any other man
stopping here--any one not of your exalted class, I mean."
"That was a quite unnecessary taunt. But I will allow it to pass if
you agree for to-day--until the gentlemen return--to treat me as you
would Mr. Ralph Corbin, for example."
"What do you mean?" she asked, quickly. "Ralph is the dearest, most
obliging cousin I have, and I impose upon him dreadfully. If he were
here, I should begin by sending him indoors to fetch my hat and
parasol from the hall rack, and a new magazine I left in the
window-seat, and tell him to call the dogs to come with us--What!
_you_ can't intend to condescend to wait upon a mere girl, a country
cousin?"
He was off and back again with the articles demanded, showing no
enmity in the smile offered with them to her acceptance. But he did
not at once surrender the periodical, or until he had satisfied
himself of the contents of the page held open by a marker of beaten
silver.
"You don't mind my looking at what you read?" he asked.
"If you like. It is some verses--_not_ what _you_ would care for, in
the least, but they have given me great pleasure."
A glance showed him that his suspicion was correct. The stanzas in
question had been written by him some months before, and sent,
unsigned, to the editor.
"Will you tell me what you fancy in these?" he said, with fine
indifference of manner.
"Why does one like a flower, or worship a star? They suit me, I
suppose, and I am learning them by heart."
His own heart throbbed with a schoolboy's glee and pride. But he said
nothing, and walked beside her light figure, in the round of garden
and orchard, bringing up in the stable-yard. Here, a space paved with
grass-grown cobblestones was bounded on three sides by frame
structures, now, in their decay, as gray and as fragile-looking as
hornets' nests.
"And the little house built of limestone, with one window, was put up
in Colonial days, for refuge in case of an Indian raid. Mr. Lloyd will
tell you one of his best stories, about an adventure of his ancestor
in there, when three white men successfully resisted a band of
red-skins. Perhaps our aboriginal anecdotes would bore you, however.
If so, give us only a little hint, and we desist. Now, shan't we go in
and see your horses?"
She lifted the latch; Vance followed her, past stalls where the
occupants gave her immediate recognition, to those in which his own
pair were comfortably ensconced. Merrylad, ungallant fellow, would
have none of the young lady, but at the touch and voice of his master,
turned his beautiful head sidewise to lay it upon Vance's shoulder
with affection.
"I am, at last, an illustration of the legend, 'Some one to love me,'"
he said, laughing. "So you thought I had forsaken you, old man? Not I,
my beauty. Gently, gently, you are too demonstrative."
"I can't imagine life without horses and dogs; can you?" she said,
with the quickly growing comradeship of a child. "There; I was
determined that Merrylad should let me stroke his neck!"
From the stables, whose inmates seemed to have put them upon a better
footing, they passed again under the pink-blossomed arcades of an
apple-orchard, to pause beside a curious indentation, like a dimple,
in the turf.
"Just here," began Evelyn,--"but I shall not tell you, unless you
promise to be properly impressed,--a sad fate overcame a dishonest
negro servant of Mr. Lloyd's ancestor. He--the servant, I mean--was a
fellow much given to acrobatic feats, and was accustomed to divert his
master's guests by tumbling and turning cart-wheels. One day, he
robbed old Mr. Lloyd's money-chest, and filling his pockets, went out
in the orchard, and testified his glee by standing on his head."
"What happened? Evidently something of a supernatural nature."
"The earth opened, and out came a great hairy red hand," said Eve, "(I
am telling it to you as my nurse told it to me) and 'cotched him by
de hayde, and drawed him down.'"
"What evidence do they offer of this event?"
"That is the thrilling part. About fifty years ago, when the present
owner was just of age, some men at work in this place dug up a
treasure of golden 'cob-coins,' clipped here and there to regulate
their value, as the custom was in olden days. And there, wedged in the
earth where the gold lay scattered, was the skeleton of a man standing
upon his head!"
"Proof positive," said Vance, laughing.
"I thought I should convince you. As an actual fact, the coins brought
six hundred dollars at the Philadelphia mint, and the money was
distributed among the finders."
"Imagine how many darkeys have stolen out here, since, to work at
night with pick and shovel! I suppose that accounts for the depression
of the sod."
"I myself found a George II. coin in the garden yesterday. See! If I
were to give it to you, do you think it would bind you to continue to
be 'some one else,' during the rest of your stay with us?"
He took the bit of copper she held out, wondering, as he had done the
night before, whether this kindly mood meant coquetry, then deciding
it was but the frolic spirit of a wholesome and untrammelled youth not
to be restrained. Whatever it meant, he would profit by it. A creature
so bright, so impulsive as this, his new-found cousin, was not within
his ken, even if the occasional prick of her wit did keep him in an
attitude of self-defence.
"Her cheeks are true apple-blossoms," he found himself murmuring,
irrelevantly, as he pursued her through the tunnel of orchard boughs.
"But her lips--what? Ah! bard beloved, I thank you--'Her mouth a
crimson flower.' That's it. 'Her mouth a crimson flower.'"
"What are you talking about, back there?" exclaimed his guide, turning
sharply to call him to account.
"Did I speak aloud? I was--ah--only wondering where we are going to
bring up?"
"Do I tire you? Perhaps you are not used to walking. Never mind; we
shall soon reach the graveyard, and then you can sit upon the stone
wall and rest."
"I think I can last to the graveyard," meekly said the young man,
whose tramps in the Alps and Dolomites and Rockies had included of
"broken records" not a few.
"Now, you are laughing at me," she said, suspiciously. "But you know I
have never heard of you except as a lounger in clubs and a leader of
_cotillons_."
Vance thought it useless to protest.
They now reached an enclosure under a grove of maples, where,
motioning him to sit upon a low wall tapestried with moss and fern and
creepers, she perched upon the gnarled root of a tree, and, opening
her book, prepared to become absorbed in it.
"Suppose you read aloud to me," he suggested, with cunning
aforethought.
"This?" she said, doubtfully, surveying his verses. "Oh, no; I think
not. You would hardly care for _this_. It is something quite out of
your line, don't you see? The writer gives expression to a perfectly
straightforward, yet eloquent, expression of a true man's true
feeling, about a thing of every day. It is not only that the words are
lovely and the sentiment is noble, but the measure ripples like a
stream--Why, what is the matter with you? One would think you know the
author."
"I am afraid, upon reflection, that I _do not_ know the author," he
said, drawing back into his shell.
"If you did, I should get you to thank him for me for this," she
resumed. "They say authors are always disappointing to meet, after one
has idealized them through their writings. But _he_ would not be. No;
I would trust him, through everything, to be a noble gentleman. Of
course he is unworldly. I believe he lives in a remote Territory, and
despises petty conventionalities of society, especially those in New
York. And I think he never even heard of that dreadful 400 of yours."
Vance, smiling at her girlish nonsense, felt himself, nevertheless,
lapped in the Elysium of her speech.
Then her mood changed to pathos, as she told him the story of "Cousin
Josey's" single episode of love, ending in the mound beside them,
where slept the old man's bride-betrothed of seventeen,--a ward of his
mother,--who had died of a tragic accident, forty years agone.
"And every day, since, he has come here. See, there are fresh
wood-violets upon her breast. And the dear old man has never thought
of such a thing as giving her a successor. Now, let us go. There are
lambs to show you, and a lot of other things."
The passing cloud was gone from her April face. She was again radiant,
and in some bedazzlement of mind he arose and followed her.
* * * * *
Townsend's acquaintance with his Virginia cousins had, as might have
been expected, prolonged itself into a visit to Carlyle Hall; and he
was on the eve of departure, after a stay of two weeks in that
delightful refuge, before he realized how much his fancy had begun to
twine around the place and its inmates.
Sentiment for the young creature who was its ruling spirit he did not
admit, other than the natural tribute of his age and sex to hers. Nor
did he give her credit for more than temporary feeling on any point
disconnected with her strong local attachments. Her father, her home,
and those she grandiosely called her "people"--meaning, he supposed,
the individuals indebted to Providence for having been born within the
limits of her State--were the objects of Eve's warm affection.
Vance felt sure her courteous thought of him was the result of only
transmitted consideration for a guest. So soon as he should quit the
pleasant precincts of the Hall, he feared he must put aside his claim
to even this consideration. This condition of affairs worried our
young man more than he cared to admit to himself. To no one else would
he have confessed that the fortnight had been spent by him in a daily
effort to impress upon her a personality widely different from her
conception of it. Now, at the end of his enterprise, he was conscious
that he had not advanced in the endeavor; and this last evening in her
company was correspondingly depressing to his _amour propre_.
They were sitting together in a window-seat of the drawing-room,
looking into an old-world garden with box walks, a sun-dial, and a
blaze of tulips piercing the brown mold. From the western sky, facing
them, the red light was vanishing, and in the large, dim room a couple
of lamps made islands of radiance in a sea of shadows. In the library,
adjoining, sat the Colonel, reading, his strong, handsome head seen in
profile from where they were.
Sounds of evening in the country, the sweet whistle of a negro in the
distance, alone broke the spell of silence brooding over the old
house. Vance hesitated to further disturb it, the more so that Evelyn
had been in a mood of unusual graciousness. Nor did he, in truth, feel
prepared to broach the discussion of certain things he had put off
until now.
"To-morrow," he said at last, with a genuine sigh, "I shall be on my
way northward, and this beautiful, restful life will be among my
has-beens."
"Too restful, I'm afraid," she cried, in her brusque, schoolgirl
fashion. "Your Aunt Myrtle always speaks of Virginia as nothing but a
'cure,' which she is clearly glad to have accomplished and lived
down."
"It has been a cure for me in another sense. I wonder if you know what
you have done for me?"
"I?"
"Yes. Don't fence with me now. For once, believe in your cousin, who
is, after this, going to leave you for a long time in peace. Tell me;
when I shall have gone, and that big, comfortable 'spare room' is put
in order again for the next guest, shall you sometimes think of the
subject of your missionary labors in the past two weeks?"
"But I have never undertaken to reform you," she said, in a vexed
tone. "It is absurd for you to think I imagined myself capable of
that. The best I could hope for was that your visit should pass
without our coming to open conflict. Papa could tell you I promised
him to try that this should be so."
"Then I am indebted to your father for the modicum of personal
consideration you have vouchsafed me?"
"And Cousin Josey--yes," she answered, with startling candor. "At the
same time, I must say, I like you now better than I believed I ever
could. It makes me wish with all my heart I could trust you."
Vance felt a sting that was not all resentment, or all pain. The
expression of her eyes, so fearless, so intense, waked in him a
feeling that, in the moment they had reached, he desired nothing so
much in all the world as to win this "mere girl's" approval. The color
deepened in his face, as he said:
"And yet you have given the author of those verses, who happens to be
myself, credit for something in which you could place faith?"
"You--_you_?" she exclaimed, starting violently. "Ah no! Don't destroy
my ideals."
"This may be wholesome, but it is certainly not pleasant," he said,
praying Heaven for patience.
There was nothing of her customary light spirit of bravado in the
manner in which, after a pause, she next spoke to him.
"I hardly know how--for the sake of others, I mean, not on my own
account--to ask if it is possible you have not, in connection with me,
given a thought to one who was my daily, intimate companion all of
last winter."
"That!" he interrupted, with a dry laugh. Why not arraign her for the
wreck of me?"
"You understand me, I see," she said, with meaning. "Let me say this,
then: that I hold a trifler with women's hearts to be the most
despicable of characters. A man who is too indolent or too infirm of
purpose to deny himself the pleasure he gets from watching his
progress in a girl's affections is an offender the law mayn't reach,
but he deserves it should. That he makes his victim old before her
time, in his gradual, refined disappointment of her hopes, may not
count for much, in your estimation. But--but--oh! I could not have
believed it of the person who wrote those verses!"
There were tears in her honest eyes, a tremor in her young voice. Save
for these, Vance, who had walked away from her a dozen steps, would
have continued to put distance between himself and this "angel at the
gate."
As it was, he controlled himself sufficiently to return and say, in a
hard, strained voice:
"I shall not attempt to change your estimate of me. But I am glad you
have given me an opportunity to tell you that on the day I saw you
first, I went directly from my aunt's house to ask Katherine Ainger to
be my wife. Some day, when you are older, and know more of the world,
and take broader views of poor humanity, all these things may seem to
you different. Then you may, perhaps, admit that, with all my faults,
I could never be such a cad as you have pictured. In the little time
that we are together now, please, let us say no more about it."
He walked away, joining the Colonel, to engage that unsuspecting
gentleman in an exhaustive discussion of politics.
Eve sat for awhile in her dusky corner, absorbed in thought. She had
decided to say a few words to him, before he should go, that might
contribute to her relief rather than his. But Vance gave her no
opportunity to speak any words to him, except those of conventional
farewell. Betimes, next morning, he took leave of his cousins; and the
Virginia episode was over.
After he had left, Eve locked herself in her room, and gave way to a
burst of tears.