with warmth and laughter and the vague perfume of women's dresses
mingled with the odour of American Beauty roses. An old-fashioned polka
was in the air, and beyond the furthest doorway he saw young people
dancing. The red candles were burning down, and drops of wax lay like
flecks of blood upon the floor. Near the entrance, a small, dark woman
was leaning upon a marble table, and as she saw him she held out a
cordial hand. She was plain and thin, with pale, startled eyes and a
mouth that slanted upward at one corner, like a crooked seam. She spoke
in an abrupt, skipping manner that possessed a surprising fascination.
"Behold the conquering hero!" she exclaimed, her pale eyes roving from
side to side. "I suppose if you were never late, you would never be
longed for."
"My dear Miss Preston," protested pretty little Mrs. Carrington, who was
soft and drowsy, with eyes that reminded one of a ruminating heifer's.
"I assure you, I have been positively longing to have you gratify my
curiosity," declared Miss Preston. "You know you do such dear, eccentric
things that we couldn't exist without you--at least I couldn't because I
should perish of boredom. No, you shan't escape just yet, so stop
looking at that beautiful Mrs. Galt. You must tell me first if it is
really true that you once carried a woman out of a burning building in
your right hand. It is so delightful to be strong, don't you think?"
The governor regarded her gravely. Before her animated chatter his
gravity became almost grotesque. "The only burning building I was ever
in was a burning smoke-house," he returned quietly. "I never carried a
woman out of anything in either hand."
There was a bored expression in his eyes, and he glanced beyond the
group to where Juliet stood surrounded.
"Pardon me," he said in a moment, and passed on.
In the crowd about him, where pretty women were as plentiful as pinks in
a garden bed, he moved awkwardly, with the hesitating steps of a man
who is uncertain of his pathway. His powerful frame and the splendid
vigour in his daring strides seemed out of place amid a profusion of
exotics that trembled as he passed. His appearance suggested the
battlegrounds of nature--high places, or the breadth of the open fields;
at the plough he would have been grandly picturesque, in the centre of a
throng of graceful men and women he loomed merely large and ill at ease.
Above his evening clothes his face showed rough, rather than refined,
and his stubborn jaw gave an impression of heaviness.
As he reached Juliet she uttered an exclamation of pleasure and held out
her hand. "Emma, you have heard of my Sunday-school scholar," she said
to a girl beside her. "My prize scholar, I mean. Sally, have you seen
the governor?"
Emma Carr, a pink-and-white girl who bore herself with the air of an
acknowledged belle, bowed, with a platitude that sounded original on her
lovely lips, and Sally Bassett turned with a hearty handshake.
"And he is our Nick Burr!" she exclaimed. "Tom, where are you?"
She spoke with an impulsive flutter which he had remembered as the
sparkle of mere girlish liveliness. Now he saw that it had degenerated
into a restlessness that appeared to result from a continued waste of
nervous energy. She looked older than Juliet, though she was in fact
much younger, and her face was drawn and heavily lined as if by years of
ill-health. Her physical strength was prodigious; one perceived it with
the suddenness of surprise. Much the same impression was produced by
her youthful manner in connection with her worn features; yet, in spite
of her faded prettiness, there was a singular charm in her unabated
vivacity.
She darted off in pursuit of Tom, to be arrested by the first newcomer
she encountered, and Nicholas was responding gravely to Juliet's banter
when his eyes fell full upon Eugenia Battle as she stood at a little
distance.
He had not seen her for fifteen years, and he started quickly as if from
an unsuspected shock. She was talking rapidly in her fervent voice, the
old illumination in her look. Her noble figure, in a straight flaxen
gown, was drawn against a background of green, her head was bent forward
on her long white neck, her kindly hands were outstretched. She had
developed from a girl into a woman, but to him she was unchanged. Her
face was, perhaps, older, her bosom fuller, but he did not see it--to
him she appeared as the resurrected spirit of his youth. Miss Carr was
speaking and he made some brief rejoinder. Eugenia had turned and was
looking at him; in a moment he heard her voice.
"Are old friends too far beneath the eyes of your excellency?" she
asked, and he heard the soft laugh pulse in her throat.
Her hand was outstretched, and he took it for an instant in his own.
"I am very glad to see you," he remarked lamely as he let it fall--so
lamely that he bit his lip at the remembrance. "You are looking well,"
he added.
"Of course--a woman always looks well at night," she answered lightly.
"And you," she laughed again, her kindly, unconscious laugh; "you are
looking--large."
He did not smile. "I have no doubt of it," he responded, and was silent.
Juliet Galt broke in with an affectionate protest. "Eugie is as great a
tease as ever," she said. "She will be the death of my baby yet. I tell
her to choose one of her own size, but she never does. She always
plagues those smaller than herself--or larger."
But Eugenia had turned away to greet a stranger, and in a moment
Nicholas drew back into a windowed embrasure where the lights were dim.
Suddenly a voice broke upon his ear addressing Juliet Galt--the vibrant
tones of Dudley Webb. He had come in late and was standing in mock
helplessness before Juliet and Carrie, his plump white hand vacillating
between the two.
"I am at a loss!" he exclaimed with an appealing shrug of his shoulders.
"Which is the débutante?"
Juliet laughed, her cheeks mantling with a pleased blush.
"You're a sad flatterer, Dudley! Isn't he, Eugie?"
Eugenia turned with a questioning glance.
"Oh, it's just his way," she returned good-humouredly. "A kindly
Providence has decreed that he should cover over my deficiencies."
Dudley protested affably, and ended by giving a hand to each. In the
crowded rooms he had become at once the picturesque and popular figure.
His magnetism was immediately felt, and men and women surrounded him in
small circles, while his pleasant words ran on smoothly, accompanied by
the ring of his infectious laugh. The luminous pallor of his clear-cut,
yet fleshy face, was accentuated by the sweep of his dark hair that
clung closely to his forehead. He seemed to have brought with him into
the heated rooms the spirit of humour and the zest of life.
From the deep embrasure Nicholas Burr watched curiously the flutter of
women's skirts and the flicker of candle light on shining heads. Eugenia
moved easily from group to group, the straight fall of her flaxen gown
giving her an added height, the dark coil of hair on the nape of her
long neck seeming to rise above the shoulders of other women. She was
never silent--for one and all she had some ready words, and her manner
was cordial, almost affectionate. It was as if she were in the midst of
a great family party, held together by the ties of blood.
In a far corner Juliet Galt and Emma Carr, the prettiest women in the
room, sat together upon a corn-coloured divan, and in front of them a
file of men passed and repassed slowly on their way to and from the
dining-room, pausing to exchange brief remarks and drifting on
aimlessly. Near them a fair, pale gentleman, robust and slightly bald,
with protruding eyes and anæmic lips, had flung himself upon a gilded
chair, a glass of punch in his hand. He had danced incessantly for hours
in the adjoining room, and at last, wearied, winded, with a palpitating
heart, he had found a punch bowl and a gilded chair.
Through the doorway floated music and the laughter of young girls
intoxicated with the dance. In the hall, some had sought rest upon the
stairway, and sat in radiant clusters, fanning themselves briskly as
they talked. There was about them an absence of coquetry as of
self-consciousness; they were frank, cordial-voiced, almost boyish.
The governor stepped suddenly from the embrasure and ran against Ben
Galt, who caught his arm.
"I've been searching the house for you," he exclaimed, "after landing my
twelfth matron in the dining-room." Then catching sight of the other's
face, he inquired blandly:
"Bored?"
"I am."
Galt gave a comprehending wink.
"So am I. These things are death. I say, don't go! Come into the library
and we'll lock the door and have supper shoved in through the window,
while we talk business. I've a decanter of the finest Madeira you ever
tasted behind the bookcase. Juliet will never know, and I don't care a
continental if she does. I'm a desperate man!"
"I was just going," replied the governor. "I'm not up to parties; but
lead off, if it's out of this."
VI
It was one o'clock when the governor left Galt's house, and turning into
Grace Street strolled leisurely in the direction of the Capitol Square.
The night was sharp with frost and a rising wind drove the shadows on
the pavement against darkened house-fronts, while behind a far-off
church spire, a wizened moon shivered through a thin cloud. On the
silence came the sound of fire bells ringing in the distance.
The bronze Washington in the deserted square shone silver beneath the
moonlight, and down the frozen slopes the trees stretched out stiffened
limbs. From the governor's house a broad light streamed, and quickening
his pace he entered the iron gate, which closed after him with a
rheumatic cough, and briskly ascended the stone steps. As he drew the
latch-key from his pocket he was thinking of his library, where the
firelight fell on cheerful walls and red leathern chairs, and with the
closing of the door he crossed the hall and entered the first room on
the left.
A red fire burned in the grate, and the furniture reflected the colour
until the place seemed pervaded by a visible warmth. The desk in the
centre of the room, the shining backs of law books, the crimson rugs,
the engravings on the walls, the easy chair drawn up before the hearth,
presented to him as he entered now the security of individual isolation.
He had felt the same sense of restfulness when he had ascended, after
the day's work, to the little whitewashed attic of his father's house.
To-night he liked the glow because it suggested warmth, but he could not
have told off-hand the colour of the carpet or the subjects of the
engravings on the wall; and had he found a white pine chair in place of
the red leathern one, he would have used it without an admission of
discomfort. In the midnight hours he liked the empty house about
him--the silence and the safeguard of his loneliness. The deserted
reception-rooms at the end of the hall pleased him by their stillness
and the cold of their fireless grates. Even the stiff, unyielding
furniture, in its fancy dress of satin brocade, soothed him by its
remoteness when he passed it wrapped in thought.
He flung himself into the easy chair, raised the light by which he read,
and unfolded a newspaper lying upon his desk. As he did so an article
which concerned himself caught his eye, and he read it with curious
intentness.
"THE MAN WITH THE CONSCIENCE.
REFUSES TO RECOMMEND THE PROPOSED
RESTRICTION OF THE SUFFRAGE.
ATTACHES HIS SIGNATURE TO SEVERAL BILLS.--TO
AMEND AND RE-ENACT THE CHARTER OF THE
TOWN OF CULPEPER--TO ESTABLISH A
FERRY ACROSS THE PIANKITANK."
He reread it abstractedly, pondering not the future of Culpeper or of
the Piankitank River, but the title by which he was beginning to be
known:
"The Man with the Conscience!" He had been in office less than a month,
and three times within the last week he had been called "The Man with
the Conscience." Once a member of the Senate had declared on the floor
that the "two strongest factors in present State politics are found to
be in the will of the people and the conscience of the governor." The
morning papers had reported it, and when, several days later, he had
vetoed a bill providing to place certain powers in the hands of a
corporation that was backed by large capital, he had been hailed again
as "The Man with the Conscience!" Now he wondered as he read what the
verdict would be to-morrow, when his refusal to sign a document which
lay at that moment upon his desk must become widely known. He had
refused, not because the bill granted too great rights to a corporation,
but because it needlessly restricted the growth of a railroad. Would his
refusal in this instance be dubbed "conscience" or "inconsistency"?
At the moment he was the people's man--this he knew. His name was
cheered by the general voice. As he passed along the street bootblacks
hurrahed! him. He had determined that the governorship should cease to
represent a figurehead, and for right or wrong, he was the man of the
hour.
He laid the paper aside, and lifting a pipe from his desk, slowly
lighted it. As the smoke curled up, it circled in gray rings upon the
air, filling the room with the aroma of the Virginia leaf. He watched it
idly, his mind upon the pile of unopened letters awaiting his attention.
Above the mantel hung a small oil painting of a Confederate soldier
after Appomattox, and it reminded him vaguely of some one whom he had
half forgotten. He followed the trail for a moment and gave it up.
Higher still was an engraving of Mr. Jefferson Davis, with the
well-remembered Puritan cast of feature and the severe chin beard.
Beneath the pictures a trivial ornament stood on the mantel and beside
it a white rose in water breathed a fading fragrance. A child who had
come to feed the squirrels in the square had put the rose in his coat,
and he had transferred it to the glass of water.
He turned towards his desk and took up several cards that he had not
seen. So Rann had called in his absence--and Vaden and Diggs. As he
pushed the cards aside, he summoned mentally the men before him and
weighed the possible values of each. Why had Rann called, he
wondered--he had an object, of course, for he did not pay so much as a
call without a purpose. The name evoked the man--he saw him plainly in
the circles of gray smoke--a stout, square figure, with short legs, his
plaid socks showing beneath light trousers; a red, hairy face, with a
wart in his left eyebrow, which was heavier than his right one; a large
head, prematurely bald, and beneath an almost intellectual forehead, a
pair of shrewd, intelligent eyes. Rann was a match for any man in
politics, he knew--the great, silent voice, some one had said--the man
who was clever enough to let others do his talking for him. Yes, he was
glad that Rann would back him up.
The remaining callers appeared together in his reverie--Vaden and Diggs.
They were never mentioned apart, and they never worked singly. They
were honest men, whose honesty was dangerous because it went with dull
credulity. In appearance they were so unlike as to make the connection
ludicrous. Vaden was long, emaciated, with a shrunken chest in which a
consumptive cough rattled. His face was scholarly, pallid, pleasant to
look at, and there was a sympathetic quality in his voice which carried
with it a reminder of past bereavements. Beside the sentimental languor
which enveloped him, Diggs loomed grotesquely fair and florid, with eyes
bulging with joviality, and red, repellent, almost gluttonous lips. He
was a teller of stories and a maker of puns.
They were both honest men and ardent Democrats, but they were in the
leading strings of sharper politicians. Perhaps, after all, the fools
were more to be feared than the villains.
Somewhere in the city a clock rang the hour, and, as his pipe died out,
he rose and went to his desk.
The next morning Vaden and Diggs dropped in to breakfast, and before it
was over he had ascertained that they were seeking to sound him upon his
attitude towards the recent National Party Platform. As he dodged their
laboured cross-examination he laughed at the overdone assumption of
indifference. Before they had risen from the table, Rann joined them,
and the conversation branched at once into impersonal topics. Diggs told
a story or two, at which Rann roared appreciatively, while Vaden
fingered his coffee spoon in pensive abstraction.
As they left the dining-room, which was in the basement, and ascended to
the hall, Diggs glanced into the reception-rooms and nodded respectfully
at the brocaded chairs.
"I like the looks of that, governor," he said, "but it's a pity you
can't find a wife. A woman gives an air to things, you know." Then he
cocked an eye at the ceiling. "This old house ain't much more than a
fire trap, anyway," he added. "The trouble is it's gotten old-fashioned
just like the Capitol building over there. My constituents are all in
favour of doing the proud thing by Virginia and giving her a real
up-to-date State House. Bless my life, the old Commonwealth deserves a
brownstone front--now don't she?"
He appealed to Rann, who dissented in his broad, if blunt, intelligence.
"I wouldn't trade that old building for all the brownstone between here
and New York harbour," he declared.
The governor laughed abstractedly, but a week later he recalled the
proposition as he sat in Juliet Galt's drawing-room, and repeated it for
the sake of her frank disgust.
"I shall tell Eugie," she exclaimed. "Eugie finds everything so new that
she suffers a perpetual homesickness for Kingsborough."
"There's nobody left down there except the judge and Mrs. Webb," broke
in Carrie; "and you know she gets on dreadfully with Mrs. Webb--now
doesn't she, Aunt Sally?"
"She never told me so," laughed Sally, "but I strongly suspect it. I
don't disguise the fact that I consider Mrs. Webb to be a terror, and
Eugie's a long way off from saintship."
"I hardly think that Mrs. Webb would consent to join our colony,"
observed Nicholas indifferently.
"May Kingsborough long enjoy her rule," added Juliet. "I hear that she
has grown quite amiable towards the judge since she prophesied that he
would have chronic gout and he had it."
"It would be so nice of them to marry each other," suggested Carrie with
an eye for matrimonial interests. "You needn't shake your head, mamma.
Aunt Sally said the same thing to Uncle Tom."
She was standing on the hearth rug in her walking gown, slowly fastening
her gloves. Sally looked at her and laughed in her nervous way.
"Well, I confess that it did cross my mind," she admitted. "Tom, like
all men, believed Mrs. Webb to be a martyr until I convinced him that
she martyred others."
"Oh, he still believes it behind your back," said Nicholas.
Juliet turned upon him frankly. "It's a shame to destroy wifely
confidence," she protested. "Sally hasn't been married long enough to
know that the only way to convince a husband is to argue against
oneself."
Her head rested upon the cushions of her chair, and her pretty foot was
on the brass fender. There was a cordial warmth about her which turned
the simple room into home for even the casual caller. The matronly grace
of her movements evoked the memory of infancy and motherhood; to
Nicholas Burr she seemed, in her beauty and her abundance, the supreme
expression of a type--of the joyous racial mother of all men.
Her youngest child, a girl of three, that she called "baby," had come in
from a walk and was standing at her knee in white cap and cloak and
mittens, her hand clutching Juliet's dress, her solemn eyes on the
governor. He had tried to induce her to approach, but she held off and
regarded him without a smile.
"Now, now, baby," pleaded Juliet, "who fed the bunnies with you the
other day?"
"Man," responded the baby gravely.
"Who gave you nice nuts for the dear bunnies?"
"Man."
"Who carried you all round the pretty square?"
"Man."
"Who gave you that lovely picture book full of animals?"
"Man."
"Then don't you love the kind man?"
"Noth."
"Yes, you do--you've forgotten. Go and speak to him."
The child approached gravely to make a grab at his watch-chain; he
lifted her to his knee, and friendship was established. They were at
peace a moment later when a voice was heard in the hall, and the
curtains were swung back as Eugenia Webb entered, tall and glowing, her
head rising from a collar of fur. She brought with her the breath of
frost, and the winter red was in her cheeks, fading slowly as she sat
down and threw off her wraps. He saw then that she looked older than he
thought and that her elastic figure had settled into matronly lines.
She raised her spotted veil and drew off her gloves.
"I mustn't talk myself out," she was saying lightly, "because Dudley
means to make me bring him to call this evening. I can't induce him to
come by himself--he simply won't. He considers, my mission in life to be
the combined duties of paying his calls and entertaining his
legislators. We had six senators to dinner last night, and we pay six
visits this evening. Come here, Tweedle-dee," to the baby. "Come to your
own Aunt Eugie and give her a kiss."
The child looked at her thoughtfully and shook her head.
"Kith man," she responded shortly.
The swift red rose to Eugenia's face. Nicholas was looking at her, and
her eyes flashed with the old anger at a senseless blush.
"That's right, old lady," said the governor to the child. "Tell her
you'd rather kiss a man every time."
"Of course she had," replied Eugenia half angrily. "She's going to be
her mother all over again."
Juliet laughed her full, soft laugh. "Now, Eugie," she protested gaily,
"my sins are many, but spare me a public confession of them."
"She takes after her aunt," put in Sally frankly. "I always liked men
better, and I think it's unwomanly not to--don't you, governor?"
Nicholas put the child down and rose.
"I'm afraid my womanliness is only skin deep," he returned, "but I
wouldn't give one honest man for all the women since Eve."
"Behold our far-famed gallantry!" exclaimed Sally.
Eugenia looked up, laughing. She had seized upon the child, and he saw
her dark eyes above the solemn blue ones.
"I'm afraid you aren't much of a politician, Governor Burr, if you tell
the truth so roundly," she said. "The first lesson in politics is to lie
and love it; the second lesson is to lie and live it. Oh, we've been in
Congress, Dudley and I."
She moved restlessly, and her colour came and went like a flame that
flickers and revives. He wondered vaguely at her nervous animation--she
had not possessed a nerve in her girlhood--nor had he seen this shifting
restlessness the other night. It did not occur to him that the meeting
with himself was the cause--he knew her too well--but had his presence,
or some greater thing, aroused within, her painful memories of the past?
As he walked down Franklin Street a little later he contrasted boldly
the two Eugenias he had known--the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia
who was Dudley Webb's. After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of
his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like
that at forty years. He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a
pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of
another, and could eat his dinner. His passion was dead, but where it
had bloomed something else drew life and helped him to live. He had
loved one woman and he loved her still, though with a love which in his
youth he would have held to be as ashes beside his flame. There were
months--even years--when he did not think of her; when he thought
profoundly of other things; but in these years the thrill of no woman's
skirts had disturbed his calm. And again, there were winter
evenings--evenings when he sat beside the hearth, and there came to him
the thought of a home and children--of a woman's presence and a child's
laugh. He could have loved the woman well had she been Eugenia, and he
could have loved the child had it been hers; but beyond her went neither
his vision nor his desire.
Now he swung on, large, forceful, a man young enough to feel, yet old
enough to know. He entered his door quickly, as was his custom,
impatient for his work and his fireside. On his desk lay the papers that
had been brought over by his secretary, and he ran his fingers
carelessly through them, gleaning indifferently the drift of their
contents. As he did so a light flashed suddenly upon him, and the
meaning of Eugenia's restlessness was made clear, for upon his desk was
an application for the pardon of Bernard Battle.
VII
The paper was still in his hand when the door behind him opened.
"A lady to see you, suh."
"A lady?" He turned impatiently to find himself facing Eugenia Webb. She
had come so swiftly, with a silence so apparitional, that he fell back
as from a blow between the eyes. For a moment he doubted her reality,
and then the glow in her face, the mist on her furs, the fog of her
breath, proclaimed that she had followed closely upon his footsteps. She
must have been almost beside him when he hurried through the frost.
"You wish to speak to me?" he asked blankly, as he drew a chair to the
hearth rug. "Will you not sit down?"
There was an unfriendly question in his eyes, and she met it boldly with
the old dash of impulse.
"They told me that to-morrow would be too late," she said. "I went to
Ben Galt's to ask him to come to you in my place, but he is out of town.
I found you there instead. It is a matter of life and death to me, so I
came."
She sat down in the chair he had drawn up for her, her muff fell to the
floor, and he placed it upon the desk where the petition lay unrolled.
As he did so he saw the list of names that presented the appeal--judge,
jury, prosecuting attorney, all were there.
She followed his gaze and moved slightly towards him. "It can't be true
that you--that you will not--" she said.
He was stirring the fire into flame, but as she broke off he turned
squarely upon her.
"I have not looked into the case," he answered harshly.
He was standing beside his own hearthstone and he was at ease. There was
no awkwardness about him now; his height endowed him with majesty, and
in his inflexible face there was no suggestion of heaviness. He looked a
man with a sublime self-confidence.
Her colour beat quickly back, warming her eyes.
"Oh, I am so glad," she said. "When you know all you will do as we ask
you, because it is right and just. If he did not serve that two years'
sentence he has served six years of poverty and sickness. He is a
wreck--we should not know him, they say--and he has not seen his wife
and children for--"
He raised his hand and stopped her. A rising anger clouded his face,
and, as she met his eyes, she slowly whitened.
"And you ask me--me of all men--to show mercy to Bernard Battle? Was
there not a governor of Virginia before me?"
She shook her head.
"Oh, it was different then--he did not know, and we did not know,
everything. For years we had not heard from him--"
"So my predecessor refused?" he asked.
She bowed her head. "But it is so different now--every one is with us."
He was looking her over grimly in an anger that seemed an emotional
reversion to the past--as he felt himself reverting with all his
strength to the original savage of the race. The hour for which he had
starved sixteen years ago was unfolding for him at last. He gloated over
it with a passion that would sicken him when it was done.
"When you came to me," he said slowly, "did you remember--"
She had risen and was standing before him, her hands hidden in the fur
upon her bosom. She was pleading now with startled eyes and cold
lips--she who had turned from him when the first lie was spoken--she was
pleading for the man who had blackened his friend's honour that he might
shield his own--she was pleading though she knew his baseness. The very
nobility of her posture--the nobility that he had found outwardly in no
other woman--hardened the man before her. The cold brow, the fervent
mouth, the fearless eyes, the lines with which Time had chastened into
womanliness her girlish figure--these had become the expression of an
invincible regret. As he faced her the iron of his nature held him as in
a vise, for life, which had made him a just man, had not made him a
gentle one.
But her spirit had risen to match with his. "He wronged you once," she
said; "let it pass--we have all been young and very ignorant; but we do
not make our lives, thank God."
He looked at her in silence.
Then, as he stood there, the walls of the room passed from before his
eyes, and the gray light from the western window was falling upon the
white road beyond the cedars. The vague pasture swept to the far-off
horizon where hung the solitary star above the sunset. From the west a
light wind blew, and into their faces dead leaves whirled from denuded
trees far distant. But surest of all was this--he hated now as he hated
then. "As for him--may God, in His mercy, damn him," he had said.
"Because he wronged you do not wrong yourself," she spoke fearlessly,
but she fell back with an upward movement of her hands. The man was
before her as the memory had been for years--she knew the distorted
features, the convulsed, closed mouth, the furrow that cleft the
forehead like a scar. She saw the savage as she had seen it once before,
and she braved it now as she had braved it then.
"You are hard--as hard as life," she said.
"Life is as we make it," he retorted. He lifted her muff from the desk
and she took it from him, turning towards the door. As he followed her
into the hall he spoke slowly: "I shall read the papers that relate to
the case," he said. "I shall do my duty. You were mistaken if you
supposed that your coming to me would influence my decision. Personal
appeal rarely avails and is often painful."
He unlatched the outer door and she passed out and descended the steps.
When he returned to the fire he was shivering from the draught let in by
the opening doors, and, lifting the fallen poker, he attacked almost
fiercely the slumbering coals. The physical shock had not tempered the
rage within; he felt it gnawing upon his entrails like a beast of prey.
Once only in his life had he found himself so powerless before a
devouring passion, and then, as now, he had glutted it with wounded
love. Then, as now, he had hated with a terrible desire.
The application lay upon his desk, and he pushed it out of sight. He
could not read it now--he wondered if the time would ever come when he
could read it. The thought smote him with the lash of fear--the fear of
himself. He who an hour ago had held his assurance to be beyond assault
was now watching for the death of his hate as he might have watched for
the death of a wolf whose fangs he had felt.
Lifting his head, he could see through the curtained window the chill
slopes of the square and the circular drive beneath the great bronze
Washington. Beyond the distant gates rose the church spires of the city,
suffused with the pink flush of sunset. The atmosphere glowed like a
blush upon the perspective, which was shading through variations of
violet remoteness. All was frozen save the winter sunset and the
advancing twilight.
He turned from the window and faced the painting of the Confederate
soldier. For a moment he regarded it blankly, then, pushing aside
Eugenia's chair he threw himself into one across from it. He was
thinking of Bernard Battle, and he remembered suddenly that he must have
hated him always--that he had hated him long ago in his childhood when
the weak-faced boy had headed a school faction against him. True, Dudley
Webb had incited the attempt at social ostracism, but he bore no
resentment against Dudley--on the contrary, he was convinced that he
liked him in spite of all--in spite, even, of Eugenia. With the
inflexible fairness that he never lost, he knew that, with Eugenia,
Dudley had not wronged him. It had been a fight in open field, and
Dudley had won. He had even liked the vigour of his wooing, and some
years later, when they had met, he had given the victor a hearty
handshake. He distrusted him as a politician, but he liked him as a man.
And Bernard Battle. That was an honest hate, and he hugged it to him.
Before him still, so vivid that it seemed but yesterday, hovered the
memory of that wild evening in the road, and the unforgotten sunset
faced him as he hurried through the wood. In the acuteness of his
remembered senses he could hear the dead leaves rustle in his pathway
and could smell the vague scents of autumn drifting on the wind. Through
all the years of public life and passionate endeavour he had not lost
one colour of the painted clouds or missed one note from the sharp
tangle of autumn odours. To this day the going down of the sun in red
and gold awoke within him the impulse of revenge, and the effluvium of
rotting flowers or the tang of pines revived the duller ache of his
senseless rage.
On that evening he had buried his youth with his youthful passion. The
hours between the twilight and the dawn had seen his emotions consumed
and his softer side laid waste. Since then he had not played saint or
martyr; he had gone his way among women, and he had liked some good ones
and some bad ones--but the turn of Eugenia's head or the trick of her
voice had haunted him in one and all. He had followed the resemblance
and had found the vacancy; he had been from first to last a man of one
ideal. His nature had broadened, hardened, rung metallic to the senses;
but it had not yielded to the shock of fresh emotions. He had loved one
woman from her childhood up.
And again she rose before him as in that Indian summer when he knew her
best--her beauty flaming against the autumn landscape, "clear as the
sun, and terrible as an army with banners." He saw her red or pale,
quivering or cold, always passing from him in a splendour of colours
that was like the clash of music.
That was sixteen years ago and it seemed but yesterday. He had lost her,
and yet he had not been unhappy, for he had learned that it is not gain
that makes happiness nor loss that kills it. Life had long since taught
him the lesson all great men learn--that happiness is but one result of
the adjustment of the individual needs to the Eternal Laws. A man had
once said of him, "Burr must think a lot of life; he bears it so blamed
well. He's the happiest man I know," and Burr, overhearing him, had
laughed aloud:
"Am I? I have never thought about it."
He did not think about life, he lived it; this was the beginning and the
end of his success.
The face of Eugenia faded slowly into the firelight, and he rose and
shook himself like a man who awakes from a nightmare. There was work for
him at his desk, and he settled to it with sudden determination.
A week later the papers were still in his desk. He told himself at first
that he would send them to Kingsborough to Judge Bassett and abide by
his decision; but the course struck him as cowardly and he put it from
him. The work was his and he would do it. Then for a week longer he went
on his way and did not think of them. His days were filled with work and
it was easy to leave disturbing thoughts alone; what was not easy was to
consider them judicially.
At last Galt spoke of the matter, and he could not refuse to listen.
"By the way, I am hearing a good deal about that Battle pardon," Galt
said. "You are looking into the matter, I suppose?"
The other shook his head.
"I have not done so as yet," he answered. "I am waiting."
"Don't wait too long or the poor devil may apply higher. He's ill, I
believe, and if he insists on returning to the State, as they say he
will, the law can't help but arrest him. It's a sad case. So far as I
can see he was a catspaw for the real criminal and didn't have sense
enough to hold on to a share of the money after he sold himself. His
sister has been to see you, hasn't she? She's a superb woman, and it was
a good day for Dudley Webb when he married her."
He looked up inquiringly.
"Ah, what were you saying?" asked the governor.
That night he locked himself in with the papers and plunged into the
case. He read and reread each written word until he was in possession of
the minutest detail. In another instance he knew that the reasons for
granting the pardon would have seemed sufficient, and he would probably
have had it made out at once. As it was, he admitted the force of the
appeal, but something stronger than himself held him back. Above the
name before him he saw the girlish face of the man he hated--saw it
accusing, defying, beseeching--and beyond it he saw the gray road and
the solitary star above the sunset. In the silence his own voice echoed,
"As for him--may God, in His mercy, damn him."
He locked the papers away again. "I cannot do it," he said.
Several days later he sent for a member of the legislature from the town
where the crime was committed. He questioned him closely, but without
result--the people up there were tired of it, the man said--at first
they had been wrought up, but six years is a long time, and they didn't
care much about it now. As the governor closed the interview he realised
that he had hoped a bitter hope that his revenge might be justified.
When the door had shut, he went back to the case again, and again he
left it. "It ought to be done, but, God help me, I cannot do it," he
said.
The next morning, while he was at work in his office in the Capitol, his
secretary came in to tell him that Miss Christina Battle was in the
anteroom. He rose hurriedly. "I will see her at once," he said, and he
opened the door as Miss Chris came in, panting softly from her ascent in
the elevator.
She had changed so little that he took her hand in sudden timidity,
recalling the days when he had sold her chickens before her hen-house
door. But when he had settled her in one of the cane rocking-chairs
beside the stove, his confidence returned and he responded heartily to
her beneficent beam. Her florid face, shining large and luminous above
the stiff black strings of her bonnet, reminded him of illustrations he
had seen in which the sun is endowed with human features and an
enveloping smile.
"This is the greatest honour my office has brought me," he said with
sincerity.
She laughed softly, smoothing her black kid glove above her plump wrist.
"I don't know what they mean by saying you aren't a lady's man, Governor
Burr," she returned. "I am sure old Judge Blitherstone himself never
turned a prettier compliment, and he lived to be upwards of ninety and
did them better every day of his life. They used to say that when Mrs.
Peachy Tucker dropped in to see him as he was breathing his last, and
told him to look forward to the joys of heaven and the communion of
saints, he replied, 'Madam, if you remain with me I shall merely pass
from one heaven to another,' and they were his last words."
The governor smiled into her beautiful, girlish eyes. "Men have spoken
worse ones," he said, her kindliness warming him like a cordial.
"It was good of you to come," he added.
"Not a bit of it," protested Miss Chris with emphasis. "It's all about
that poor, foolish boy--he's still a boy to me, and so are you for that
matter. You know how wicked he has been and how miserable he has made us
all, for you can't stop loving people just because they are bad. Now you
are a good man, Governor Burr, and that's why I came to you. You'll do
right if it kills you, and whatever you do in this matter is going to
be the right thing. You can't help being good any more than he can help
being bad, and I hope the Lord understands this as well as I do--I don't
know, I'm sure--sometimes it looks as if He didn't; but we'd just as
well trust Him, because there's nothing else for us to do.
"Now the foolish boy wronged you more than he wronged us; but you'll
forgive him as we forgave him, when you know what he's suffered. It's
better to be sinned against than to sin, God knows."
Her eyes were moist and her lips trembled. The governor crossed to where
she sat and took her hand.
"Dear Miss Chris," he said, "women like you make men heroes." And he
added quickly, "The pardon is being made out. When it is ready I will
sign it."
She looked at him an instant in silence; then she rose heavily to her
feet, leaning upon his arm. "You're a great man, Nick Burr," she said
softly.
An hour later Nicholas Burr looked calmly down upon his signature that
meant freedom for Bernard Battle. He had won the victory of his life,
and he was feeling with a glow of self-appreciation that he had done a
generous thing.
VIII
Miss Chris, in her hired carriage, rolled leisurely into Franklin
Street, where pretty women in visiting gowns were going in and out of
doorways. She leaned out and bowed smilingly several times, but she was
not thinking of the gracefully dressed callers or of the houses into
which they went. When Emma Carr threw her a kiss from Galt's porch, she
responded amiably; but she was as blind to the affectionate gesture as
to the striking beauty of the girl in her winter furs.
Up the quiet street the leafless trees made a gray vista that melted
into transparent mist. The sunshine stretched in pale gold bars from
sidewalk to sidewalk, and overhead the sky was of a rare Italian blue.
But for the frost in the air and the naked boughs, it might have been a
day in April.
Presently the carriage turned into Main Street, halting abruptly while a
trolley car shot past. "Please be very careful," called Miss Chris
nervously, gathering herself together as they stopped before a big gray
house that faced a gray church on the opposite corner. A flight of stone
steps ran from the doorway to a short tesselated entrance leading to the
street, where two scraggy poplars still held aloft the withered
skeletons of last year's tulips. The Webbs had taken the house because
the box bushes in the yard reminded Eugenia of Battle Hall, while
Dudley declared it to be the best breathing space he could get for the
money.
"We done git back, Mistis," announced the negro driver, descending from
his perch, and at the same instant the door of the house flew open and
Eugenia ran out, bareheaded, followed by Dudley.
"I saw you from the window, Aunt Chris," she cried, "and now I want to
know the meaning of this mystery. Dudley suspects you of having a lover,
but I am positive that you've stolen a march on me and have been to
market. What a pity I confessed to you that I couldn't tell brains from
sweetbreads."
"Let me get there, Eugie," said Dudley, as Miss Chris emerged with the
assistance of the driver. "Take my arm, Aunt Chris, and I'll hoist you
into the house before you know it."
"Well, I declare," remarked Miss Chris, carefully stepping forth. "I
don't know when I've had such a turn. These street car drivers have lost
all their manners. If we hadn't pulled up in time, I believe he would
have gone right into us. And to think that a few years ago we never got
ready to go to market until the car was at the door. Betty Taylor used
to call to the driver every morning to wait till she put on her
bonnet--and time and again I've seen him stop because she had forgotten
her list of groceries. Now, if you weren't standing right on the corner,
I actually believe they'd go by without you."
"That's progress, Aunt Chris," responded Dudley cheerfully.
Here the driver insisted upon lending a hand, and between them they
established Miss Chris before the fire in the sitting-room. "I wish
you'd make Giles go out and pick up that loose paper that's scattered on
the pavement," she said to Eugenia. "It looks so untidy. If I wasn't
rheumatic I'd do it myself."
Dudley and Eugenia seated themselves across from her. "Now where have
you been, Aunt Chris?" they demanded.
Miss Chris laughed softly as she took off her bonnet and gloves and gave
them to Eugenia; then she unfastened her cape and passed it over.
"You'll never find out that, my dears," she returned. "I'm not too old
to keep a secret. Why, I've gone and lost my bag. Didn't I carry that
bag with me, Eugenia?"
"Of course you did," said Eugenia. "Never mind, I'll make you another."
She went out to put away Miss Chris's wraps, and came back presently,
laughing.
"Have you found out her secret, Dudley?" she asked. "If she doesn't tell
you, it will die with her."
"I know better than to ask," returned Dudley good-humouredly. "That's
the reason I'm her favourite. I don't ask impertinent questions, do I,
Aunt Chris?"
"Bless you, no," responded Miss Chris serenely, as she stretched out her
feet in their cloth shoes.
"You're her favourite because you happen to be a man," protested
Eugenia. "She comes of a generation of man spoilers. I believe she
thinks I ought to bring you your slippers in the evening--now don't you,
Aunt Chris?"
"My dear mother always brought them to my father," replied Miss Chris
placidly. "It was her pleasure to wait on him."
"And it is mine to have Dudley wait on me. But you do make an unfair
difference between us, Aunt Chris. Why did you call me 'uncharitable'
when I said Mrs. Gordon painted immodestly! Dudley said the same thing
this morning, and you only smiled."
"It was uncharitable, my dear, and besides it is too palpable to need
mention--but men will be men."
Eugenia frowned. "I wish you would occasionally remember that women will
be women," she suggested. She wore a scarlet shirtwaist, and the glow
from the fire seemed to follow her about.
"I won't have Aunt Chris bullied, Eugie," declared Dudley as he rose.
"Well, I'm off again. I may bring a legislator or two back to dinner.
What have we got?"
"The Lord knows," replied Eugenia desperately. "Our third cook this
month for one thing, and Congo refuses to serve dinner in courses. He
says 'dar's too much shufflin' er de dishes for too little victuals.'"
Dudley laughed at her mimicry.
"Oh, I suppose we'll do," he said. "By the way, don't forget to call on
Mrs. Rann to-day."
Miss Chris was gazing placidly into the fire. As Dudley turned with his
hand on the door knob, she looked up.
"I was surprised to find the Capitol so dirty," she observed
regretfully.
Dudley swung round breathlessly.
"Well, I am--blessed!" he gasped.
"So that's where you've been!" cried Eugenia. She threw herself beside
Miss Chris's chair. "What did he say, Aunt Chris?" she implored.
Miss Chris blushed with confusion.
"Well, if I haven't let it out!" she exclaimed. "Who'd have thought I
couldn't keep a secret at my age." Then she patted Eugenia's hand. "He's
a good man," she said softly, "and it's all right about Bernard."
"I knew it would be," said Dudley quickly. "You know, Eugie, I always
told you he'd do it."
But Eugenia had turned away with swimming eyes. "I must tell Lottie,"
she said hurriedly. "Oh, Aunt Chris, how could you keep it? To think the
children are at school!"
Dudley, with an afterthought, turned from the door and gave her an
affectionate pat on the shoulder. "It's fine news, old girl," he said
cheerfully, and Eugenia smiled at him through her tears.
As he went out she followed him into the hall and slowly ascended the
stairs. On the landing above she entered a room where Bernard's wife was
lying on a wicker couch, cutting the pages of a magazine.
"Lottie, I've good news for you," she exclaimed, "the best of news."
Lottie tossed aside the magazine and raised herself on her elbow. She
had a pretty, ineffectual face and a girlish figure, and, despite her
faded colouring, looked almost helplessly young. Her round white hands
were as weak as a child's.
"I'm sure I don't know what it can be," she returned. "You look awfully
well in that red waist, Eugie. I think I'll get one like it."
Eugenia picked up a child's story book from the rug and laid it on the
table; then she stood looking gravely down on the younger woman.
"Can't you guess what it is?" she asked.
Lottie looked up with a nervous blinking of her eyes. She had paled
slightly and she leaned over and drew an eiderdown quilt across her
knees.
"It--it's not about Bernard?" she asked in a whisper.
"Yes, it is about Bernard. You may go to him and bring him home. You may
go to-morrow. Oh, Lottie, doesn't it make you happy?"
Lottie drew the eiderdown quilt still higher. She was not looking at
Eugenia, and her mouth had grown sullen. "I don't see why you send me,"
she said. "Why can't Jack Tucker bring him home? He's with him."
"But I thought you wanted to go," returned Eugenia blankly.
"I haven't seen him for six years," said Lottie, her face still turned
away. "He is almost a stranger--and I am afraid of him."
"Oh, Lottie, he loves you so!"
"I don't know," protested Lottie. "He has been so wicked."
Eugenia was looking down upon her with dismayed eyes.
"Don't you love him, Lottie?" she asked.
For a moment the other did not reply. Her lips trembled and her knees
were shaking beneath the eiderdown quilt. Then with a slow turn of the
head she looked up doggedly. "I believe I hate him," she answered.
A swift flush rose to Eugenia's face, her eyes flashed angrily, she took
a step forward. "And you are his wife!" she cried.
But Lottie had turned at last. She flung the quilt aside and rose to her
feet, her girlish figure quivering in its beribboned wrapper. There were
bright pink spots in her cheeks.
"Yes, I am his wife, God help me," she said.
Eugenia had drawn back before the childish desperation. Lottie had never
revolted before--she had thought Eugenia's thoughts and weakly lived up
to Eugenia's conception of her duty. She had been meek and amiable and
ineffectual; but it came to Eugenia with a shock that she had never
admired her until to-day--until the hour of her rebellion.
She spoke sternly--as she might have spoken to herself in a moment of
dear, but dismal failure.
"Hush," she commanded. "You are one of us, and you have no right to
desert us. It is because you are his wife that my home is yours and your
children's. I am only his sister, and I have stood by him through it
all. Do you think, if his sins were twenty times as great, that I should
fall away from him now?"
Lottie looked at her and laughed--a little heartless laugh.
"Oh, but I am not a Battle," she replied bitterly. "Battle sins are just
like other people's sins to me."
Then she raised her pretty, nerveless hands to her throat.
"I have wanted to be free all these years," she said. "All these years
when you would not let me forget Bernard Battle--when you shut me up and
hid me away, and made me old when I was young. And now--just as I am
beginning to be happy with my children--you tell me that I must go back
to him and start afresh."
Her voice grated upon Eugenia's ears, and she realised more acutely than
her pity the fact that Lottie was common--hopelessly common. For an
instant she forgot Bernard's greater transgressions in the wonder that a
Battle should have married a woman who did not know how to behave in a
crisis--who could even chant her wrongs from the housetop. At the moment
this seemed to her the weightier share of the family remissness. The
loyalty of the Battle wives had been as a lasting memorial to the Battle
breeding--which, after all, was more invincible than the Battle virtue.
She crossed to the window and stood looking out upon the winter sunshine
falling on the gray church across the way. On the stone steps a negro
nurse was sitting, drowsily trundling back and forth before her a
beruffled baby carriage. Nearer at hand, in the yard on the left of the
tesselated entrance below, a pointed magnolia tree shone evergreen
beside the naked poplars, and a bevy of sparrows fluttered in and out
amid the sheltering leaves.
"Oh, you will never understand," wailed Lottie. She had flung herself
upon the couch and was sobbing weakly. "It is so different with you and
Dudley."
Eugenia turned and came back. "I do understand," she returned gently,
and before Lottie could raise her lowered head she left the room.
She had promised Dudley that the calls should be made, and she put on
her visiting gown without a thought of shirking the fulfilment of her
pledge. From the day of her marriage she had zealously accepted the
obligations forced upon her by Dudley's political aspirations, and Mrs.
Rann became to-day simply a heavier responsibility than usual. Her world
was full of Mrs. Ranns, and she braved them with dauntless spirits and
triumphant humour. As she buttoned her gloves on the way downstairs she
was conscious of a singularly mild recognition of the fact that the
world might have been the gainer had Mrs. Rann abided unborn.
But the fresh air restored her courage, and by the time she sat in Mrs.
Rann's drawing-room, face to face with her hostess, she was at ease with
herself and her surroundings. She gave out at once the peculiar social
atmosphere of her race; she uttered her gay little nothings with an
intimate air; she laughed good-humouredly at Mrs. Rann's gossip, and she
begged to see photographs of Mrs. Rann's babies. It was as if she had
immediately become the confidential adviser of Mrs. Rann's domestic
difficulties.
Mrs. Rann, herself, was little and plain and obsolete. She appeared to
have been left behind in the sixties, like words that have become vulgar
from disuse. She wore bracelets on her wrists, and her accent was as
flat as her ideas. Before the war--and even long after--nobody had heard
of the Ranns; they had arrived as suddenly as the electric lights or
the trolley cars. When Miss Chris had alluded to them as "new people,"
and Juliet Galt had declared that she "did not call there," Dudley had
thrown out an uncertain line to Eugenia. "Rann is a useful man, my
dear," he had said. "He may be of great help to me," and the next day
Eugenia had left her card. Where Dudley's ambitions led she cheerfully
followed.
"We are politicians," was her excuse to Juliet, "and we can't afford to
be exclusive. Of course, with Emma Carr and yourself it is different.
You may exclude half society if you please, and, in fact, you do; but
Dudley and I really don't mind. He wants something, and I, you know, was
born without the instinct of class."
So she sat in Mrs. Rann's drawing-room and received her confidences,
while Juliet and Emma Carr were gossiping across the street.
"The greatest trouble I have with Mr. Rann when he comes to town," said
Mrs. Rann, "is that he refuses to wear woollen socks. I don't know
whether Mr. Webb wears woollen socks or not."
Eugenia shook her head.
"I've no doubt he would be a better and a wiser man if he did," she
responded.
"Then he doesn't catch cold when he puts on thin ones with his dress
suit. Now Mr. Rann says woollen socks don't look well in the
evening--and he takes cold every time he goes out at night. He won't
even let me put red flannel in the soles of his shoes."
"Then he's not the man I thought him," said Eugenia as she rose. "Do you
know, the baby is so pretty I stopped her carriage. If she were mine I
shouldn't let her grow up."
Mrs. Rann glowed with pride, and in the depths of her shallow eyes
Eugenia read a triumphant compassion. This little vulgar countrywoman,
upon whom she looked so grandly down, was pitying her in her narrow
heart.
She flushed and turned away.
"You have never had a child?" asked the little common voice.
Eugenia faced her coldly. "I lost one--a week old," she replied, and she
hated herself that she was proud of her seven days' motherhood. She had
mourned the loss, but she had never vaunted the possession until now.
As she left the house her name was called by Juliet Galt from her window
across the way. "Come over, Eugie," she cried. "We've been watching
you," and as Eugenia ascended the steps the door was opened and she was
clasped in Emma Carr's arms. "We've shut our eyes and ground our teeth
and put ourselves in your place," she said. "Oh, Eugie, she's worse than
the dentist!"
"I went to the dentist's first," was Eugenia's reply.
She followed Miss Carr into the drawing-room and sank into the
window-seat beside Juliet, who was bending over her embroidery frame.
Then she laughed--a full, frank laugh.
"You dear women," she said, "if you knew the lot of a politician's wife,
you'd--marry a footman."
"Provided he were Dudley Webb," returned Emma Carr. She seized Eugenia's
hand and they smiled at each other in demonstrative intimacy. "You
know, of course, that we are all in love with your husband--desperately,
darkly in love--and you ought to be gray with jealousy. If I were
married to the handsomest man in Virginia I'd get me to a nunnery."
"That's not Eugie's way," said Juliet, snapping off her silk. "If she
went, she'd drag him after."
"Oh, he's just Dudley," protested Eugenia. "I'd as soon be jealous of
Aunt Chris--and he's waiting at home this instant with his senators come
to judgment on my dinner. If I were free, I'd spend the day with you.
Juliet, but I've married into servitude."
IX
When Eugenia went upstairs that night she softly opened Lottie's door
and glanced into the room. By the sinking firelight she saw Lottie lying
asleep, her hand upon the pillow of her younger child, who slept beside
her. The pretty, nerveless hand, even in sleep, tremored like a caress,
for whatever Lottie's wifely failings, as a mother she was without
reproach. Lottie--vain, hysterical, bewailing her wrongs--was the same
Lottie now resting with a protecting arm thrown out--this Eugenia
admitted thoughtfully as she looked into the darkened room where the
thin blue flame cast a spectral light upon the sleepers. From this
shallow rooted nature had bloomed the maternal ardour of the Southern
woman, in whom motherhood is the abiding grace.
Eugenia closed the door and crossed the hall to Miss Chris, who was
reading her Bible as she seeded raisins into a small yellow bowl. The
leaves of the Bible were held open by her spectacle case which she had
placed between them; for while her hands were busy with material matters
her placid eyes followed the text.
"I thought I'd get these done to-night," she remarked as Eugenia
entered. "I'm going to make a plum pudding for Dudley to-morrow. Where
is he now?"
"A political barbecue, I believe," responded Eugenia indifferently as
she knotted the cord of her flannel dressing-gown. She yawned and threw
herself into a chair. "I wonder why everybody spoils Dudley so," she
added. "Even I do it. I am sitting up for him to-night simply because I
know he'll want to tell me about it all when he comes in."
"It's a good habit for a wife to cultivate," returned Miss Chris,
shaking the raisins together. "If my poor father stayed out until four
o'clock in the morning he found my mother up and dressed when he came
in."
"I should say it was 'poor' grandmamma," commented Eugenia drily. "But
Dudley won't find me after midnight." Then she regarded Miss Chris
affectionately. "What a blessing that you didn't marry, Aunt Chris," she
said. "You'd have prepared some man to merit damnation."
"My dear Eugie," protested Miss Chris, half shocked, half flattered at
the picture. "But you're a good wife, all the same, like your mother
before you. The only fault I ever saw in poor Meely was that she
wouldn't put currants in her fruit cake. Tom was always fond of
currants--" in a moment she abruptly recalled herself. "My dear, I don't
say you haven't had your trials," she went on. "Dudley isn't a saint,
but I don't believe even the Lord expects a man to be that. It doesn't
seem to set well on them."
"Oh, I am not blaming Dudley," returned Eugenia as leniently as Miss
Chris. "We live and let live--only our tastes are different. Why, the
chief proof of his affection for me is that he always describes to me
the object of his admiration--which means that his eyes stray, but his
heart does not, and the heart's the chief thing, after all."
"I'm glad you aren't jealous," said Miss Chris. "I used to think you
were--as a child."
"Oh, I was--as a child," replied Eugenia. Her kindly face clouded. It
was borne in upon her with a twinge of conscience that the absence of
jealousy which had become the safeguard of Dudley's peace proved her own
lack of passion. What a hell some women--good women--might have made of
Dudley's life--that genial life that flowed as smoothly as a song. In
the flights and pauses of his temperament what discord might have
shocked the decent measure of their marriage? Persistent passion would
have bored him; exacting love would have soured the charm of his radiant
egotism. It was because she was not in love with him, that her love had
wisely meted out to him only so much or so little of herself as he
desired--and with a sudden arraignment of Fate she admitted that because
she had failed in the first requirement of the marriage sacrament, she
had made that sacrament other than a mockery. Out of her own
unfulfilment Dudley's happiness was fulfilled.
"Yes, Dudley suits me," she said absently, "and, what's the main thing,
I suit Dudley."
"Well, well, I'm glad of it," returned Miss Chris, but in a moment
Eugenia was kneeling beside her, her hand upon the open Bible.
"Dear Aunt Chris, you haven't told me all," she said.
"All?" Miss Chris wavered. "You mean about Bernard?"
"I mean about the governor." She closed the. Bible and pushed it from
her. "Do you think he is quite, quite happy?"
Miss Chris laughed in protest.
"Do I believe him to be pining of hopeless love? No, I don't," she
retorted.
"Oh, not that!" exclaimed Eugenia impatiently. She appeared vaguely to
resent Miss Chris's assurance. She was feminine enough to experience an
irrational jealousy at the idea of a vacancy which she had done her best
to create. It destroyed an example of the permanence of love.
"I don't suppose anybody could be happy on politics," observed Miss
Chris. "It doesn't seem natural." And she slowly added: "I wish some
good woman would marry him."
"I don't!" said Eugenia sharply. She rose with a spring from the rug,
and left Miss Chris to her reflections and her raisins. In her own room
she sat down before the fire and loosened her hair from the low coil on
her neck. She drew out the hairpins one by one, until her hands were
full, and the thick black rope fell across her bosom. Then she tossed
the pins upon her bureau and shook a veil over her face and shoulders.
As she settled herself into her chair she glanced impatiently at the
clock. Dudley was late, and she listened for his footsteps with the
composure of a woman from whom the flush of marriage has passed away.
His footsteps were as much a part of her days as the ticking of the
clock upon the mantel. If the clock were to stop, she would miss the
accustomed sound, but so long as it went on she was almost unconscious
of its presence. Her affection for Dudley had grown so into her nature
that it was like the claim of kinship--quiet, unimpassioned, full of
service--the love that is the end of many happy marriages, the beginning
of few.
As she sat there she fell vaguely to wondering what her lot would have
been had her pulses fluttered to his footsteps as they came and went.
She would have known remorseless waitings and the long agony of jealous
nights--all the passionate self-torture that she had missed--that she
had missed, thank God! She made the best of her life to-day, as she
would have made the best of blows and bruises. It was the old buoyant
instinct of the Battle blood--the fighting of Fate on its ground with
its own weapons. She had insisted strenuously upon her own
happiness--and she had found it not in the great things of life, but in
the little ones. She was happy because happiness is ours in the cradle
or not at all--because it is of the blood and not of the environment.
During the first years of her marriage she had intensely sought the
relief of outside interests. She had worked zealously on hospital boards
and had exhausted herself in the service of the city mission. Then a new
call had quivered in her life, and she had let these things go. With the
passion of her nature she had pledged herself to motherhood, and that,
too, had foiled her--for the child had died. Looking back upon the years
she saw that those months of tranquil waiting were the happiest of her
life--those monotonous months when each day was as the day before it,
when her hands were busy for the love that would come to her, and her
heart warmed itself before the future. The child was hers for a single
week, and afterwards she had put her grief away and gone back to the old
beginning. She had given herself to little kindnesses and trivial
interests, for the fulfilment of her nature had withered in the bud.
The key turned in the door downstairs and in a moment she heard Dudley
in the hall. As her door opened she looked up brightly. "Up, old girl?"
he asked cheerfully, and as he came to the fire he bent to kiss her.
"Did you make a speech? and what did you say?" she inquired.
"Oh, they got a good deal out of me," he responded with a genial
recollection which he proceeded to unfold. His eyes shone and his face
was flushed. As he stood on the hearth rug before her she admitted with
a sigh of satisfaction his physical splendour. The glow of his
personality warmed her into an emotion half maternal. She regarded him
with the eyes of tolerant affection.
"Oh, yes, I think I made a friend of Diggs," he was adding complacently
as he flecked a particle of cigar ash from his coat. "He got off a
capital story, by the way. I'd give it to you, but I'm half
afraid--you're so squeamish."
"His jokes don't amuse me," returned Eugenia indifferently. "Who else
was there?"
"Well, the governor was very much there. He did some stiff talking. I
say, Eugie, do you know, I believe he used to have a pretty strong fancy
for you--didn't he?"
Eugenia looked at him with a laugh. "Oh, a fancy?" she repeated.
She moved away, gathering her hair from her shoulders; but in a moment
she came back again and rubbed her cheek against Dudley's arm as she
used to rub it against General Battle's old linen sleeve. "Dudley," she
said with a sudden break, "the baby would have been ten years old
to-night--do you remember?"
Dudley was looking into the fire; his face grew grave, and he patted
Eugenia's head. "You don't say so! Poor little chap!" he exclaimed.
They were both silent. Dudley's eyes were still on the flame, but the
shadow lifted from his brow. Eugenia's lips quivered and grew firm. She
gently drew herself away and began braiding her hair, but her hands were
unsteady.
In a moment Dudley spoke again. "It was a great pity I lost that
governorship," he said abstractedly.
A week after this Eugenia went with Juliet Galt to the Capitol to hear a
speech in which Dudley was interested. The Senate Chamber was crowded,
and as the atmosphere grew oppressive while Dudley's gentleman held the
floor, she rose and went out into the lobby where a noisy circle pulsed
round Houdon's Washington. She had spoken to several acquaintances, and
her hand was in the clasp of a house member from her old county, when
she started at the sound of a shrill voice rising above the persistent
hum of the legislators and the lobbyists.
"I'm a-lookin' for the governor, Nick Burr," it said.
"I didn't know the governor posed as a cavalier," laughed the house
member, and as a wave of humour lighted the faces around her, Eugenia
turned to find Marthy Burr standing in the doorway. She wore a stiff
alpaca dress, and beneath the green veil above her bonnet she cast
alert, nervous glances from side to side. Her hands clutched, in a
deathlike grip, a cotton umbrella and a small, covered basket.
Eugenia hesitated for a single instant, and then took a step forward
with outstretched hand, a kindly glow in her face; but as she did so the
crowd parted and Nicholas Burr reached his stepmother's side.
"Why, this is a treat, ma!" he said heartily, and he took the umbrella
and the basket from her reluctant hands, despite her warning whisper,
"thar's new-laid eggs in thar!"
"My dear Mrs. Burr!" exclaimed Eugenia. She lifted her gaze from the
homely figure in its awkward finery, to the man who stood beside her.
Then she stooped and kissed Marthy Burr on the cheek.
"Do let her come home with me," she said.
Her eyes fell and a wave of colour beat into her face. An instant before
she had felt her act to be entirely admirable; now it flamed before her
in a mental revelation that she was a sycophant who sought the reward of
an assumed virtue. With the reward had come the knowledge--she had found
both in Nicholas's eyes; and as she felt the thrust of self-abasement,
she felt also that for the sake of that look she would have kissed a
dozen Burrs a dozen times.
"You are very kind," said the governor. "But you know I have an empty
house."
Then he put his arm about Marthy Burr and assisted her down the steps to
the walk below. She looked about her with half-frightened, half-defiant
eyes, and clung grimly to his powerful figure.
As Eugenia watched them, a quick remembrance shot before her. She saw
Nicholas Burr as she had seen him in his youth--ardent, assured, holding
out his arms to the future, which was to be love, love, love. Now the
future had become the present, and the one affection that remained to
him was that of the old, illiterate woman, with the rasping voice. He
had lost the thing he had lived for--and he was happy.