He bent toward her over his armful of holly.
“I have a capacious breast for secrets,” he assured her.
“Then you will never breathe it?”
“Will you have me swear?” he glanced about him.
“Not by the inconstant moon,” she entreated merrily.
“Well, by my 'gracious self'; what's the rest of it?”
She coloured and drew away from him. His eyes made her self-conscious, ill
at ease; the very carelessness of his look disconcerted her.
“No, do not swear,” she begged. “I shall trust you with even so weighty a
confidence. I do not like--”
“Oh, come, why torture me?” he demanded.
She made a little gesture of alarm. “From fear of the wrath to come,” she
admitted.
“Of my wrath?” he regarded her with amazement. “Oh, don't you like
_me_?” he exclaimed.
“You! Yes, yes--but--have mercy upon your petitioner. I do not like your
cravats.”
She shut her eyes and stood before him with lowered head.
“My cravats!” cried Dan, in dismay, as his hand went to his throat, “but my
cravats are from Paris--Charlie Morson brought them over. What is the
matter with them?”
“They--they're too fancy,” confessed Betty. “Papa wears only white, or
black ones you know.”
“Too fancy! Nonsense! do you want to send me back to grandfather's stocks,
I wonder? It's just pure envy--that's what it is. Never mind, I'll give you
the very best one I've got.”
Betty shook her head. “And what should I do with it, pray?” she asked.
“Uncle Shadrach wouldn't wear it for worlds--he wears only papa's clothes,
you see. Oh, I might give it to Hosea; but I don't think he'd like it.”
“Hosea! Well, I declare,” exclaimed Dan, and was silent.
When he spoke a little later it was somewhat awkwardly.
“I say, did Virginia ever tell you she didn't like my cravats?” he
inquired.
“Virginia!” her voice was a little startled. “Oh, Virginia thinks they're
lovely.”
“And you don't?”
“No, I don't.”
“Well, you are a case,” he said, and walked on slowly.
They were already in sight of the house, and he did not speak again until
they had passed the portico and entered the hall. There they found Virginia
and the young men, who had ridden over ahead of them, hanging evergreens
for the approaching party. Jack Morson, from the top of the step-ladder,
was suspending a holly wreath above the door, while Champe was entwining
the mahogany balustrade in running cedar.
“Oh, Betty, would it be disrespectful to put mistletoe above General
Washington's portrait?” called Virginia, as they went into the hall.
“I don't think he'd mind--the old dear,” answered Betty, throwing her
armful of holly upon the floor. “There, Dan, the burden of the day is
over.”
“And none too soon,” said Dan, as he tossed the holly from him. “Diggs, you
sluggard, what are you sitting there in idleness for? Miss Pussy, can't you
set him to work?”
Miss Pussy, who was bustling in and out with a troop of servants at her
heels, found time to reply seriously that she really didn't think there was
anything she could trust him with. “Of course, I don't mind your amusing
yourselves with the decorations,” she added briskly, “but the cooking is
quite a different thing, you know.”
“Amusing myself!” protested Dan, in astonishment. “My dear lady, do you
call carrying a wagon load of brushwood amusement? Now, I'll grant, if you
please, that Morson is amusing himself on the step-ladder.”
“Keep off,” implored Morson, in terror; “if you shake the thing, I'm gone,
I declare I am.”
He nailed the garland in place and came down cautiously. “Now, that's what
I call an artistic job,” he complacently remarked.
“Why, it's lovely,” said Virginia, smiling, as he turned to her. “It's
lovely, isn't it, Betty?”
“As lovely as a crooked thing can be,” laughed Betty. She was looking
earnestly at Virginia, and wondering if she really liked Jack Morson so
very much. The girl was so bewitching in her red dress, with the flush of
a sudden emotion in her face, and the shyness in her downcast eyes.
“Oh, that isn't fair, Virginia,” called Champe from the steps. “Save your
favour for the man that deserves it--and look at me.” Virginia did look at
him, sending him the same radiant glance.
“But I've many 'lovelies' left,” she said quickly; “it's my favourite
word.”
“A most appropriate taste,” faltered Diggs, from his chair beneath the hall
clock.
Champe descended the staircase with a bound.
“What do I hear?” he exclaimed. “Has the oyster opened his mouth and
brought forth a compliment?”
“Oh, be quiet,” commanded Dan, “I shan't hear Diggs made fun of, and it's
time to get back, anyway. Well, loveliest of lovely ladies, you must put on
your prettiest frock to-night.”
Virginia's blush deepened. Did she like Dan so very much? thought Betty.
“But you mustn't notice me, please,” she begged, “all the neighbours are
coming, and there are so many girls,--the Powells and the Harrisons and the
Dulaneys. I am going to wear pink, but you mustn't notice it, you know.”
“That's right,” said Jack Morson, “make him do his duty by the County, and
keep your dances for Diggs and me.”
“I've done my duty by you, sir,” was Dan's prompt retort, “so I'll begin to
do my pleasure by myself. Now I give you fair warning, Virginia, if you
don't save the first reel for me, I'll dance all the rest with Betty.”
“Then it will be a Betty of your own making,” declared Betty over her
shoulder, “for this Betty doesn't dance a single step with you to-night, so
there, sir.”
“Your punishment be on your own head, rash woman,” said Dan, sternly, as he
took up his riding-whip. “I'll dance with Peggy Harrison,” and he went out
to Prince Rupert, lifting his hat, as he mounted, to Miss Lydia, who stood
at her window above. A moment later they heard his horse's hoofs ringing in
the drive, and his voice gayly whistling:--
“They tell me thou'rt the favor'd guest.”
When the others joined him in the turnpike, the four voices took up the
air, and sent the pathetic melody fairly dancing across the snow.
“Do I thus haste to hall and bower
Among the proud and gay to shine?
Or deck my hair with gem and flower
To flatter other eyes than thine?
Ah, no, with me love's smiles are past;
Thou hadst the first, thou hadst the last.”
The song ended in a burst of laughter, and up the white turnpike, beneath
the melting snow that rained down from the trees, they rode merrily back to
Chericoke.
In the carriage way they found the Major, wrapped in his broadcloth cape,
taking what he called a “breath of air.”
“Well, gentlemen, I hope you had a pleasant ride,” he remarked, following
them into the house. “You didn't see your way to stop by Uplands, I
reckon?”
“That we did, sir,” said Diggs, who was never bashful with the Major. “In
fact, we made ourselves rather useful, I believe.”
“They're charming young ladies over there, eh?” inquired the Major,
genially; and a little later when Dan and he were alone, he put the same
question to his grandson. “They're delightful girls, are they not, my boy?”
he ventured incautiously. “You have noticed, I dare say, how your
grandmother takes to Betty--and she's not a woman of many fancies, is your
grandmother.”
“Oh, but Virginia!” exclaimed Dan, with enthusiasm. “I wish you could have
seen her in her red dress to-day. You don't half realize what a thundering
beauty that girl is. Why, she positively took my breath away.”
The Major chuckled and rubbed his hands together.
“I don't, eh?” he said, scenting a romance as an old war horse scents a
battle. “Well, well, maybe not; but I see where the wind blows anyway, and
you have my congratulations on either hand. I shan't deny that we old folks
had a leaning to Betty; but youth is youth, and we shan't oppose your
fancy. So I congratulate you, my boy, I congratulate you.”
“Ah, she wouldn't look at me, sir,” declared Dan, feeling that the pace was
becoming a little too impetuous. “I only wish she would; but I'd as soon
expect the moon to drop from the skies.”
“Not look at you! Pooh, pooh!” protested the old gentleman, indignantly.
“Proper pride is not vanity, sir; and there's never been a Lightfoot yet
that couldn't catch a woman's eye, if I do say it who should not. Pooh,
pooh! it isn't a faint heart that wins the ladies.”
“I know you to be an authority, my dear grandpa,” admitted the young man,
lightly glancing into the gilt-framed mirror above the mantel. “If there's
any of your blood in me, it makes for conquest.” From the glass he caught
the laughter in his eyes and turned it on his grandfather.
“It ill becomes me to rob the Lightfoots of one of their chief
distinctions,” said the Major, smiling in his turn. “We are not a proud
people, my boy; but we've always fought like men and made love like
gentlemen, and I hope that you will live up to your inheritance.”
Then, as his grandson ran upstairs to dress, he followed him as far as Mrs.
Lightfoot's chamber, and informed her with a touch of pomposity: “That it
was Virginia, not Betty, after all. But we'll make the best of it, my
dear,” he added cheerfully. “Either of the Ambler girls is a jewel of
priceless value.”
The little old lady received this flower of speech with more than ordinary
unconcern.
“Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Lightfoot, that the boy has begun already?”
she demanded, in amazement.
“He doesn't say so,” replied the Major, with a chuckle; “but I see what he
means--I see what he means. Why, he told me he wished I could have seen her
to-day in her red dress--and, bless my soul, I wish I could, ma'am.”
“I don't see what good it would do you,” returned his wife, coolly. “But
did he have the face to tell you he was in love with the girl, Mr.
Lightfoot?”
“Have the face?” repeated the Major, testily. “Pray, why shouldn't he have
the face, ma'am? Whom should he tell, I'd like to know, before he tells his
grandfather?” and with a final “pooh, pooh!” he returned angrily to his
library and to the _Richmond Whig_, a paper he breathlessly read and
mightily abused.
Dan, meanwhile, upstairs in his room with Champe, was busily sorting his
collection of neckwear.
“Look here, Champe, I'll give you all these red ties, if you want them,” he
generously concluded. “I believe, after all, I'll take to wearing white or
black ones again.”
“What?” asked Champe, in astonishment, turning on his heel. “Have the skies
fallen, or does Beau Montjoy forsake the fashions?”
“Confound the fashions!” retorted Dan, impatiently. “I don't care a jot for
the fashions. You may have all these, if you choose,” and he tossed the
neckties upon the bed.
Champe picked up one and examined it with interest.
“O woman,” he murmured as he did so, “your hand is small but mighty.”
IV.
LOVE IN A MAZE
Despite Virginia's endeavour to efface herself for her guests, she shone
unrivalled at the party, and Dan, who had held her hand for an ecstatic
moment under the mistletoe, felt, as he rode home in the moonlight
afterwards, that his head was fairly on fire with her beauty. She had been
sweetly candid and flatteringly impartial. He could not honestly assert
that she had danced with him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others,
but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said,
“I cannot,” her soft eyes added for her, “though I really wish to.” There
was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with
which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As
if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was
his hostess that she went with him at all. But some men would never
understand women, though they lived to be a thousand, and got rejected once
a day.
Out in the moonlight, with the Governor's wine singing in his blood, he
found that his emotions had a way of tripping lightly off his tongue. There
were hot words with Diggs, who hinted that Virginia was not the beauty of
the century, and threats of blows with Morson, who too boldly affirmed that
she was. In the end Champe rode between them, and sent Prince Rupert on his
way with a touch of the whip.
“For heaven's sake, keep your twaddle to yourselves!” he exclaimed
impatiently, “or take my advice, and make for the nearest duck pond. You've
both gone over your depth in the Governor's Madeira, and I advise you to
keep quiet until you've had your heads in a basin of ice water. There, get
out of my road, Morson. I can't sit here freezing all night.”
“Do you dare to imply that I am drunk, sir?” demanded Morson, in a fury.
“Bear witness, gentlemen, that the insult was unprovoked.”
“Oh, insult be damned!” retorted Champe. “If you shake your fist at me
again, I'll pitch you head over heels into that snowdrift.”
“Pitch whom, sir?” roared Morson, riding at the wall, when Diggs caught his
bridle and roughly dragged him back.
“Come, now, don't make a beast of yourself,” he implored.
“Who's a beast?” was promptly put by Morson; but leaving it unanswered,
Diggs wheeled his horse about and started up the turnpike. “You've let Beau
get out of sight,” he said. “We'd better catch up with him,” and he set off
at a gallop.
Dan, who had ridden on at Champe's first words, did not even turn his head
when the three came abreast with him. The moonlight was in his eyes, and
the vision of Virginia floated before him at his saddle bow. He let the
reins fall loosely on Prince Rupert's neck, and as the hoofs rang on the
frozen road, thrust his hands for warmth into his coat. In another dress,
with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a
cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding
carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken young Pretender.
But he was only following his dreams, and they hovered round Virginia,
catching their rosy glamour from her dress. In the cold night air he saw
her walking demurely through the lancers, her skirt held up above her satin
shoes, her coral necklace glowing deeper pink against her slim white
throat. Mistletoe and holly hung over her, and the light of the candles
shone brighter where her radiant figure passed. He caught the soft flash of
her shy brown eyes, he heard her gentle voice speaking trivial things with
profound tenderness. His hand still burned from the light pressure of her
finger tips. Oh, his day had come, he told himself, and he was furiously in
love at last.
As for going back to college, the very idea was absurd. At twenty years it
was quite time for him to settle down and keep open house like other men.
Virginia, in rose pink, flitted up the crooked stair and across the white
panels of the parlor, and with a leap, his heart went after her. He saw
Great-aunt Emmeline lean down from her faded canvas as if to toss her apple
at the young girl's feet. Ah, poor old beauty, hanging in a gilded frame,
what was her century of dust to a bit of living flesh that had bright eyes
and was coloured like a flower?
When he was safely married he would have his wife's portrait hung upon the
opposite wall, only he rather thought he should have the dogs in and let
her be Diana, with a spear instead of an apple in her hand. Two beauties in
one family--that was something to be proud of even in Virginia.
It was at this romantic point that Champe shattered his visions by shooting
a jest at him about the “love sick swain.”
“Oh, be off, and let a fellow think, won't you?” he retorted angrily.
“Do you hear him call it thinking?” jeered Diggs, from the other side.
“He doesn't call it mooning, oh, no,” scoffed Champe.
“Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life,” sang Morson, striking an
attitude that almost threw him off his horse.
“Shut up, Morson,” commanded Diggs, “you ought to be thankful if you had
enough sense left to moon with.”
“Sense, who wants sense?” inquired Morson, on the point of tears. “I have
heart, sir.”
“Then keep it bottled up,” rejoined Champe, coolly, as they turned into the
drive at Chericoke.
In Dan's room they found Big Abel stretched before the fire asleep; and as
the young men came in, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Hi! young Marsters, hit's ter-morrow!” he exclaimed.
“To-morrow! I wish it were to-morrow,” responded Dan, cheerfully. “The fire
makes my head spin like a top. Here, come and pull off my coat, Big Abel,
or I'll have to go to bed with my clothes on.”
Big Abel pulled off the coat and brushed it carefully; then he held out his
hand for Champe's.
“I hope dis yer coat ain' gwine lose hit's set 'fo' hit gits ter me,” he
muttered as he hung them up. “Seems like you don' teck no cyar yo' clothes,
nohow, Marse Dan. I'se de wuss dress somebody dis yer side er de po' w'ite
trash. Wat's de use er bein' de quality ef'n you ain' got de close?”
“Stop grumbling, you fool you,” returned Dan, with his lordly air. “If it's
my second best evening suit you're after, you may take it; but I tell you
now, it's the last thing you're going to get out of me till summer.”
Big Abel took down the second best suit of clothes and examined them with
an interest they had never inspired before. “I d'clar you sutney does set
hard,” he remarked after a moment, and added, tentatively, “I dunno whar de
shuts gwine come f'om.”
“Not from me,” replied Dan, airily; “and now get out of here, for I'm going
to sleep.”
But when he threw himself upon his bed it was to toss with feverish
rose-coloured dreams until the daybreak.
His blood was still warm when he came down to breakfast; but he met his
grandfather's genial jests with a boyish attempt at counter-buff.
“Oh, you needn't twit me, sir,” he said with an embarrassed laugh; “to wear
the heart upon the sleeve is hereditary with us, you know.”
“Keep clear of the daws, my son, and it does no harm,” responded the Major.
“There's nothing so becoming to a gentleman as a fine heart well worn, eh,
Molly?”
He carefully spread the butter upon his cakes, for his day of love-making
was over, and his eye could hold its twinkle while he watched Dan fidget in
his seat.
Mrs. Lightfoot promptly took up the challenge. “For my part I prefer one
under a buttoned coat,” she replied briskly; “but be careful, Mr.
Lightfoot, or you will put notions into the boys' heads. They are at the
age when a man has a fancy a day and gets over it before he knows it.”
“They are at the age when I had my fancy for you, Molly,” gallantly
retorted the Major, “and I seem to be carrying it with me to my grave.”
“It would be a dull wit that would go roving from Aunt Molly,” said Champe,
affectionately; “but there aren't many of her kind in the world.”
“I never found but one like her,” admitted the Major, “and I've seen a good
deal in my day, sir.”
The old lady listened with a smile, though she spoke in a severe voice.
“You mustn't let them teach you how to flatter, Mr. Morson,” she said
warningly, as she filled the Major's second cup of coffee--“Cupid, Mr.
Morson will have a partridge.”
“The man who sits at your table will never question your supremacy, dear
madam,” returned Jack Morson, as he helped himself to a bird. “There is
little merit in devotion to such bounty.”
“Shall I kick him, grandma?” demanded Dan. “He means that we love you
because you feed us, the sly scamp.”
Mrs. Lightfoot shook her head reprovingly. “Oh, I understand you, Mr.
Morson,” she said amiably, “and a compliment to my housekeeping never goes
amiss. If a woman has any talent, it will come out upon her table.”
“You're right, Molly, you're right,” agreed the Major, heartily. “I've
always held that there was nothing in a man who couldn't make a speech or
in a woman who couldn't set a table.”
Dan stirred restlessly in his chair, and at the first movement of Mrs.
Lightfoot he rose and went out into the hall. An hour later he ordered
Prince Rupert and started joyously to Uplands.
As he rode through the frosted air he pictured to himself a dozen different
ways in which it was possible that he might meet Virginia. Would she be
upon the portico or in the parlour? Was she still in pink or would she wear
the red gown of yesterday? When she gave him her hand would she smile as
she had smiled last night? or would she stand demurely grave with down
dropped lashes?
The truth was that she did none of the things he had half expected of her.
She was sitting before a log fire, surrounded by a group of Harrisons and
Powells, who had been prevailed upon to spend the night, and when he
entered she gave him a sleepy little nod from the corner of a rosewood
sofa. As she lay back in the firelight she was like a drowsy kitten that
had just awakened from a nap. Though less radiant, her beauty was more
appealing, and as she stared at him with her large eyes blinking, he wanted
to stoop down and rock her off to sleep. He regarded her calmly this
morning, for, with all his tenderness, she did not fire his brain, and the
glory of the vision had passed away. Half angrily he asked himself if he
were in love with a pink dress and nothing more?
An hour afterward he came noisily into the library at Chericoke and aroused
the Major from his Horace by stamping distractedly about the room.
“Oh, it's all up with me, sir,” he began despondently. “I might as well go
out and hang myself. I don't know what I want and yet I'm going mad because
I can't get it.”
“Come, come,” said the Major, soothingly. “I've been through it myself,
sir, and since your grandmother's out of earshot, I'd as well confess that
I've been through it more than once. Cheer up, cheer up, you aren't the
first to dare the venture--_Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_, you know.”
His assurance was hardly as comforting as he had intended it to be. “Oh, I
dare say, there've been fools enough before me,” returned Dan, impatiently,
as he flung himself out of the room.
He grew still more impatient when the day came for him to return to
college; and as they started out on horseback, with Zeke and Big Abel
riding behind their masters, he declared irritably that the whole system of
education was a nuisance, and that he “wished the ark had gone down with
all the ancient languages on board.”
“There would still be law,” suggested Morson, pleasantly. “So cheer up,
Beau, there's something left for you to learn.”
Then, as they passed Uplands, they turned, with a single impulse, and
cantered up the broad drive to the portico. Betty and Virginia were in the
library; and as they heard the horses, they came running to the window and
threw it open.
“So you will come back in the summer--all of you,” said Virginia,
hopefully, and as she leaned out a white camellia fell from her bosom to
the snow beneath. In an instant Jack Morson was off his horse and the
flower was in his hand. “We'll bring back all that we take away,” he
answered gallantly, his fair boyish face as red as Virginia's.
Dan could have kicked him for the words, but he merely said savagely, “Have
you left your pocket handkerchief?” and turned Prince Rupert toward the
road. When he looked back from beneath the silver poplars, the girls were
still standing at the open window, the cold wind flushing their cheeks and
blowing the brown hair and the red together.
Virginia was the first to turn away. “Come in, you'll take cold,” she said,
going to the fire. “Peggy Harrison never goes out when the wind blows, you
know, she says it's dreadful for the complexion. Once when she had to come
back from town on a March day, she told me she wore six green veils. I
wonder if that's the way she keeps her lovely colour?”
“Well, I wouldn't be Peggy Harrison,” returned Betty, gayly, and she added
in the same tone, “so Mr. Morson got your camellia, after all, didn't he?”
“Oh, he begged so hard with his eyes,” answered Virginia. “He had seen me
give Dan a white rose on Christmas Eve, you know, and he said it wasn't
fair to be so unfair.”
“You gave Dan a white rose?” repeated Betty, slowly. Her face was pale, but
she was smiling brightly.
Virginia's soft little laugh pealed out. “And it was your rose, too,
darling,” she said, nestling to Betty like a child. “You dropped it on the
stair and I picked it up. I was just going to take it to you because it
looked so lovely in your hair, when Dan came along and he would have it,
whether or no. But you don't mind, do you, just a little bit of white
rosebud?” She put up her hand and stroked her sister's cheek. “Men are so
silly, aren't they?” she added with a sigh.
For a moment Betty looked down upon the brown head on her bosom; then she
stooped and kissed Virginia's brow. “Oh, no, I don't mind, dear,” she
answered, “and women are very silly, too, sometimes.”