WHEN FIELDS LIE FALLOW
I
On an October afternoon Nicholas Burr was walking along the branch road
that led to his father's farm. He carried a well filled bag upon his
shoulder, the musty surface of which betrayed that it contained freshly
ground meal, but, despite the additional weight, his figure was
unflinchingly erect. There was a splendid vigour in his thick-set frame
and in the swinging strides of his hardy limbs. His face--the
square-jawed, large-featured face of a philosopher or a
farmer--possessed, with its uncompromising ugliness, a certain eccentric
power. Rugged, gray, alert-eyed as it was, large-browed and overhung by
his waving red hair--it was a face to attract or to repel--not to be
ignored.
Now, as he swung on vigorously in the October light, there was about him
a joyousness of purpose which belonged to his age and his aspirations.
It was an atmosphere, an emanation thrown off by respiring vitality.
Across the road the sunshine fell in long, level shafts. The spirit of
October was abroad in the wood--veiling itself in a faint, bluish haze
like the smoke of the greenwood when it burns. Overhead, crimson and
yellow ran riot among the trees, the flame of the maple extinguishing
the dull red of the oak, the clear gold of the hickory flashing through
the gloss of the holly. As yet the leaves had not begun to fall; they
held tenaciously to the living branches, fluttering light heads in the
first autumn chill. In the underbrush, where the deerberry showed hectic
blotches, a squirrel worked busily, completing its winter store, while
in the slanting sun rays a tawny butterfly, like a wind-blown, loosened
tiger lily, danced its last mad dance with death.
To Nicholas the scene was without significance. With a gesture he threw
off the spell of its beauty, as he shifted the "sack" of corn meal upon
his shoulder. He had found Uncle Ish tottering homeward with the load,
and he had taken it from him with a careless promise to leave it at the
old negro's cabin door--then, passing him by a stride, he had gone on
his kindly, confident way. He forgot Uncle Ish as readily as he forgot
the bag he carried. His mind was busily reviewing the points of his last
case and the possible facts of a more important one he believed to be
coming to him. In this connection he went back to his first fight in the
little court-house, and he laughed with an appreciation of the humour of
his success. It was Turner, after all, who had given it to him; Turner,
who, having bought a horse that died upon the journey home, wanted
revenge as well as recompense. He remembered his perturbation as he rose
to cross-examine the defendant--the nervousness with which he drove his
weapons home. It had all seemed so important to him then--the court,
his client, the great, greasy horse dealer forced into the witness
stand.
He had proved his case by the defendant, and he had won as well a mild
reputation among the farmers who had assembled for the day. Since then
he had done well, and the judge's patronage had placed much in his hands
that, otherwise, would have gone elsewhere.
Beyond the wood, the uncultivated wasteland sported its annual carnival
of golden rod and sumach, and across the brilliant plumes a round, red
sun hung suspended in a quiet sky. In the corn field, where the late
crop was fast maturing, negro women chanted shrilly as they pulled the
"fodder," their high-coloured kerchiefs blending, like autumn foliage,
with the landscape. Around them the bared stalks rose boldly row on row,
reserving their scarred and yellow husks for the last harvest of the
year.
When Nicholas reached his father's house he did not enter the little
whitewashed gate, but kept on to the log cabin on the edge of General
Battle's land, where Uncle Ish was passing his declining years in
poverty and independence. The cabin stood above a little gully which
skirted the dividing line of the pastures, facing, in its primitive
nudity, the level stretch of the shadowless highway. It was a rotting,
one-room dwelling, with a wide doorway opening upon a small, bare strip
of ground where a gnarled oak grew. In the rear there was a small
garden, denuded now of its modest vegetables, only the leafy foliage of
a late pea crop retaining a semblance of fruitfulness.
Nicholas went up the narrow path leading from the road to the hut, and
placed the bag on the smooth, round stone which served for a step. As he
did so, the doorway abruptly darkened, and a girl came from the interior
and paused with her foot upon the threshold. He saw, in an upward
glance, that it was Eugenia Battle, and, from the light wicker basket on
her arm, he inferred that, in the absence of Uncle Ish, she had been
engaged in supplying his simple wants. That the old negro was still
cared for by the Battles he was aware, though upon the means of his
livelihood Uncle Ish, himself, was singularly reticent.
As Eugenia saw him she flushed slightly, as one caught in a secret
charity, and promptly pointed to the bag of meal.
"Whose is that?"
He looked from the girl to the bag and back again, his own cheek
reddening. At the instant it occurred to him that it was a peculiar
greeting after a separation of years.
"It belongs to Uncle Ish," he answered, with unreasonable embarrassment.
"I believe your father gave it to him."
"He might have brought it home for him," was her comment, and
immediately:
"Where is he?"
"Uncle Ish? He's on the road."
Her next remark probed deeper, and he winced.
"What were you doing with it?"
Her gaze was warming upon him. He met it and laughed aloud.
"Toting it," he responded lightly.
She was still warming. He saw the glow kindle in her eyes and illumine
her sombre face; it was like the leaping of light to the surface. As she
stood midway of the entrance, in a frame of unpolished logs, her white
and black beauty against the smoky gloom of the interior, the red sunset
before her feet, he recalled swiftly an allegorical figure of Night he
had once seen in an old engraving. Then, before the charm of her smile,
the recollection passed as it had come.
"You may bring in the bag," she said, with the authority of one
accustomed to much service. "I found he had very little left to eat. We
have to bring him things secretly, and he pretends the Lord feeds him as
He fed the prophet."
She reëntered the hut, and Nicholas, stepping lightly in the fear that
his weight might hasten the fall of the logs, deposited the bag upon a
pine table, where an ash cake lay ready for the embers. In a little
cupboard he saw the contents of Eugenia's basket--a cold fried chicken
and some coffee and sugar. Before the hearth there was a comfortable
rocking chair, and a bright coloured quilt was upon the bed. As he
turned away the girl spoke swiftly:
"It _was_ good of you," she said.
"Good of me?" He met her approbation almost haughtily; then he
impulsively added: "I always liked Uncle Ish--and he reminds me of old
times."
She turned frankly to him. In the noble poise of her head she had seemed
strangely far off; now she appeared to stoop.
"Of our old times?"
Her cordial eyes arrested him.
"Of yours and mine," he answered. "Do you remember the hare traps he
set for us and the straw mats he taught us to plait? Once you said you
had stolen a watermelon to save Jake a whipping, and he found you
out--do you remember?"
He pressed the recollections upon her eagerly, almost violently.
Eugenia shook her head, half laughing.
"No, no," she said; "but I remember you carried me home once when I had
hurt my foot, and you jumped into the ice pond to save my kitten, and--"
"You shared your lunch with me at school," he broke in.
"And you dug me a little garden all yourself--"
"And you bought me a Jew's harp on my birthday--"
"And you always left half the eggs in a bird's nest because I begged you
to--"
"And you were an out and out angel," he concluded triumphantly.
"An angel, black-haired and a tomboy?"
He assented. "A little tyrannical angel with a temper."
Her confessions multiplied.
"I scratched your face once."
"Yes."
"I got mad and smashed your best hawk's egg."
"You did."
"I threw your fishing line into the brook when you wouldn't let me
fish."
"I have never seen it since."
"I was horrid and mean."
"Such were your angelic characteristics."
She thoughtfully swung the basket on her arm, her white sleeve
fluttering above her wrist. Her head, with its wave, from the clear
brow, of dead-black hair, was bent frankly towards him.
"It has been so long since I saw you," she said suddenly, "and when I
last saw you, you were horrid, not I."
He flushed quickly.
"I was a brute," he admitted.
"And you hurt me so, I cried all night."
"Not because you cared?" he asked breathlessly.
"Of course not--because I didn't care a--a rap. I cried for the fun of
it."
He was sufficiently abashed.
"If I had known--" he began, and stopped.
"You might have known!" she flashed out.
He was at a disadvantage, which he admitted by a blank regard.
"But things were desperate then, and--"
"So were you."
"Not as desperate as I might have been."
In her equable unconsciousness she threw off the meaning of his retort.
"But I like desperateness."
She had crossed the threshold and stood now in the ambient glow, gazing
across the quiet pasture, where a stray sheep bleated. She reached up
and broke a bunch of red leaves from the oak, fastening them in her belt
as they descended the narrow path.
In the road they came upon Uncle Ish, who was hobbling slowly towards
them. He was wrinkled with age and bent with rheumatism, and his voice
sounded cracked and querulous.
"Is de Lawd done sont dem vittles?" he demanded suspiciously. "Ef He
ain', I dunno how I'se gwine ter git mo'n a'er ash cake fur supper.
'Pears like He's gittin' monst'ous ondependible dese yer las' days. I
ain' lay eyes on er dish er kebbage sence I lef dat ar patch on Hick'ry
Hill, en all de blackeye peas I'se done seen is what I raise right dar
behint dat do'. Es long es Gord A'mighty ondertecks ter feed you, He
mought es well feed you ter yo' tase."
"There are some eggs in the cupboard," said Eugenia seriously. "You must
cook some for supper."
Uncle Ish grunted.
"En egg's er wishwashy creeter es ain' got ernuff tase er its own ter
stan' alont widout salt," he remarked contemptuously; after which he
grew hospitable.
"Ain' you gwine ter step in es you'se passin'?" he inquired.
Eugenia shook her head.
"Not to-day, Uncle Ish," she responded cheerfully. "I know you're
tired--and how is your rheumatism?"
"Wuss en wuss," responded the old negro gloomily. "I'se done cyar'ed one
er dese yer I'sh taters in my pocket twell hit sprouted, en de rhematiks
ain' never knowed 'twuz dar. Hit's wuss en wuss."
As they passed on, he hobbled painfully up the rocky path, leaning
heavily upon his stick and grunting audibly at each rheumatic twinge.
Nicholas and Eugenia followed the highway and turned into the avenue of
cedars. When the house was in sight, he stopped and held out his hand.
"May I see you sometimes?" he asked diffidently.
She spoke eagerly.
"Oh, do come to see us," she said. "Papa would enjoy talking about Judge
Bassett. He half worships him."
"So do I."
She nodded sympathetically.
"I know--I know. He is splendid! And you are doing well, aren't you?"
"I have work to do, thank God, and I do it. I can't say how."
"What does Judge Bassett say?"
He laughed boyishly. "He says silence."
She was puzzled.
"I don't understand--but I must go--I really must. It is quite dark."
And she passed from him into the box-bordered walk. He watched her tall
figure until it ascended the stone steps and paused upon the porch,
whence came the sound of voices. Through the wide open doors he could
see the swinging lamp in the centre of the great hall and the broad
stairway leading to the floor above. For a moment he stood motionless;
then, turning back into the avenue, he retraced his steps to his
father's house.
In the kitchen, where the table was laid for supper, his half-sister,
Nannie, was sewing on her wedding clothes. She was to be married in the
fulness of the winter to young Nat Turner--one of the Turners of
Nicholas's boyhood. By the light of the kerosene lamp she looked
wonderfully fair and fresh, her auburn curls hanging heavily against her
cheek as she bent over the cambric in her lap.
As Nicholas entered she looked up brightly, exclaiming: "Oh, it's you!"
in disappointed accents.
Nicholas looked about the kitchen inquiringly.
"Where's ma?" he asked, and at the instant Marthy Burr appeared in the
doorway, a pat of butter in her hand.
"Air you home, Nick?" was her greeting, as she placed the butter upon
the table. Then she went across to Nannie and examined the hem on the
cambric ruffle.
"It seems to me you might have done them stitches a little finer," she
observed critically. "Old Mrs. Turner's got powerful sharp eyes for
stitches, an' she's goin' to look mighty hard at yours. If thar's one
stitch shorter'n another, it's goin' to stand out plainer than all the
rest. It's the nater of a woman to be far-sighted at seeing the flaws in
her son's wife, an' old Mrs. Turner ain't no better'n God made her, if
she ain't no worse. 'Tain't my way to be wishin' harm to folks, but I
al'ays said the only thing to Amos Burr's credit I ever heerd of is that
he's an orphan--which he ain't responsible for."
"But the sewing's all right," returned Nannie in wounded pride. "Nat
ain't marrying me for my sewing, anyway."
Her mother shook her head.
"What a man marries for's hard to tell," she returned; "an' what a woman
marries for's past find-in' out. I ain't never seen an old maid yet that
ain't had a mighty good opinion of men--an' I ain't never seen a married
woman that ain't had a feelin' that a few improvements wouldn't be out
of place. I don't want to turn you agin Nat Turner--he's a man an' he's
got a mother, an' that's all I've got agin him. No talkin's goin' to
turn anybody that's got their mind set on marryin', any more than it's
goin' to turn anybody that's got their mind set on drink. So I ain't
goin' to open my mouth."
Here Amos Burr appeared, and as he seated himself beside Nannie she drew
her ruffles away. "You're so dusty, pa," she exclaimed half pettishly.
He fixed his heavy, admiring eyes upon her, receiving the reproof as
meekly as he received all feminine utterances. He might bully a man, but
he would always be bullied by a woman.
"I reckon you're pretty near ready," he observed cheerfully, rubbing his
great hairy hands. "You've got 'most a trunk full of finery. I reckon
Turner'll know I ain't in the poorhouse yet--or near it."
It was a speech of unusual length, and, after making it, he slowly
settled into silence.
"Nat wouldn't mind if I was in the poorhouse, so long as he could get me
out," said his daughter, taking up the cudgels in defence of her lover's
disinterestedness.
Amos Burr chuckled.
"Don't you set no store by that," he rejoined.
"An' don't you set about judgin' other folks by yourself, Amos Burr,"
retorted his wife sharply. "'Tain't likely you'd ever pull anybody out
o' the poorhouse 'thout slippin' in yourself, seein' as I've slaved
goin' on twenty years to keep you from land-in' thar at last. The less
you say about some things the better. Now, you'd jest as well set down
an' eat your supper."
II
The next day Nicholas went into Tom Bassett's office, where he met
Dudley Webb, who was spending a dutiful week in Kingsborough. He was a
genial young fellow, with a clear-cut, cleanly shaven face and a
handsome head covered with rich, dark hair. His hands were smooth and
white, and he gesticulated rapidly as he talked. It was already said of
him that he told a poor story better than anybody else told a good
one--a fact which was probably the elemental feature of his popularity.
As Nicholas looked in, he raised himself lightly from Tom's desk chair
and gave him a hearty handshake.
"Hello, Burr! We were just talking of you. I was telling Tom a jolly
thing I heard yesterday. Two farmers were discussing you at the
post-office, and one of them said: ''Tain't that he's got so much
sense--I had a sight more at his age--but he's so blamed sure of
himself, he makes you believe in him.' How's that for fame?"
"Not so bad as it is for me," returned Nicholas with a laugh. "If you
win one or two small cases, there's obliged to be undue influence of the
devil."
"Which, occasionally, it is," added Tom seriously.
Dudley threw himself back into his chair and crossed his shapely legs.
For a moment he smoked in silence, then he removed his cigar from his
mouth and flecked the ashes upon the uncarpeted floor.
"Oh! the mystery to me is," he said, "that you exist down here and live
to tell the tale--or at least that you earn enough crumbs to feed the
crows."
"Kingsborough crows aren't high livers," remarked Nicholas as he threw
himself into the remaining chair.
Dudley laughed softly--a humorous laugh that fell pleasantly on the ear.
"That reminds me," he began whimsically. "I met a tourist with
spectacles walking along Duke of Gloucester Street. 'Sir,' he said
courteously, 'I am looking for Kingsborough. I am told that it is a
city.' 'Sir,' I responded, with a bow that did honour to my
grandfather's ghost, 'it was once a chartered city; it is now only a
charter.'"
Then he turned to Tom.
"We haven't got used to the railroad yet, have we?" he asked.
Tom shook his head.
"General Battle's still protesting," he replied. "He swears it makes
Kingsborough common."
Dudley thoughtfully examined his cigar, an amused smile about his mouth.
"My mother doesn't want the cows turned out of the churchyard," he
observed, "because it would abolish one of Kingsborough's
characteristics. She's right, too, by Jove."
"They're having a fight over it now," put in Nicholas with the gravity
he rarely lost. "The people who own cows call it an 'ancient right.' The
people who don't, call it sacrilege. The rector leads one faction, and
the congregation has split."
"And split we smash," added Dudley. "Well, these are exciting times in
Kingsborough's history; it is almost as lively as Richmond. There we had
a religious convention and an elopement last week. I don't suppose you
come up to that?"
Nicholas ran his hand through his hair with a habitual gesture. He was
idly watching the light of Dudley's cigar and noting the quality by the
aroma. He could not afford cigars himself, and he wondered how Dudley
managed to do so.
"We are a people without a present," he returned inattentively. "You've
heard, I take it, that an old elm has gone near the court-house."
"My mother told me. I believe she knows every brick that used to be and
is not. I'm trying to get her away with me, but she won't come."
"Sally Burwell was telling me," said Tom, a dawning interest in his
face, "she had tried to persuade her."
"Yes, we tried and failed. By the way, is it true that Sally's engaged
to Jack Wyth? I hear it at every turn."
"I--I shouldn't be surprised," gasped Tom painfully.
"I don't believe a word of it," protested Nicholas.
"He isn't much good, eh?"
"Why, he's a brick," said Nicholas.
"He's a cad," said Tom.
Dudley laughed and blew a cloud of smoke in the air.
"Well, she's a daisy herself, and as good as gold. She's the kind of
woman to flirt herself hoarse and then settle down into dove-like
domesticity. But what about Eugie? Is she really grown up? My mother
declares she's splendid."
Nicholas was silent.
"Oh, she's handsome enough," Tom carelessly replied.
"But not like Sally, eh?"
"Oh, no! not like Sally."
Dudley tossed the stump of his cigar through the open window, lit a
cigarette, and changed the subject. He talked easily, relating several
laughable stories, referring occasionally to himself and his success,
illustrating his remarks by his experience at the bar, giving finally
the exclamation of a fellow-lawyer at the close of an argument he had
made: "You may be a muff of a jurist, Webb," he had cried, "but, by
George! you're a devil of an advocate!"
He was, withal, so affable, so confident, so thoroughly a good fellow,
that an hour passed before Nicholas remembered he had looked in only for
a moment.
When he rose to go, Dudley gripped his hand again, slapped him on the
shoulder, declared him to be a "first-rate old chap," and ended by
pressing him to drop in on him when he ran up to Richmond.
Nicholas gave back the friendly grasp and pledged himself to the
"dropping in." He resistingly succumbed before the inherent jovial
charm.
The afternoon being Saturday, he left town earlier than usual and spent
a couple of hours with his father in the fields. The peanuts were being
harvested. Amos Burr, with a peanut "share" attached to the plough, was
separating the yellowed plants from the ripe nuts underground, and
Nicholas, lifting the roots upon a pitchfork, shook them free from earth
and threw them over the pointed staves which were the final supports of
the "shocks." A negro hand went before him, driving the sticks into the
sandy soil.
"I should say you might count on forty bushels an acre," remarked
Nicholas cheerfully, as he lifted a detached root from a broken hill.
"It's a fair yield, isn't it?"
Amos Burr shook his head and muttered that there was "no tellin'.
Peanuts air one of the things thar's no countin' on," he added. "Wheat
air another, corn air another, oats air another."
"Life is another," concluded Nicholas lightly. "Still we live and still
we raise wheat and oats and corn. But I wish you'd look into market
gardening. I believe it would pay you better."
"'Tain't no use," returned Amos, with his accustomed pessimism. "'Tain't
no use my plantin' as long as the government ain't goin' to move, nohow.
It's been promisin' to help the farmer ever since the war, an' it ain't
done nothin' for him yet but tax him."
But Nicholas, to avoid his father's political drift, fell to talking
with one of the negro workers.
Several hours later, when he had changed his farm clothes, he joined
Eugenia in the pasture and walked with her to Battle Hall, where the
general received him with ready, if condescending, hospitality. Eugenia
had instructed her family upon the changed conditions of Nicholas's
social standing, but her logic was powerless to convince her father
that Amos Burr's son was any better than Amos Burr had been before him.
"Pish! Pish!" he exclaimed testily, "the boy's not a lawyer--only
gentlemen belong to the bar, but there's nobody too high or too low to
be a farmer. Polite to him? Did you ever see me impolite in my own house
even to a chimney sweep?"
"I never saw a chimney sweep in your own house," Eugenia retorted,
whereupon he pinched her cheek and accused her of "making fun of her old
father."
Now, when Nicholas sat down on one of the long green benches on the
porch, the general conversed with him as he conversed with the chicken
sellers who came of an afternoon to receive payment for their luckless
fowls.
"This'll be a busy season for you," he observed cheerfully, in the
slightly elevated voice in which he addressed his inferiors. "You'll be
cutting your corn before long and seeding your winter crops. What are
you planting this fall?"
He could not be induced to engage upon social topics with the young man
or to allude in the most distant manner to his legal profession. He was
a Burr, and a Burr was a small farmer, nothing more.
"We're ploughing for oats now, sir," responded Nicholas diffidently,
"and we're going to seed a little rye with clover--if the clover's
killed, the rye'll last."
"I should advise you to look after the land," said the general, stuffing
the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and pressing it down with his fat
thumb. "What you need is to plant it in cow-peas and turn them down.
There's nothing like them for fertilising."
Nicholas, who was listening attentively, rose to shake hands with Miss
Chris who appeared in the doorway.
"The fall comes earlier than it used to," she remarked, drawing a light
crocheted shawl about her shoulders. "Why, I remember when it used to be
summer up to the middle of November. I was talking to Judge Bassett
about it yesterday, and he said he certainly thought the seasons had
changed since he was a boy."
"I don't reckon your father has much opinion of fertilisers," broke in
the general, reverting to his pleasant patronage.
Nicholas answered before Eugenia could interpose. "No, sir, he doesn't
believe in them much," he replied.
"Well, you tell him it's lime he needs," continued the general. "The
most successful peanut grower I ever knew put about a thousand pounds of
lime to an acre, and he cleared--"
"Have you seen Dudley Webb?" asked Eugenia, shaking her head at the
general's frown.
"For an hour this morning. He was in Tom Bassett's office. He told some
good stories."
Miss Chris heaved a reminiscent sigh.
"That's poor Julius Webb all over again," she said. "He could keep a
dinner table laughing for two hours and fight a duel at daybreak. I
remember at his own wedding, when they drank his health, he told such a
funny story that old Judge Blitherstone, who was upwards of eighty, had
to have cold bandages put to his head."
The general took his pipe from his mouth. "Dudley's a fine young
fellow," he said. "I saw him yesterday when I went to the post-office.
They tell me he's making a name for himself in Richmond."
Eugenia laughed lightly.
"Papa adores Mrs. Webb, so he thinks Dudley splendid," she said.
"That lady is one of the noblest of her sex," loyally asserted the
general.
"And one of the most trying of either sex," added his daughter. "When I
came home my last holiday, she asked me what I learned at school, and I
danced a skirt dance for her."
"I always told you you spoiled Eugie to death, Tom," said Miss Chris in
justification of her own responsibility. "In my day no young lady knew
what a skirt dance was."
"But that's what I learned at school," protested Eugenia.
The general, feeling that the conversation excluded Nicholas, renewed
his attack.
"What do you think of raising garden products?" he inquired affably.
Then Eugenia rose, and he submissively retired.
"We aren't going to talk farming any more," said the girl. "Nick and I
are going into the garden for roses," and she descended the steps,
followed by Nicholas, who was beginning for the first time to breathe
freely.
"Tell your father to look into the truck-growing," was the general's
parting shot.
The garden was flushed with the riot of autumn. Over the little
whitewashed fence double rows of hollyhocks and sunflowers nodded their
heavy heads, and bordering the narrow walk were lines of chrysanthemums
and dahlias. October roses, the richest of the year, bloomed and dropped
in the quaint old squares where the long vegetable rows began. At the
end of the straight, overgrown walk the hop vines on the fence threw out
a pungent odour.
"Papa wants to have the garden ploughed," said Eugenia. "He says it
takes too much time to hoe it. Give me your knife, please."
He opened the blade, and she stooped to cut off a crimson dahlia while
the Indian summer sunshine slanted from the west upon her dark head and
white dress. Over all was the faint violet haze of the season, hanging
above the gay old garden like a delicate effluvium from autumns long
decayed.
"There aren't many old-time gardens left," said Nicholas regretfully,
"but I like this one best of all. I always think of you in the midst of
it."
"Yes, we used to gather calacanthus blossoms and trade them for taffy at
school. The bushes are almost all dead now. That is the only one left."
She laid the knife upon the grass and raised her arms to fasten a yellow
chrysanthemum in her hair. As it lay against her ear it cast a clear,
golden light upon her cheek, as warm as the late sunshine.
"Flowers suit you," he said.
"Do they?" she smiled in a quick, pleased way. "Is it because I love
them?"
"It is because you are beautiful," he answered bluntly.
Some one had once called Eugenia's besetting vanity the love of giving
pleasure; it was, perhaps, in reality, the pleasure of being loved. It
was not the fact that she might be beautiful that now warmed her so
gratefully, but the evidence that Nicholas was good enough to consider
her so.
"You have seen so few girls," she remarked reasonably enough.
"I may see many, but it won't alter my view of you."
"How can you tell?"
He shook his head impatiently.
"I shan't tell. I shall prove it."
"And when you have proved it where shall I be?--old and toothless?"
"May be--but still beautiful."
There was a glow in her face, but she did not reply. His eyes and the
last, long ray of sunshine were upon her. He was revoking from an old
October a dark-haired, clear-eyed girl amid the dahlias, and it seemed
to him that Eugenia had shot up in a season like one of the stately
flowers. As she stood in the grass-grown walk, her skirt half-filled
with blossoms, her white hands lifting the thin folds above her ruffled
petticoat, she appeared to be the vital apparition of the place--a
harbinger of the vivid sunlight and the dark shadows of the passing of
the year.
"See how many!" she exclaimed, holding her lapful towards him. "You may
take your choice--only not that last pink papa loves."
He plunged his hands amid the confusion of colours and drew out a yellow
chrysanthemum.
"I like this," he said simply.
She laughed. "But it doesn't suit your hair," she suggested.
He met her sally gravely.
"It is my favourite flower," he returned.
"Since when, pray?"
"Since--since a half-hour ago."
He stooped and picked up his knife from the grass.
"Are you going away?" he asked, "or shall you stay here always?"
"Always," she promptly returned. "I'm going to live here with this old
garden until I grow to be an ancient dame--and you may walk over on
autumn afternoons and I'll be sympathetic about your rheumatism. Isn't
that a picture that delights your soul?"
"No," he said bluntly; "I see a better one."
"Tell me."
"I can never tell you," he replied gravely--"not even when you are an
ancient dame and I rheumatic."
She was merry again.
"Then I fear it's wicked," she said, "and I'm amazed at you. But my
day-dreams are all common ones. I ask only the country and my home and
horses and cows and chickens--and a rheumatic friend. You see I must be
happy, I ask so little."
"And you argue that he who demands little gets it," he returned
lightly. "On the other hand, I should say that he who is content with
less gets nothing. I ask the biggest thing Fate has to give, and then
stand waiting for--"
He paused for a breathless instant while he looked at her, and then
slowly finished:
"For the skies to fall."
They swung open the gate into cattle lane, and stood waiting while the
cows trooped by to the barnyard.
Eugenia called them by name, and they turned great stupid eyes upon her
as they stopped to munch the hollyhocks.
"She was named after you," said the girl suddenly.
"She? Who?" he turned a helpless look upon the two small negroes who
drove the cows.
"Why, Burr Bess, of course--that Jersey there. You know we couldn't name
her Nick because she wasn't a boy, so Bernard called her Burr Bess. You
don't seem pleased."
"She's a fine cow," observed Nicholas critically.
"Oh! she was the most beautiful calf! I thought you remembered it. One
was named after me, but it died, and one was named after Bernard, but it
went to the butcher. Bernard was so angry about it that he waylaid the
cart on the road and let it out. But they caught it again. It was too
bad, wasn't it?"
The garden gate closed behind them with a click, and they crossed the
lane to the lawn.
Miss Chris, who stood shading her eyes in the back porch, was giving
directions to Aunt Verbeny in the smoke-house. When she saw Nicholas
she broke off and asked him to stay to supper, but he declined hastily,
and, with an embarrassed good-evening, turned back into the lane. The
hollyhocks over the whitewashed fence brushed him as he passed, and the
spices of the garden came to him like the essence of the eternal
Romance.
III
Over all hung Indian summer and the happy sunshine. Eugenia, rising at
daybreak for a gallop across country, would feel the dew in her face and
the autumn in her blood. As she dashed over fences and ditches to the
unploughed pasture, the morning was as desolate as midnight--not a soul
showed in the surrounding fields and the long road lay as pallid as a
streak of frost. The loneliness and the hour set her eyes to dancing and
the glad blood to bounding in her veins. When a startled rabbit shied
from the brushwood she would slacken her speed to watch it, and when, as
sometimes chanced, she frightened a covey of partridges from their
retreat, she went softly, rejoicing that no shot was near.
At this time she was possessed, perhaps, of a spirit too elastic, of a
buoyance almost insolent--she turned, as it were, too round a cheek to
Fate. In her clear purity romanticism held no part, and her soul, strong
to adhere, was slow to conform. Her nature was straight as an arrow that
would not fall though it overshot the mark. She dreamed scant dreams of
the future because she clove tenaciously to the past--to the rare
associations and the old affections--to the road and the cedars and the
Hall as to the men and women whose blood she bore and whose likeness she
carried. She loved one and all with a fidelity that did not swerve.
Riding home along the open road that led to the cedars, she marked each
friendly object in its turn--on one side the persimmon tree where the
fruit ripened--on the other the blackened wreck of the giant oak,
towering above the shining spread of life-everlasting. She noted that
the rail fence skirting the pasture sagged at one corner beneath a
weight of poisonous oak, that a mud hole had eaten through the short
strip of "corduroy" road, and that where Uncle Ish's path led to his
cabin the plank across the gully was rapidly rotting. She saw these
things with the tender eyes with which we mark decay in one beloved.
Then, pacing up the avenue to the gravelled walk, she would call
"good-morning" to the general and leap lightly to the ground, fresh as
the day, bright as the autumn.
It was on one of these early rides that she saw Nicholas again. She was
returning leisurely through the stretch of woodland, when, catching
sight of him as he swung vigorously ahead, she quickened her horse's
pace and overtook him as he glanced inquiringly back.
"Divide the worm, early bird," she cried gaily.
He paused as she did, laying his hand on the horse's neck.
"There wasn't but one and you got it," he retorted lightly. "Have you
been far?"
"Miles, and I'm as hungry as two bears. Have you anything in your
pocket?"
Her glowing face rose against a background of maple boughs, which
surrounded her like a flame. The mist of the morning was on her lips and
her eyes were shining. He felt her beauty leap like wine to his brain,
and he set his teeth and looked blankly down the road.
She laughed as she plunged her hand into the pocket of his coat. "You
used to have apples," she complained, "or honeyshucks, at least--now
there's only this."
It was a worn little Latin text book, with frayed edges and soiled
leaves.
"Give it to me," he said quickly, but as he reached to take it from her
the leaves fell open and she saw her own name written and rewritten
across the crumpled pages.
She closed it and gave it back to him.
"You used that long ago," she remarked carelessly; "very long ago."
He replaced the book in his pocket, his steady eyes upon her.
"That's what we get for rifling our neighbour's pockets," he said
quietly, "and what we deserve."
"No," she returned with equal gravity, "sometimes we get apples--or even
peanuts, which we don't deserve."
He took no notice of the retort, but answered half-absently a former
question.
"Yes; I used that long ago," he said. "You don't think I would write
your name 'Genia' now, do you?"
There was a dignity in his assumption of indifference--in his absolute
refusal to betray himself, which bore upon her conception of his
manhood. There was strength in his face, strength in his voice, strength
in his quiet hand that lay upon her bridle. She looked down on him with
thoughtful eyes.
"If you wrote of me at all," she returned. "It is my name."
"But I am not to call you by it."
"Why not?"
"Why not?" He laughed with a touch of bitterness, and held out his hand,
fresh from the soil, hardened by the plough. It was a powerful hand,
brown and sinewy, with distorted knuckles and broken nails. "Oh, not
that," he said. "I don't mean that. That shows work, but I know
you--Genia--you will tell me work is manly. So it is, but is ignorance
and poverty and--and all the rest--"
She leaned over and touched his hand lightly with her own. "All the rest
is courage and patience and pride," she said; "as for the hand, it is a
good hand, and I like it."
He shook his head.
"Good enough in its place, I grant you," he answered; "good enough in
the fields, at the plough; or in the barnyard--good enough even to keep
this poor farm from collapse and to lift a few of its burdens--but not
good enough to--"
He raised her hand lightly, regarding it with half-humorous eyes.
"How strong it is to be so light!" he added.
"Strong enough to hold fast to its friends," returned Eugenia gravely.
He let it fall and looked into her face.
"May its friends be worthy ones," he said.
She rode slowly through the wood, and he walked with his hand on her
bridle. The bright branches struck them as they passed, and sometimes he
stopped to hold them aside for her. His eyes followed her as she rode
serenely above him, and he thought, in his folly, of the lady in the old
romance who was, to the desire of her lovers, as "a distant flame, a
sword afar off."
"It was here that you told me good-bye when you went off to school," he
said recklessly.
"Was it?" she asked. "I was very miserable that day and you gave me no
comfort. You didn't even come down to the road next morning to see me go
by."
"Yes, I know," he admitted.
"I thought you were asleep, and I was angry."
"No, I was not asleep. I was at work."
"But you might have come."
"Yes, I might have come," he repeated absently, and quickly corrected
himself. "No, I mean I couldn't come, of course. If you were to go away
to-morrow, I couldn't come. Something would rise and prevent. I have a
presentiment that I shall never say good-bye to you."
She dissented. "I've a feeling that I shall say 'God speed' to you when
you go off to become a great man."
"A great man? Do you mean a rich man?" he asked quickly.
"Oh, dear, yes," she mocked; "a great, gouty gentleman, who owns a
couple of railroads and wears an electric light in his shirt-front."
His lips laughed, but his eyes were grave.
"And when I came back to you with such trophies," he objected, "you
would tell me that the railroads belonged to the people and that the
electric light only served to illuminate my ugliness."
"And I should take it to wear on my forehead," she added. "What
prophetic insight!"
"But 'going off' does not always mean railroads and electric light," he
went on half seriously. "Suppose I came back poor, but honest, as they
say?"
Laughter rippled on her lips. He watched the humorous tremor of her
nostrils.
"Then I should probably kill the fatted chicken for you," she said.
There was a touch of bitterness in his answer. "Only in that case I
should stay away." As he spoke he stopped to break off a drooping branch
from a sweet-gum tree that grew near the road.
"You once called this your colour," he said quietly as he fastened the
leaves on her horse's head. "There is no tree that turns so clear and so
fiery."
Then, as she rode on with the branch waving like a banner before her, he
laughed with a keen delight in the savage brilliance.
"You remind me of--who is it?" he asked--"'_Clear as the sun and
terrible as an army with banners_.'"
Her smile was warm upon him.
"But my banners fall before the wind," she said as several loosened
leaves fluttered to the road. "So I am not terrible, after all." The
glow of the gum-tree was in her face. His eyes fell before it, and he
did not speak. The soft footfalls of the horse on the damp ground
sounded distinctly. Overhead the wind rustled among the trees.
As they emerged from the wood and passed the Burr farm they saw Amos
leaning on his gate, looking moodily upon the morning.
"Good-morning, Mr. Burr!" said Eugenia with the pleasant condescension
of the general in her manner. "Fine weather, isn't it?"
He nodded awkwardly and admitted, with a muttered reservation, that the
weather might be worse. Then he looked at Nicholas. "If you ain't got
nothin' better to do I reckon you might lend a hand at the ploughin',"
he surlily suggested.
"Why, so I might," assented Nicholas good-humouredly. "I've a couple of
hours free."
He fastened more securely the branch in the horse's bridle; then,
raising his hat, he turned and vaulted the whitewashed fence, while
Eugenia, touching her horse into a gallop, vanished in the distance of
the open road, blazing her track with scarlet gum leaves that scattered
royally in the wind.
As Nicholas passed the peanut field he nodded pleasantly to the
congregation of negroes assembled for the annual festival called "a
picking." They ranged in degrees from Uncle Ish, the oldest
representative of his race, to Betsey's five-year-old Jeremiah, who had
already been detected in an attempt to filch the nuts from an overturned
shock, and was being soundly admonished by his mother's avenging palm.
The ground was strewn with baskets and buckets of varying dimensions,
into which the nuts were gathered before being consigned to the huge
hamper guarded by Amos Burr. A hoarse clamour, like that produced by a
flock of crows, went up from the animated swarm as it settled to work.
Nicholas crossed to the adjoining field and ploughed deep furrows in the
soil, going into breakfast with the smell of the warm earth about him
and the glow of exercise in his blood. He ate heartily and listened
without remark to the political vagaries of his father. Amos Burr had
been "looking into politics" of late, and his stubborn wits had been
fixed by a grievance. "If he was a fool befo' now, he's a plum fool
now," Marthy Burr had observed dispassionately. "I ain't never seen no
head so level that it could bear the lettin' in of politics. It makes a
fool of a man and a worse fool of a fool. The government's like a mule,
it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the
way you don't want it."
"I tell you it's done promised to help the farmer," put in Amos heavily,
bringing his large red hand down upon the table. "Ain't it been helpin'
the manufacturer all these years? Ain't it been lookin' arter the
labourer, black an' white? Ain't it time for it to keep its word to the
farmer?"
"In the meantime I'd finish that piece of ploughing, if I were you,"
suggested Nicholas. "The more work in the fall the less in the
spring--that's a proverb for you."
"I don't want no proverb," returned Amos sullenly. "I want my rights,
an' I want the country to give 'em to me."
"I ain't never seen no good come of settin' down an' wishin' for
rights," remarked his wife tartly. "It's a sight better to be up an'
plantin'."
Nicholas finished his breakfast, and a little later walked in to town.
He was in exuberant spirits, and his thoughts were high on the
scaffolding where his future was building. Success and Eugenia startled,
allured, delighted him. He was at the age of sublime self-confidence,
but his eyes were not bandaged by it. He knew that without success--such
success as he dreamed of--there could be, for him, no Eugenia. He
believed in her as he believed in the sun, and yet he was not sure of
her--he could not be until he possessed her and she bore his name. That
she might not love him he admitted; that she might even love another he
saw to be dimly possible; but he was determined that so long as no other
man held her his arms should be open. In the first ardour of his mood
his relative position to that society of which she formed a part was
lost sight of, if not obscured. Now he realised bitterly that he might
work for a lifetime in the class in which he was born, and at the end
still find Eugenia far from him. He must rise above his work and his
people, he must cut his old name anew, he must walk rough-shod where his
mind led him--among men who were his superiors only in the accident of a
better birthright. And if on that higher plane his ambitions did not
betray, he would bring honour to his State and to Eugenia.
Here the two loves of the boy and the man stood out boldly. The old
romantic fervour with which he had longed for the days of Marshall and
Madison, of Jefferson and Henry, still lingered on as an exotic
patriotism in an era of time-servers and unprofitable servants. There
was an old-fashioned democracy about him--a pioneer simplicity--as one
who had walked from the great days of Virginia into her lesser ones. A
century ago he might have left his plough to fight, and, having fought,
might have returned thereto; but the battle would have tingled in his
blood and the furrows have gone crooked. He would have ploughed, not for
love of the plough, but because the time for the sowing of the grain had
come.
Now he walked rapidly to his work, seeing Eugenia in the woods, in the
sunshine, in the very clouds lifted high above. The thought of her
surrounded him as an atmosphere.
As for the girl, she rode home and spent the long day in the garden
potting plants for the winter. When she came into the hall in the early
afternoon, with her trowel in her hand and her sleeves rolled back from
her white arms, her father called her to the porch, and, going out, she
found Dudley Webb in one of the cane chairs. He sprang to his feet as
she reached the threshold, and held out his hand, but she laughed and
showed the earth that clung to her wrists. "Unclean! unclean!" she cried
gaily. Her face had flushed from its warm pallor and her hair hung low
upon her forehead. A long streak of clay lay across her skirt where she
had knelt in the flower-bed.
He seized her protesting hand, admiration lighting his eyes. "Why,
little Eugie is a woman!" he exclaimed. "Can you grasp it, General?"
The general shook his head.
"If she wasn't almost as tall as I, I shouldn't believe it," he
declared, "though she's as old as her mother was when I married her."
Eugenia seated herself upon the bench, still holding the trowel in her
hand. She was watching the interest in her father's face, and she
realised, half resentfully, that it was evoked by Dudley Webb.
He had drawn the general's favourite anecdotes from him, and they had
plunged together into a discussion of the good old days. After a few
light words she sat silent, listening with tender attention to the
threadbare stories on the one side and the hearty applause of them on
the other. She wondered wistfully why Dudley and herself were the only
persons who understood as well as loved the general. Why was it Dudley,
and not Nicholas, who brought that youthful look to his face and the
heartiness to his voice?
"Some one was telling me the other day--I think it was Colonel
Preston--that he fought beside you at Seven Pines," Dudley was saying
with that absorption in his subject which won him a friend in every man
who told him a joke.
"Jake Preston!" exclaimed the general. "Why, bless my soul! I've slept
under the same blanket with Jake Preston twenty times. I was standing by
him when he got that bullet in his thigh. Did he tell you?"
Eugenia rose in a moment and went back to her flowers. As she passed she
threw a grateful glance at Dudley, but when she reached the garden it
was of Nicholas she was thinking. There was a glow at her heart that
kept alive the memory of his eyes as he looked at her in the wood, of
his voice when he called her name, of his hand when it brushed her own.
She fell happily to work, and when Dudley came out, an hour later, to
find her, she was singing softly as she uprooted a scarlet geranium.
He smiled and looked down on her with frank enjoyment of her ripening
womanhood, but it did not occur to him to join in the transplanting as
Nicholas would have done. He held off and absorbed the picture.
"You do papa so much good!" said Eugenia gratefully. "I hope you will
come out whenever you are in Kingsborough."
She was kneeling upon the ground, her hands buried in the flower-bed,
her firm arms rising white above the rich earth. The line of her bosom
rose and fell swiftly, and her breath came in soft pants. There was a
flush in her cheeks.
"If you wish it I will come," he answered impulsively. "I will come to
Kingsborough every week if you wish it."
His temperament responded promptly to the appeal of her beauty, and his
blood quickened as it did when women moved him. There was about him,
withal, a fantastic chivalry which succumbed to the glitter of false
sentiment. He would have made the remark had Eugenia been plain--but he
would not have come to Kingsborough.
"It would please your mother," returned the girl quietly. She had the
sexual self-poise of the Virginia woman, and she weighed the implied
compliment at its due value. Had he declared he would die for her once a
week, she would have received the assurance with much the same smiling
indifference.
"I'll run down, I think, pretty often this winter," he went on easily.
"It's a nice old town, after all--isn't it?"
"It's the dearest old town in the world," said Eugenia.
"Well, I believe it is--strange, I used to find it dull, don't you
think? By the way, will you let me ride with you sometimes? I hear you
are as great a horsewoman as ever."
Eugenia looked up calmly.
"I go very early," she answered. "Can you get up at daybreak?"
He laughed his pleasant laugh.
"Oh, I might manage it," he rejoined. "I'm not much of an early riser, I
never knew before what charms the sunrise held."
But Eugenia went on potting plants.
IV
During the following week Sally Burwell came to spend the night with
Eugenia, and the girls sat before the log fire in Eugenia's room until
they heard the cocks crow shrilly from the hen-house. The room was a
large, old-fashioned chamber, full of dark corners and unsuspected
alcoves; and the lamp on the bureau served only to intensify the shadows
that lay beyond its faint illumination.
Sally, her pretty hair in a tumble on her shoulders and the light of the
logs on her bare arms, was stretched upon the hearth-rug, looking up at
Eugenia, who lay in an easy-chair, her feet almost touching the embers.
A waiter of russet apples was on the floor beside them.
"This is my idea of comfort," murmured Sally sleepily as she munched an
apple. "No men and no manners."
"If you liked it, you'd come often, chick," returned Eugenia.
"Bless you! I'm too busy. I made over two dresses this week, trimmed
mamma a bonnet, and covered a sofa with cretonne. One of the dresses is
a love. I wore it yesterday, and Dudley said it reminded him of one he'd
seen on the stage."
"He says a good deal," observed Eugenia unsympathetically.
"Doesn't he?" laughed Sally. "At any rate, he said that he found you
reading Plato under the trees, and that any woman who read Plato ought
to be ostracised--unless she happens to be handsome enough to make you
overlook it. Is that your Plato? What is he like?"
Eugenia savagely shook her head.
"It's no affair of his," she retorted promptly, meaning not Plato, but
Dudley.
"Oh! he said he knew it wasn't. I think he even wished it were. You're
too unconventional for him--he frankly admits it--but he admits also
that you're good-looking enough to warrant the unconventionality of a
Hottentot--and you are, you dear, bad thing, though your forehead's too
high and your chin's too long and your nose isn't all that a nose should
be."
"Thanks," drawled Eugenia amicably. "But Dudley's a nice fellow, all the
same. He gets on splendidly with papa--and I bless him for it."
"He gets on well with everybody--even his mother--which makes me suspect
that he's a Job masquerading as an Apollo. By the way, Mrs. Webb wants
you to join some society she's getting up called the 'Daughters of
Duty.'"
"Oh, I can't! I can't!" protested Eugenia distressfully. "I detest
'Daughter' things, and I have a rooted aversion to my duty. But if she
comes to me I'll join it--I know I shall! How did you keep out of it?"
"I didn't. I'm in it. It seems that our duty is confined to 'preserving
the antiquities' of Kingsborough--so I began by presenting a jar of
pickled cucumbers to Uncle Ish. I trust they won't be the death of him,
but he was the only antiquity in sight."
She gave the smouldering log a push with her foot, and it broke apart,
scattering a shower of sparks. "I don't know any other woman so much
admired and so little loved," she mused of Mrs. Webb.
"Papa worships her," said Eugenia. "All men do--at a distance. She's the
kind of woman you never get near enough to to feel that she is flesh.
Now, Aunt Chris is just the opposite. No one ever gets far enough away
from her to feel that she's a saint--which she is."
"It's odd she never married," wondered Sally.
"She never had time to." Eugenia clasped her hands behind her head and
looked up at the high, plastered ceiling. "She never happened to be in a
place where she could be spared. But you know her lover died when she
was young," she added. "It broke her heart, but it did not destroy her
happiness. She has been happy for forty years with a broken heart."
"I know," said Sally. "It seems strange, doesn't it? But I've known so
many like her. The happiest woman I ever knew had lost everything she
cared for in the war. That war was fought on women's hearts, but they
went on beating just the same. I'm glad I wasn't I then."
"And I'm sorry. I like stirring deeds and shot and shell and tattered
flags. They thrill one."
"And kill one," added Sally. "But you've got that kind of pluck. You
aren't afraid."
"Oh! yes, I am," protested Eugenia. "I'm afraid of bats and of getting
fat like my forefathers."
Sally shook a reassuring head.
"But you won't, darling. Your mother was thin, and you're the image of
her--everybody says so."
"But I'm afraid--horribly afraid. I don't dare eat potatoes, and I
wouldn't so much as look at a glass of buttermilk. The fear is on me."
"It's absurd. Why, your grandma Tucker was a rail--I remember her. I
know your other grandmother was--enormous; but you ought to strike the
happy medium--and you do. You're splendid. You aren't a bit too large
for your height."
Eugenia laughed as she twisted Sally's curls about her fingers. "You're
the dearest little duck that ever lived on dry land," she said. "If I
were a man I'd be wild about you."
"A few of them are," returned Sally meekly, casting up her eyes, "but
I--"
"How about Gerald Smith?"
"He's too tall. I look like an aspiring grasshopper beside him."
"And Jack Wyth?"
"He's too short."
"And Sydney Kent?"
"He's too stupid."
"And Tom Bassett?"
Sally yawned.
"He's too--everything. There's cock crow, and I'm going to bed."
The next afternoon Eugenia drove Sally in to town, and stopped on her
outward trip to pay a visit to Mrs. Webb. She found that lady serenely
seated in her drawing-room, as unruffled as if she had not just
dismissed a cook and cooked a dinner.
"Oh, yes, thank you, dear, all is well," she replied in answer to the
girl's question; for she held it to be vulgarity to allude, in her
drawing-room, to the trials of housekeeping. She was not touched by such
questions because she ignored that she was in any way concerned in them.
She spent six hours a day with her servants, but had she spent
twenty-four she would have remained secure in her conviction that they
did not come within the sphere of her life.
"I have wanted to see you to ask you to join my society, the 'Daughters
of Duty,'" she went on, her eyes on a piece of fine white damask she was
hem-stitching. "Its object is to preserve our old landmarks, and when I
spoke to your father he told me he was quite sure you would care to
become an active member."
"I'm afraid I don't have much time," began Eugenia helplessly, when Mrs.
Webb interrupted her, though without haste or discourtesy.
"Not have time, my dear?" she repeated with her slow, fine smile. "If I
can find time, with all my other duties, don't you think that you might
be able to do so?"
Eugenia was baffled. "Of course I love Kingsborough," she said, "and I'd
preserve every inch of it with my own hands if I could--but I can't bear
meetings--and--and things."
Mrs. Webb took a careful stitch in the damask. "I thought you might care
enough to assist us," she remarked tentatively; and Eugenia succumbed.
"I'll do anything I can," she declared. "I will, indeed--only you
mustn't expect much."
In a few moments she rose to go, lingering with a courteous appearance
of being unwilling to depart, which belonged to her social training. As
she stood in the doorway, her hand in Mrs. Webb's, the older woman
looked at her almost affectionately.
"I had a letter from Dudley this morning," she said. "He is coming down
next week for Sunday."
A flush crossed Eugenia's face, evoking an expression of irritation.
"You must miss him," she observed sympathetically.
"I do miss him, but he comes often. He is a good son. He sent a message
to you, by the way, but it was not important."
"No, it was not important," repeated Eugenia with a feeling that her
carelessness appeared to be assumed.
She lightly kissed Mrs. Webb and ran down the steps and into the
carriage, which was waiting in the road. Her visit had left her with a
curious sense of oppression, and she breathed a long draught of the
invigorating air.
As she drove down the street she saw Nicholas coming out of his office
and offered him a "lift" to his home. He said little on the way, and his
utterances were forced, but Eugenia talked lightly and rapidly, as she
always did when with him.
She told him of Sally Burwell, of the last letter from Bernard--who was
coming home soon--of Mrs. Webb and the "Daughters of Duty."
"The truth is, I like her, but I'm afraid of her--dreadfully."
"She disapproves of your--your liking for me," he said bitterly. "But
every one does that--even the judge, though he doesn't say anything. And
they are right--I see it. You know from what I came and what I am."
"Yes, I know what you are," she returned defiantly, "and they shall all
know some day."
He turned and looked at her as she sat beside him, but he was silent,
nor did he speak until he said "good-bye" before his father's gate.
It was some days later that she saw him again. She had gone out to
gather goldenrod for the great blue vases that stood on the dining-room
mantel-piece, and was standing knee-deep in the ragged field, when he
leaped the fence that divided the farms and crossed to where she stood.
The sun was going down behind the blackened branches of the dead oak,
and the wide common, spread with goldenrod and life-everlasting, lay
like a sea of flame and snow. Eugenia, standing in its midst, a tall
woman in a dress of brown, fell in richly with the surrounding colours.
Her arms were filled with the yellow plumes and her dress was tinselled
with the dried pollen that floated in the air. As Nicholas reached her
she was seeking to free herself from the clutch of a crimson briar that
crawled along the ground, and in the effort some of the broken stalks
slipped from her hold.
Without speaking, he knelt beside her and released her skirt. "You have
torn it," he said quietly, but he was looking up at her, and there was
a quality in his voice which thrilled her.
"Have I?" she returned quickly. "Well, I can mend it--but there! it's
caught again. I've been trying to get free for--hours."
He smiled.
"You came into the field only twenty minutes ago. I saw you. But, hold
on. I'll uproot this blackberry vine while I'm about it."
He tore it from its tenacious hold to the earth and flung it into the
field. Then he examined the rent in Eugenia's dress.
"If you had waited until I came you might have spared yourself
this--patch," he observed.
"I shan't patch it--and I didn't know you were coming."
"Don't I always come--when there's a patch to be saved?" he asked. "I
hate to see things ruined."
"Then you might have come sooner. There, give me my goldenrod. It's all
scattered."
He began patiently to gather up the stalks, arranging them in an even
layer of equal lengths.
Eugenia watched him, laughing.
"How precise you are!" she said.
"Aren't they right?" He looked up for her approval, and she saw that he
had grown singularly boyish. His face was less rugged, more sensitive.
He wore no hat, and his thick red hair had fallen across his forehead.
She felt the peculiar power of his look as she had felt it before.
"No, they're wrong. They aren't Chinese puzzles. Don't fix them so
tight. Here."
She took them from him, and as his hands touched hers she noticed that
they were cold. "You're shaking them all apart," he protested, "and I
took such a lot of trouble."
As she bent her head his eyes followed the dark coil of hair to the
white nape of her neck where her collar rose. Several loose strands had
blown across her ear and wound softly about the delicate lobe. He wanted
to raise his hand and put them in place, but he checked himself with a
start. With his eyes upon her he recalled the warmth of her woollen
dress, and he wished that he had put his lips to it as he knelt. She
would never have known.
Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly
invested with the glory of the sunset. The goldenrod burned at her feet
and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face. The next
moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light--the field,
with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out
his hand like one in pain.
"What is it?" she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the
general radiance. "You have been looking at the sun. It hurts my eyes."
"No," he answered steadily, "I was looking at you."
She thrilled as he spoke and brought her eyes to the level of his. Then
she would have looked away, but his gaze held her, and she made a sudden
movement of alarm--a swift tremor to escape. She held the sheaf of
goldenrod to her bosom and above it her eyes shone; her breath came
quickly between her parted lips. All her changeful beauty was startled
into life.
"Genia!" he said softly, so softly that he seemed speaking to himself.
"Genia!"
"Yes?" She responded in the same still whisper.
"You know?"
"Yes, I know," she repeated slowly. Her glance fell from his and she
turned away.
"You know it is--impossible," he said.
"Yes, I know it is impossible."
There was a gasp in her voice. She turned to move onward--a briar caught
her dress; she stumbled for an instant, and he flung out his arms.
"You know it is impossible," he said, and kissed her.
The sheaf of goldenrod loosened and scattered between them. Her head lay
on his arm, and he felt her warm breath come and go. Her face was
upturned, and he saw her eyes as he had never seen them before--light on
light, shadow on shadow. He looked at her in the brief instant as a man
looks to remember--at the white brow--the red mouth, at the blue veins,
and the dark hair, at the upward lift of the chin and the straight
throat--at all the perfect colouring and the imperfect outline.
"You know it is impossible," he repeated, and put her from him.
Eugenia gathered herself together like one stunned. "I must go," she
said breathlessly. "I must go."
Then she hesitated and stood before him, her hands on her bosom, a
single spray of goldenrod clinging to her dress.
He folded his arms as he faced her.
"I have loved you all my life," he said.
She bowed her head; her face had gone white.
"I shall always love you," he went on. "You may as well know it. Men
change, but I do not. I have never really loved anybody else. I have
tried to love my family, but I never did. When I was a little,
God-forsaken chap I used to want to love people, but I couldn't--I
couldn't even love the judge--whom I would die for. I love you."
"I know it," she said.