WHEN Virginia came down-stairs she heard the pleasant jingle of ice in
the drawing-room. Plato was serving iced tea, there being no occasion
in life, not even a funeral, when refreshments were not served; but
Mr. Carter and her grandfather were the only tea-drinkers. Mrs. Carter
was sitting in the corner, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, and
Daniel was walking up and down on the rear piazza. Virginia heard his
restless tramp as she crossed the hall and stood for a moment in the
drawing-room door. They all looked up at her, and Plato discreetly
withdrew, bearing his tray.
“How is she, Jinny?” the colonel asked quietly, setting aside his
slender glass of tea.
“I think she knew him,” Virginia answered simply, and then, ignoring
the two men, she went over to Mrs. Carter. “You were good to come,” she
said softly.
“Oh, Virginia!” Mrs. Carter dabbed at her eyes, “I feel as if I’d
been guilty.” She lowered her voice and added in a whisper: “What did
William say?”
Virginia smiled, a beautiful light in her eyes.
“I think he’s forgiven her already,” she replied sweetly. “I’ve been
with her for hours and hours, and I’m fond of her. I can’t help it.
She’s like a child, Mrs. Carter, and she loves William. Besides, she’s
suffered terribly, and don’t you think suffering expiates everything?”
Mrs. Carter pressed her handkerchief against her lips. For a moment
she was silent, aware of her husband’s eyes and Colonel Denbigh’s.
Involuntarily they looked at her. She wavered a little, and then she
spoke, faint-heartedly but sincerely.
“Johnson, I think we ought to go up-stairs, too. We ought to tell
William how we feel--at least, I should. I’m ready to do anything
that’s right.”
Mr. Carter nodded his head slowly.
“I’ve just told the colonel that we’re not really monsters,” he replied
bluntly; “but we’ve had rather a rough experience, take it all in all.
There’s Leigh, nothing but a boy, and he’s killed a man. It’s not a
nice thing to think about. He told me one night how he felt. It haunts
him. Besides, I’ve seen William falling down on his work. The whole
racket got on our nerves. I reckon we were hard on her. William used
to call her a wild fawn. Maybe, if we’d met her from the first in the
right way, she’d have tamed down.”
Colonel Denbigh pulled hard at his mustache.
“Give her a little love, Carter, and trust in the Lord,” he advised
gently.
It was Virginia, however, who solved the problem.
“William must take her away,” she said decidedly. “She’s used to big
cities, to life and light and change, and she couldn’t endure us here.
It will be a long time before she can. If he takes her away they’ll
understand each other, Mrs. Carter, and then the rest of it will solve
itself.”
Mrs. Carter assented to this. It came to her in the nature of
manna from heaven. To mend William’s marriage and to escape the
responsibility of Fanchon would be almost too good to be true.
“I reckon that’s just it, Jinny,” she said weakly. “It’s all wrong for
two young people to start in together with another family. We’re right
set in our ways, too. I think you’re right. Don’t you, papa?”
Mr. Carter nodded again. There was a little pause, broken only by the
distant sound of Daniel’s march on the piazza.
“Isn’t that boy coming in here to sit down and drink some tea?” Mr.
Carter demanded suddenly and sharply, addressing space.
“I’ll call him,” said Virginia.
But as she spoke they heard a step on the stairs and William’s voice.
“Mother, will you come up and see--my wife?”
Mrs. Carter rose, with a gasp, glancing at her husband. She met assent
in his eyes, and she hurried out into the hall. William stood there,
his face changed and softened, but still very pale. His eyes met his
mother’s, and he held out his hand.
“She’s come out of her delirium. She knows me--and she wants to ask
your forgiveness,” he said in a low voice, swallowing a lump in his
throat.
Mrs. Carter clung to his arm, lifting her face to his.
“Oh, Willie!” she sobbed, and kissed him.
The colonel and Mr. Carter saw the mother and son going up-stairs
together.
“It’s all right,” said the colonel with manifest relief. “I’m mighty
glad of it!”
Mr. Carter made no reply, but lifted his glass of iced tea slowly to
his lips and drank it. He felt choked. He was registering a silent vow
that, whatever happened, Emily shouldn’t paint her eyelashes!
Virginia, smiling at her grandfather, slipped quietly out of the room.
She stood for a moment in the wide, cool hall, listening. She could
hear the faint murmur of voices above her, and the tramp of Daniel’s
nervous feet. Outside the door the warm sunshine seemed to pulsate, and
a thousand little gnats danced in a circle in mid air. Virginia crossed
the hall softly and stood in the door.
Daniel, very pale and quiet, stopped his marching up and down. His eyes
met hers with a silent interrogation.
“It’s all right, Dan,” she said gently. “William just called your
mother. It’s made up.”
Daniel drew a deep breath, his eyes on her face. He thought he had
never seen her look so beautiful.
“It’s your doing, Virginia,” he said softly.
She shook her head, coming out and standing beside him in the sunshine.
“It’s God’s doing, Dan,” she replied gravely.
He said nothing. He was still gazing at her. She looked so beautiful
and so happy that he wondered if, after all, she cared for William.
Then he reflected that angels must always look beautiful in acts of
love and renunciation.
She turned and smiled at him again.
“Let’s walk down to the end of the garden,” she said gently. “It’s cool
there under the old mulberry.”
They walked slowly, not because of his lameness, for he was limping
very little to-day, but because the walk through the old garden-paths
was sweet.
“My roses are still blooming,” remarked Virginia. “I’m going to set out
some more of these late ones this autumn. How sweet the air is to-day!”
He looked up at the clear sky. Only a few white clouds floated in the
deep, ineffable blue.
“It’s a heavenly day,” he said.
They were silent after that, walking between the hedgerows, until they
came to a grassy slope that was left to go wild, because Virginia loved
wild flowers. Here, in the spring, were pink anemones and blood-root,
and now there were little yellow flowers on the green blades of grass.
They sat down together on a fallen tree, which had been left lying
there for a seat. Daniel looked down at the little yellow stars in the
grass.
“Aren’t they pretty things?” he said musingly. “At first I thought this
was only common turf, but it’s full of yellow stars.”
Virginia, following his eyes, smiled.
“They call that star-grass, Dan.”
“Star-grass?” he repeated thoughtfully, “it’s a pretty name, Virginia.
Do you know why I was looking at it? Those little stars are everywhere
like tiny points of flame--and they are all around your feet, little
flames of incense.”
“There’s a legend,” she replied, “that those little stars were fastened
on the blades of grass so that the humble things of earth, which
couldn’t look so high as heaven, could see the stars in the grass.
Isn’t it a quaint idea?”
Daniel nodded, leaning his chin on the hands that clasped the top of
his walking-stick, and looking at them, something grim and sad coming
into his face.
“I saw a white-breasted nuthatch yesterday in that tree,” said Virginia
dreamily.
He did not reply, and there was such a long silence that she turned and
looked at him. She saw how pale he had grown, how the delicate hollows
had fallen in his cheeks, and the shadows under his eyes. Daniel’s eyes
were beautiful, she thought--like a woman’s in their clear kindness.
Perhaps it was the pain he had borne for so many years after his hurt.
“Virginia, if you look at me like that I shall say something,” he cried
suddenly. “I can’t bear it! Turn your eyes away, Virginia.”
She laughed a little tremulously, blushing, too.
“But why, Dan? A cat may look at a king, you know.”
He did not answer for a while. He was digging little holes in the soft
turf with his stick.
“A cripple can’t speak,” he said at last. “A cripple can’t tell a woman
what he feels, even when that woman is an angel of compassion.”
“But you’re not a cripple, Dan. You’re only a little lame. It grows
less, too, every day.”
“I overheard father once,” Daniel replied bitterly. “He called me a
cripple. ‘No girl wants a cripple,’ he said.”
“Oh, how cruel,” Virginia cried. “And it’s not true, Dan; it’s not true
at all!”
Daniel started, looking around at her, but her face was averted. He
only saw her charming profile against the beauty of the foliage behind
her. Something in it--something tender and sympathetic--reached him. He
drew a long breath.
“Virginia, you can’t mean----”
She said nothing, but she lifted her eyes a little shyly to his face,
and this time Daniel could not resist the look.
“You can’t mean that you’d marry me!” he cried, and then softly, with
infinite tenderness: “Will you, Virginia?”
“Yes, Dan,” she answered, smiling.
Her smile seemed to change his whole world for him, and to fill it
with an ineffable tenderness and light. It was no longer the sweet
whistling of a robin that he heard, but the music of the spheres. The
very ground was carpeted with stars--with tiny stars that ran like
little flames all the way to Virginia’s feet, for--like the humble
things of earth--Daniel had found his bit of heaven there.