SOUTHERN HEARTS.
[Illustration: From "THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO"--Part II.]
SOUTHERN HEARTS
_By_
FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURN
_Author of_ "NURSERY ETHICS," _and_ "FROM THE
CHILD'S STANDPOINT"
NEW YORK
THE F.M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY.
_Southern Hearts._
MY VIRGINIA FRIENDS;
ESPECIALLY TO
THAT ONE OF THEM WHO LIVES IN MY MEMORY
AS THE
TYPE OF ALL THAT IS SINCERE,
HOSPITABLE AND KINDLY
IN THE
SOUTHERN CHARACTER,
THIS VOLUME IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED
BY THE AUTHOR.
SEVERAL of the stories in this volume have appeared in the magazines;
three are entirely new. For courteous permission to reprint thanks
are due the publishers of "Romance," "Godey's Magazine," "The Ladies'
World," and "The Independent."
CONTENTS.
PAGE
WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES 11
THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO 41
PETER WEAVER 153
A HALT AT DAWN 263
PINK AND BLACK 291
MRS. MAY'S PRIVATE INCOME 311
THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA 339
AN AWAKENING 365
APPLE BLOSSOMS 389
SOUTHERN HEARTS.
WHEN LOVE ENSLAVES.
IT was a beautiful morning of early October in the mountain region of
Virginia. The old Fitzhugh homestead, now the property of an Englishman
who had married the only daughter of the impoverished family and
bought in the home from creditors with good British gold, reared its
dull red sides from amid a mass of sugar maples, larches and sycamore
trees, and seemed with its widely opened doors, to proclaim an endless
hospitality. The passer-by caught a glimpse of rambling out-houses
whose chimneys shed lazy wreaths of smoke from pine wood fires, and if
near enough he might have sniffed the pleasant odor of savory cookery
from the rear building where Aunt Rose, the old-time cook, exercised
her skill to please her epicure master, or tempt the less robust
appetite of her young mistress.
Mrs. Meeks stood at this moment in the middle of the sitting-room, her
arms clasped over a broom, and her dark eyes gazing upon the floor in
front of her. But her meditations had nothing to do with the rug where
the broom rested, nor yet with the sun-lit slope of the Blue Ridges
that extended in all their wealth of autumn beauty in front of the open
windows.
She was thinking of Mr. Meeks. He had just left the house, and as not
infrequently happened, had left the sting of sharp words behind him.
Yet, not exactly sharp, either. Overbearing, dogmatical words, not
intentionally cutting ones, for that was not the nature of the man; but
words that, said in his tone of command, bore heavily upon sensitive
feelings.
Mrs. Meeks was sensitive. That was evident in every line of her softly
rounded face, but the red lips that were curved in Cupid's bow could
straighten and stiffen when she was roused into one of her rare moods
of determination. Mr. Meeks called these moods "tantrums," although
his wife always spoke low and never lost her good manners. She had
been reared by a grandmother who was one of the last of the Southern
dames of the _ancien régime_, and would have died before she would have
condescended to a rough and vulgar quarrel.
It was the opposite trait in Mr. Meeks that hurt her. He was inclined
to quarrel on slight occasion. He had not the least idea of his defect
of temper; it was always clear to him that he was in the right, and
people who differed from him were wrong. They quarreled with him. If
people would do what they were told, he would never have cause to
get out of humor. This lordliness of tone did not set ill on a man
presiding at town meetings, and explaining to badly informed clients
the intricacies of law. In these cases, suavity and a fine, melodious
voice were the decent coverings of an egotism that wore less disguise
when he was laying down the law to the little woman at home.
It had been only an agreeable sort of masterfulness in the courting
days. Then it had seemed to the romantic girl that yielding her will
to a tender, protecting lover gave to their relation a delightful
exclusiveness, as contrasted with other relations. But in three
years she had learned that what from one point of view is agreeable
authority, becomes from another point of view distasteful restraint.
Besides, the fiber of the American woman which yields sweetly to
suggestions of warmer wraps and the reserving of dances, is less
compliant under complaints of neglected hose or bad management of fuel.
Still, one could conceive of a demeanor that would have deprived even
such fault-finding of its sting. But the most tender wifely forbearance
will bristle with resentment when such a slight matter as a wrongly
folded white tie calls forth allusions to a blissful and ante-marital
condition in which hired landladies were attentive to a man's comfort;
and above all, when ill-humor allows itself the parting shot from the
doorway of a muttered "darned fool."
Mrs. Meeks had watched her stout, well-set-up husband drive away behind
his handsome bay horses to his office in town, and then fallen into
an unpleasant fit of meditation over her morning task of putting the
sitting-room in order.
The suggestion of Cupid's bow had entirely disappeared by the time she
had mentally reviewed the whole situation, and her mouth was, as the
old black servant secretly observed as she entered, "set for a fight."
"Ef ever Mis' Linda gits her back up onc't, that air Englishman better
look out for hisse'f," old Rose had confided to a confidential friend.
"I knows the Fitzhugh blood. It won't bear much puttin' upon, now I
tells you."
The old family servant was not particularly fond of her Mis' Linda's
husband, and she looked forward to that crisis when the Fitzhugh blood
would become heated.
"Laws, honey," she made bold to say as she came forward and took the
broom into her hard, muscular hands, "you go and set down. You's got no
call to worry yo'se'f no-how 'bout housewuk."
"But you have enough to do already, Rose," said Mrs. Meeks kindly, and
turning her eyes, in which tears glistened, away from the withered,
kindly old face. She dared not meet the look of sympathy, being in
that humor when even a dignified woman may be melted into indiscreet
confidences under the temptation of a silent, intelligent championship.
Old Rose, however, began to sweep with those deft, smooth strokes that
raise no dust, and with her head bent, she talked along in a seemingly
purposeless fashion.
"I's an ole coon, Mis' Linda; a little extry wuk ain't goin' to hurt
me none. You take keer yo'se'f, honey, an' don' wuk yo' good looks
away. An' don' fret 'em away, neither. You mus'n't wu'y yo'se'f, chile.
Never was er _man_ wuth wu'yin' over. Ain't I had three husbands? De
good Laud, He tuk Jim an' Abraham, an' den I, like a fool, tuk up wid
Josh. An' he drunk an' drunk, an' den he cusses an' swear at me, an'
me wu'kin' myse'f like er ole hoss, and den I jes gets up an' I say,
'Josh, I don' 'low no nigger ter cuss at me!' I says, 'You kin hev de
inside of dis house an' I'll tek de outside,' and so I comes back ter
de ole place, an' what Josh do? Why, Josh, he sober up, an' he 'gins
ter see den w'at comes o' ugliness, an' he follow a'ter me, an' heah
he is, gard'nin' fur Mr. Meeks. But when he comes home ter de shanty
he don' cuss at me no mo'. Bes' way is jes ter let dese men know dere
place, honey, once an' fur all."
After old Rose had gone out with the dust-pan, Mrs. Meeks sat still
in the rocking chair by the window, from which she could see quite a
distance down the road; but her vision was turned too intensely inward
to admit of her taking any interest in the few passers-by.
Strange how a single sentence coming at the right time, will have a
force that tons of inopportune advice has not. "Bes' way is jes ter
let dese men know dere place, honey, once an' fur all." The sage,
worldly-wise policy of this ignorant colored woman, to whom mother-wit
had suggested methods culture could scarcely have rendered more
effective, struck a chord in the heart of her mistress that would
have failed to vibrate at any other moment. When causes of irritation
are not present, one is simply amused in listening to recitals that
piquantly set forth the temper of the subject, but when the mind is
oppressed by a sense of long-smothered injuries, it turns a very
different aspect toward experiences that appear similar to its own.
Mrs. Meeks would not have deliberately made herself, or permitted any
one else to make comparisons between her husband and Uncle Josh, whose
outward uncouthness removed him leagues distant from his master. Yet,
with that gentleman's last muttered expression smarting in her ears,
she quailed at the suggestion of a spiritual likeness between the
two beings in their antipodal tweed and jeans. Floating in upon her
disturbed mind came a certain rude epigram which she had heard in the
kitchen years ago when, a tiny girl, she was playing about the door,
and had remembered because it struck her as being funny: "All men's tar
off de same stick."
"True!" said Mrs. Meeks bitterly, the tears falling now without
disguise. "Men are all alike. I thought Robert was different. And our
life together was to be a heaven upon earth? Well, this is the end of
it all. I cannot stand his temper--I will not stand it!"
How far her resentful musings would have extended if she had been left
a while longer in that worst of solitudes, the loneliness of affronted
dignity, is uncertain, for her tears were suddenly checked by sounds
of visitors. A keen-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman alighted at
the door from an open carriage and made her way in without ceremony.
Mrs. Meeks started up with intent to escape, but settled back in her
chair again as her visitor entered with the little whirl and rush that
characterizes the movements of a lively, excitable woman.
Her sharp black eyes took in the situation at a glance; the
half-arranged room, Mrs. Meek's dishabille, her despondent attitude
and the traces of tears. She advanced quickly and put out both hands,
exclaiming in a voice of mingled affection and curiosity:
"Linda, what is the matter?"
"Oh, Louise, for once I am sorry to see you!"
These two women were lifelong friends; friends in the sense in which
Virginians understand the term, their relations being of the sort that
involves the frankest self-disclosure, and an immediate discussion of
every important circumstance entering into their experience.
"Now, my dear," said Louise Gourlay, in a husky, emphatic voice, which
to her torment she could never soften, "Providence sent me here this
morning. I think too much of you not to understand at once what ails
you. Mr. Meeks has been abusing you!"
Mrs. Meeks blushed and tried to look indignant, but only succeeded in
looking unhappy.
"There is no use in talking about it," she said, bracing herself to
encounter opposition. "Some things ought not to be talked about. It
cannot help any. I can't go back and be a girl again." There was a
slight pause and a struggle after control, and then she broke out with
a sob: "Oh, Louise, why did I marry?"
"The good Lord only knows why any of us marry," answered the older
woman, raising her eyes devoutly. "But I suppose the world has to be
carried on some way. It isn't so much the marrying, after all, that's
the trouble, as the foolishness afterward. Now, dear, you remember
that I prophesied long ago that Mr. Meeks would tyrannize over you
hand and foot, if you let him. A man can't help trying to rule the
roost--mercy, what's all that row about?"
She broke off suddenly and got up to look out of the window as sounds
of a great commotion in the garden turned the peaceful scene without
into one of those miniature pandemoniums not uncommon in the country,
where a flock of hens follow a Robin Hood of a spouse in his raids upon
forbidden territory.
Robin Hood in this case was a superb black Spanish cock with large
powers of leadership, and he had succeeded in marshaling his entire
female troop into the geranium patch before Uncle Josh, soberly hoeing
corn in the rear, was made aware of the invasion.
He ambled forward, waving his hat and shouting. Aunt Rose ran out,
waving her apron, and the daring Robin Hood, making as much noise as
both of them, strode back and forth, protecting while at the same time
vigorously protesting against the retreat of his flock.
"Mercy on us!" ejaculated Mrs. Gourlay, "the hens are trampling over
your yellow chrysanthemums, Linda."
Confidences can wait, but the peril of a cherished flower-bed is not
lightly to be set aside. Mrs. Meeks was stung into renewed interest in
the life she had been upon the point of denouncing as utterly devoid
of satisfaction. It was impossible to sit still and watch those lazy,
awkward negroes vainly trying to head off the stout-hearted rooster.
She went out, at first with rather a contemptuous, indifferent air,
but, as the cause of provocation scuttled toward her she suddenly
felt her indefinite sense of wrong against a sex at large become
concentrated into fury toward this small masculine specimen, and
entered into the chase with an ardor that soon routed him from the
field.
She entered the house half laughing, half frowning at the two darkies,
who had rather enjoyed the little excitement.
"Aunt Rose, you are as bad as a child, standing giggling there! You had
better be making some little cakes for lunch. Miss Louise will stay."
"Laws, Mis' Linda, I couldn't he'p myse'f. Dat rooster, he de wuss
sp'iled fowl I ebber see. He oughter be clapped inter de pot. He got a
heap o' sense, too, but he done sp'iled tell he jes rotten." Thus Rose,
as she sauntered back to her kitchen, to look up eggs and sugar for her
cakes. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gourlay was saying:
"No, Linda, I can't stay to-day. You drive back with me and stay all
night. It's an age since you spent the night at my house. Come, it will
do Mr. Meeks good to show him you feel a proper resentment. It's high
time you took a stand."
"Stay all night?" said Linda slowly. She felt that the significance of
the act would be greater to her husband than her adviser was aware.
It would be dropping the old life, putting a check upon all the sweet,
confidential relations that were so dear to both, and starting out in
a new, untried path of independence, of separateness that might end
in complete alienation. She was a reasoning woman, used to foreseeing
consequences. Sometimes she was impatient of the sound logical faculty
that held her impulsive disposition in check, and longed to plunge
headlong into some kind of folly, as a child bound over by a promise
not to meddle with sweets, has spasms of temptation which even the
certainty of illness and castor oil are hardly sufficient to restrain.
She got up and walked slowly toward the door that opened into her
own and her husband's room. It was a spacious chamber, capable of
holding the belongings of two persons, and before its wide-open
fireplace filled with small logs ready for lighting, was drawn a great
easy-chair, in which he loved to recline in the evenings with her on a
cushion at his feet, while they watched the blaze together. A slight,
nervous shudder passed over Linda as her dress brushed against the
chair on her way to the closet where her numerous hats were arranged in
their boxes. Mr. Meeks liked to see his pretty wife well dressed, and
no woman in the county had such an abundance of fine clothes. She took
down a fawn-colored wool gown and went to the dressing-case to fasten
it before the glass. A serious, tremulous face looked back at her, a
face made for sweet looks, for happiness, but now shadowed by the most
miserable feelings a woman can have, for "to be wroth with one we love
doth work like madness in the brain."
There, hanging on its pretty stand, was her jeweled watch, his wedding
gift to her. Shining on the pin cushion were brooches and little
trinkets, every one of which marked some pleasant episode. A vase of
her favorite late white roses gathered by his hands only the evening
before, breathed reproachful sweetness as she hastily bent over them.
But Linda was a proud woman as well as a tender one. The Fitzhugh
spirit had been chafed beyond endurance; it could bear the hurts
of privation, of grief, ruin and all sufferings inflicted by evil
circumstances; it could not submit to insult. So she named the
roughness of the man whose one great fault had to-day come to outweigh
in her mind innumerable virtues. She called old Rose, gave a few orders
in a tone that warned the servant to preserve silence in the midst of
surprise, and then, beside her friend who kept up a cheerful flow of
talk, moved tall and stately toward the carriage, and gazed dry-eyed,
but ah, how sadly, at the fine old red brick dwelling half-covered with
Virginia creeper and clematis, till a turn of the road swept it out of
sight.
The strong black horses pranced merrily along the road, which now on
one side lay beneath the mountain, covered with the red, yellow and
brown masses of forestry that in the autumn glorify the earth, and in
daily bleeding beauty divert a gazer's thoughts from the cruel frosts
of night. To the left a deep gorge, rocky and dangerous, swept to the
river below. Two vehicles, coming in opposite directions, could barely
pass each other, and the driver who had the inside track might well
bless his luck. But secure in the skill of their black Jehu, the two
women gave no single thought to danger, but kept up their conversation
indefatigably. John, keen and alert, pulled up his team carefully as he
heard the tramp of a horseman rapidly approaching.
The horseman also slowed up, and when alongside stopped entirely, to
exchange greetings. He was elderly and distinguished-looking, despite
his shabby, dust-covered clothing and carelessly-cropped hair and
beard. His worn, melancholy face brightened as he swept off his hat and
made careful inquiries after the ladies' health. Then he cantered on
and the inmates of the carriage leaned back again.
"Poor Colonel Thomas!" commented Mrs. Gourlay. "I recollect when he was
the first young man in the county. He has gone all to pieces in the
last year. He was rather high once, but Amanda was too much for him.
Sam calls her 'Petruchio in petticoats.'"
Her tones smote her listener's ear as sounds coming from afar. Poor
Colonel Thomas! Had he ever been in love with that sharp-tongued woman?
How terrible for a woman to have upon her conscience the wreck of a
man's life. If Robert should ever come to wear that bowed look--if
instead of the proud confidence that well became his comely Saxon
features, he should show in sunken eyes and fitful flush the marks of
that ill remedy that promises but never brings "surcease of sorrow...."
But he was too strong, too sane; misery could never drive him to
dissipation, although it might drive him to desperation of another
sort. Her quick fancy began to picture Robert estranged from the woman
he loved. Mentally she saw him growing cold, gloomy and reserved--their
intimacy gone as if it had never been, and they two, bound by
unbreakable ties, aging in sight of each other, their lives dragging on
in a way that might come to end in mutual aversion and disgust. She
knew that Robert would construe her going away to-day, after their cold
parting, into a determination to assert herself against him, and still
worse, to seek abroad sympathy for that which she was bound as a loving
wife to bear in silence and to forget.
The proud Fitzhugh blood flamed in her cheeks and her head flung up
unconsciously. But at the same instant there came into her mind, as a
bugle note sounds amid the horrid discord of battle, a sentence Robert
had uttered to her once in the early days of their love, when he had
inadvertently offended her by a careless remark: "A man is not to be
judged by one word, but by all the acts of his life."
And as if in her mental struggle she had been seeking some maxim as a
guide, she fastened upon this and repeated it over and over to herself.
All this time she had been mechanically giving outward attention to
Mrs. Gourlay, although that shrewd woman, comprehending her absent
glance, made small exactions upon her for reply. But seeing a sudden
brightness take the place of her friend's dull gaze, she gave her talk
more point.
"Sam is home, my dear. He came yesterday, and he says he means to pay
us an old-fashioned visit. I hope the weather will keep fine so we
can have some dancing picnics. He declares they are better fun than
anything in Philadelphia."
"Yes, I always liked them--when I was a girl."
"What are you now, an aged woman? Nonsense, you are even prettier than
you used to be when Sam spent his days on the road between our place
and your father's. Ah, child, you treated Sam badly. He never got over
your marriage, poor fellow. I don't know how he will bear meeting you
to-day, without any preparation. But men's hearts bend, they never
break; that's one comfort. Still, perhaps you'd best not flirt too hard
with him."
Linda started and looked squarely at her friend. She knew that in
the code of the Virginia matron, herself holding her girlhood's
coquetries in dear remembrance, such meetings between old flames and
mild renewals of former admiration were perfectly harmless and natural.
But her husband would think differently. He might believe this meeting
pre-meditated on her part; believe that she sought diversion of a
dangerous and a doubtful nature. For she knew well, and he had guessed,
that Sam Hilton's courtship of her had been no idle pastime, and that
the young Southerner bore the Englishman a grudge which would make him
a swift partisan if there once entered his head the slightest suspicion
that she had reason to complain of the treatment she received.
Had she? Her husband was in general goodness itself, all indulgence
and kindness except when wrought upon by outer irritating quality, or
annoyed at carelessness in herself. For she was forgetful--not wantonly
careless, but lacking in that perfect method his good taste demanded.
He was arbitrary--yes--still, some of the blame was hers, and if they
had differences it was her place to give in. So the wife told herself
in the quick interval between Mrs. Gourlay's last remark, and the
turning of the carriage into the east fork of the road that marked half
the distance between the two residences.
"Louise," she said in an imperative undertone, "tell John to turn back
and take me home. I _must_ go back this minute. If you think anything
of me," she added hastily, interposing against remonstrance, "do as I
ask."
"Now, Linda, listen to reason. If you've made up your mind to go back
and eat humble-pie--excuse the truth--at least wait till after dinner
and Sam shall drive you back. It would be absurd to turn back now."
"Louise--you don't understand my feeling. I was wrong to come. Robert
was to come home early this evening and bring an old friend just from
England with him to stay a few days. Think how mortifying to find me
gone away!"
"It would look badly. Still--serve him right!"
"No, I was cross myself this morning--probably. I didn't mean to tell
you of our quarrel--our _half_ quarrel. But never mind talking about
it, only, please take me back. Or else let me walk? I can walk; it's
not far."
"Linda Fitzhugh! Well, then--John, Mrs. Meeks has forgotten an
important engagement and we must take her straight home again. Can you
turn the carriage here?"
"Reckon I kin, m'm," said John sulkily, and the horses were turned
about.
Mrs. Gourlay glanced at her watch and said resignedly:
"It will be half-past one by the time I am back, and the children will
be savage, for I promised them I wouldn't stay long this morning. But
you always have your own way with me, Linda. I wish you were half as
spunky with somebody else."
"Don't, dearest," Linda entreated, the color rising in her cheeks.
"I will say it. If you keep on giving in this way to a man's temper,
you'll end by not daring to say your soul's your own."
"Robert is imperious, perhaps," the young wife answered slowly. "But
that is between him and me. If I can stand it, my friends needn't
worry."
"My dear child, you know I don't mean to be meddlesome. I might have
recollected the old adage about a husband and wife being a pair of
scissors, and whatever comes between the blades gets cut. But there is
a principle involved here."
"Yes," assented Linda, "there is a principle involved."
"I suppose you mean your principles and mine are not the same," said
the elder woman, with a little heat.
"Oh, yours are all right for you. But I must conform myself to a
different rule. I can't explain it all, dear, only, right or wrong,
I shall continue to give in--as you term it--to Robert. If he is
high-tempered, there's all the more reason why I shouldn't be. I know
what he expects of me--what he has always expected of me----"
"Expects you to be an angel!" broke in her friend, "while he
is--whatever he chooses."
"Well," answered Linda, with a brilliant smile, "I'll be as near an
angel as I can. You don't understand. There are compensations. Even if
there is a little bitter drop now and then, he makes me very happy. And
happiness is worth an effort."
"Well, well," sighed her friend, and they both fell into silence.
At the porch they parted with a warmer kiss than usual. Linda could
not help feeling that she had cast herself adrift to swim alone
henceforth in waters that might be cold and sullen. She went into the
house and took off her hat half reluctantly. The next few hours dragged
on in unbroken dulness. About four o'clock the bay horses dashed up
and Mr. Meeks alighted from his buggy, followed by a fine-looking,
gray-haired man who was in the midst of remarks evidently admiring and
complimentary in their nature.
Mrs. Meeks stood upon the veranda, her eyes a trifle brighter than
usual, her cheeks a trifle warmer; her head was held unconsciously a
little high, but otherwise there was no criticism to be made upon the
gracious sweetness with which she greeted her husband and his guest.
"I was in a measure prepared to meet you," said the suave Briton.
"Meeks has been treating me to certain rhapsodies of description with
which I now perfectly sympathize."
"In Virginia we say that an acquaintance begun with a compliment ends
in a duel," said Linda, smiling.
When the guest had been ushered upstairs to wash off the dust of
travel, Mr. Meeks put his arm about his wife's waist. His eyes were
unshadowed by any disagreeable recollections.
"Sweetheart!" he said.
"He will never make any apologies," thought Linda. "Well, no matter. I
am glad I came back."
THE WIFE OF LOTHARIO.[1]
I.
"MANDY'S jest crazy to go to New York," said Mrs. Powell to her friend
Mrs. Thomas, who was spending the day with her.
The two elderly women were "kin" in that wide-reaching term that in
Virginia stretches out over blood relationship to the remotest degree
of fortieth cousinship. Mr. Thomas' mother had been a Powell, and it
was from the Powells, she was accustomed to say with ill-concealed
pride, that her son Vivian got his high spirit and his splendid eyes.
Amanda Powell had the identical dark brown eyes and apparently the
same high spirit. When she was six and Vivian twelve, the two had been
used to retire from family parties anywhere from one to a dozen times
in the course of an afternoon to have it out, in the back hallway, or
in the garret, or even, when the excitement was intense, in the "far
barn," a dilapidated building a quarter of a mile away from the house.
Vivian, even at the manly age of twelve, and in the face of all
the traditions of chivalry, which to a Southern boy of that period
exercised a very real influence over his attitude toward the softer
sex, despite the vigilance of his mother and aunts, who were
perpetually admonishing him to recollect that "Mandy was little and a
girl besides," Vivian was tormented by a desire to subdue his spunky,
small cousin at any cost of time and ingenuity. He had once made a
great flourish with a hazel switch and raised a welt on her slim bare
arm, which gave him immense satisfaction at the moment, and haunted
him remorsefully for weeks afterwards. Amanda had promptly pulled out
a lock of his hair, and then, setting her back against the side of the
barn and gritting her tiny white teeth, had bidden him "come on" in a
tone ringing with belligerent probabilities.
After that day a new element was added to the attraction the two
children had for each other. Their attitude was much like that of two
unfledged chickens who have had a fight ending in a drawn battle, and
have a thirst for satisfaction. Whoever has watched a pair of very
young roosters in the act of combat, knows how each one makes a peck
and then draws off and stands upon the defensive, vigilant and defiant;
another peck--then another rest, neither one giving in or running away
until some intruder parts them.
Vivian and Amanda had continued upon these terms until increasing years
rendered actual fighting impossible, and left to their antagonistic
spirits only the resource of stinging words, and to hours of repentance
the mere interchange of shy glances and softer speech, added to a
fierce absorption of one another's society, which left the rest of the
world completely outside.
The Powell and Thomas tribe had come in the course of time to accept
the alliance between the fighting cousins as one of the mysterious
results of the strange similarity of the two children in looks and
disposition, and all the other young cousins had learned that these two
black-eyed friend-enemies belonged to one another, and tolerated no
interference in their relation.
Both were fatherless, and so, in either case, the young spirit that
needed wise and loving restraint, had broken through the feeble curb of
motherly fondness and gained freedom before achieving the self-control
that prevents liberty from degenerating into license.
Amanda was now eighteen, and Vivian--just home from a two-years' term
at the College of Virginia--was twenty-four. The two mothers, sitting
together that afternoon, a week after Vivian's premature return from
college, were anxiously alive to all the possibilities smouldering in
such a period and fanned by recent separation and the excitement of
inquiry into the changes a couple of years had wrought.
I should like to dwell for a moment upon the scene of this little
motherly conference. It was the "settin'-room" of a large,
old-fashioned mansion in central Virginia, and was one of two ample
square rooms lying on either side of a great hall that ran straight
through the middle of the house and lost itself in a broad porch in the
rear.
Its newly white-washed walls were half covered with dusky old family
portraits interspersed with bits of what Amanda called "bric-a-brac,"
meaning wood-cuts from the illustrated weeklies, brilliantly colored
fans, and bunches of ferns and grasses tied together with ends of
sash ribbon. The worn carpet covering the middle of the floor was an
ancient and costly Axminster, and the few pieces of furniture were of
massive mahogany, the long sofa and two armchairs covered with black
haircloth, but overlaid with so many knitted tidies and scarfs that
their dreariness was well concealed. In the deep, wide fireplace a
big log burned slowly this chilly April day, and on either side of
a spider-legged table drawn up before the blaze, sat and rocked the
elderly ladies, dividing their attention between a small decanter
of Madeira and a plate of Aunt 'Liza's delicious plum cake, and the
subject of Amanda's craze to go to New York.
"Mandy's always had her own way about everything up to this," said Mrs.
Thomas, her cool, pale blue eyes turning their wavering glance upon
the plump, handsome face of her hostess, whose blooming cheeks were
framed in snowy curls and set off by a lace fichu that came up high
around the neck of her gray merino dress and was fastened in front by
a pin made of her husband's hair woven into the form of a bunch of
grapes. The term "motherly" described her accurately; her cheery smile,
her ponderous but quick motions, her rich-toned voice and large, soft
hands, all made up a personnel that drew hearts to her in affectionate
confidence. She laughed in responding to her cousin's remark, a mellow,
rippling laugh, such as you might have expected from her.
"I dunno what 'u'd happen if anybody wuz to set 'emselves up against
Mandy," she said, shaking her beautiful white curls. "And I dunno's
her way is sech a bad way. She don't like to have anybody say what she
shall do and what she sha'n't, but give her her head and she's generous
as the day, and good-hearted. The Powell disposition always wuz to be a
leetle wilful, but the Major and I always got along well, and Mandy's
like her pa. She was always wild to travel, and she's not had a great
opportunity to see the world. If I could leave home--or had anybody to
take her! But I reckon it'll have to be managed some way. Mandy's bound
to go."
"There's one person 'u'd be glad enough to take her," said Mrs. Thomas.
"He'd take her anywhere she wanted to go, shore."
"You mean Edgar Chamblin?"
"You know I mean Vivian, so what's the use o' talkin' 'bout anybody
else? I seen cl'ar 'nuff, Nellie, five year ago, how things wuz goin'
to be when them two growed up. It's nater, and I dunno's we kin help
it, even supposin' we wuz to desire to."
A troubled look passed over Mrs. Powell's face; passed and left no
trace, as a cloud passes over the sun. "Whatever is, is best," she
had been saying all her life, when persons about her were complaining
of fate and Providence and ill-luck. But beneath her optimism was a
basis of sound judgment, and she always quietly made herself sure that
nothing better was attainable before acquiescing in such arrangements
as Providence allotted.
"Edgar Chamblin is jest sech a young man as I'd like to see Mandy
marry," she observed placidly. "I've nothin' ag'in Vivian--you know
I've always been as fond of him as if he wuz my own--but put fire and
tow together! Now, Edgar's one of the kind that'd let Mandy do jest
what she pleased. He's easy-goin'. Not but what he's sensible too, and
steady. I'd be proud to hev Mandy so well suited in a husband as Ed'd
suit her."
"I should think you'd know better'n to pick out who Mandy's goin' to
marry," said Vivian's mother. "And I ain't so shore as it's the best
thing fur a woman to have a husband give in to her every whip-stitch.
Probably you dunno what it is to have a shiftless, no-account,
no-back-bone sort o' creetur 'round under foot--"
"Lord knows, all I want's my child's happiness," sighed good Mrs.
Powell. "If she and Vivian air fond o' one another, I'm not the one to
oppose 'em. But I can't say now as I want it so. It stands to reason
two black-eyed, high-strung people, both proud as Lucifer, must expect
to have a stormy life together. Why, it'd make me tremble--the idee of
'em goin' away on a weddin' tour!"
"Vivian's a good boy, Nellie," answered his mother in a tone that
trembled a little. "You know, yourself, he's a gentleman. No woman need
be afeard of a man if he's a gentleman."
"My dear, the Major wuz a gentleman; no man more so. But I dunno
what'd happened if I hadn't known how to manage him. You've either
got to manage a man or _be_ managed, and though there air women that
need managin', and some that like it, I've never seen the man yet
that's fit to be the head o' woman. I ain't sayin' they don't exist.
I haven't been about much. But my mother had. She'd been everywhere.
Her father was Commander in the Navy, as you know, and she said to me
once: 'Nellie, I never yet see the man that was good enough for a good
woman.' I don't go as fur as that. Ma was ruther high in her notions.
But on the other hand it'd go mighty hard with me to have to stand by
and see a man that married Mandy with his hand on top."
"Seems to me you needn't be afeard o' that if she has Vivian. It's been
all along with them two that if one wuz ahead one day, t'other was
shore to git ahead the next. You recollect the old saying: 'Pull Dick,
pull deevil,' I reckon, Nellie?"
"That's the worst on it. I'm mortal afeard they'd kill one another.
They ain't noways suited, Jane, and I trust to mercy that the thing's
not to be."
Mrs. Powell pronounced her ultimatum with unusual energy, and rising,
began to stir about the room, setting cushions and folding up pieces
of sewing in a manner that evinced a wish to shake off a disagreeable
impression. Never before had she felt a wish to fight the inevitable.
She was not one of the thin-skinned, superstitious beings who claim to
be intuitional, and she was content, ordinarily, to recognize events
when they actually took place, and not spy them out beforehand in the
clouds of fancy. But mothers seem to have a special sense that warns
of coming danger, and this good mother had felt within the last few
minutes a strange sinking at the heart in connection with thoughts
of Mandy which made her very anxious and, as she put it, "fidgety,"
so that to sit still longer and discuss the matter of this undesired
marriage was an impossibility.
"I sort o' hoped you wouldn't be averse to the children's comin'
together, Nellie," were Mrs. Thomas's parting words as she settled
herself in the broad carryall while the sun was still high, to drive
the two miles to Bloomdale, where, standing back a little way from
Main Street, was the modern brick house that her father, the general
storekeeper "in town," had left her and to her eldest son George after
her, the entail taking no account of Vivian, to whom she promptly gave
up his father's farm the day he came of age.
As she took up the reins after this plaintive remark and turned her
eyes reproachfully upon Mrs. Powell's countenance, beaming upon the
parting guest from the broad doorway, another vehicle whirled around
the curve and stopped, and two beautiful pairs of dark eyes smiled upon
her, as Vivian himself sprang out and put his arm about Amanda with
a zeal that was totally unnecessary to the furthering of that active
damsel's descent to the ground.
"Where have you two been all this blessed afternoon, when I needed
Mandy to hem them table-cloths?" said Mrs. Powell, her beaming
countenance contradicting her complaint, as Amanda put both arms about
her neck and kissed her with an affection that was as genuine as it was
spontaneous.
"Been to Bear's Den," said Amanda, a rich color mantling her
opal-tinted cheeks, and a shy, saucy smile curving a mouth formed
for the torment of men, in more senses than one. Her voice was a
modified edition of her mother's, lazy, rich and sweet, but with
keener timbre. Under provocation it might become scornful, which Mrs.
Powell's could not. She was tall and symmetrically built, her figure
already showing the luxurious development that to girls of northern
race comes only with an uncomfortable embonpoint. But there was not a
trace of clumsiness in her make-up, which united energy and languor in
singularly equal proportions.
A fair picture the little group made, when Vivian had placed himself
beside his young kinswoman and stood, leaning against the pillar,
his soft hat dangling from one hand, while the other surreptitiously
held Amanda's under cover of her shawl. He was her match in beauty and
very like her, but with lighter coloring, his mother's blonde tints
reappearing in his ruddy skin and bronze-brown mustache. With equal
fire of glance, there was yet something that was not present in her
spirited countenance; a hint of petulance and selfishness. But it was
counter-balanced by a wonderful tenderness of expression that now
spread over his clear-cut features like a wave of moonlight, bringing
out the rare charm that made Vivian at times irresistible.
His mother, watching him with all her heart in her eyes, caught her
breath and dropped the reins on her lap as she met the significant look
he turned toward her for a second, before bending his gaze, filled with
its utmost persuasive power, upon Mrs. Powell.
"I reckon," he said slowly, his tones cutting the air decisively, yet
quivering with a certain plaintiveness that recalled "Cousin Jane's"
tremulous minor notes, "this is as good a time as any to tell you both
that Amanda and I have made up our minds to try housekeeping together
at Benvenew."
"After we come back from New York," put in Amanda with a saucy glance
of reminder.
"Children," said Mrs. Powell, more solemnly than she had ever spoken
in her life. She took a hand of each and looked from one to the other,
while Jane Thomas scarcely breathed as she leaned out of the carryall
toward them. "Children, if ye've both made up your minds, I've got no
call to interfere with young folks' happiness, and I sha'n't. What
I say now, I say once and for all, and I sha'n't harp on it. But I
know both on ye pretty nigh as well as I know myself. I'm afeard my
girl needs somethin' you can't give her, Vivian. You think you don't,
honey," she added, squeezing the soft palm laid in her own, and longing
for eloquence to express the meaning that was in her heart; "but you
ain't a woman yet; you're only a child. And what you're a-goin' to
turn out depends more'n you can think now, on the kind of marriage you
make. I pity the man that sets his heart on makin' you over to suit
himself. And you, my dear boy, air too rash--you ain't settled enough.
And it's my duty to say, fur your own sake, that if you two try gettin'
along together, you'll be ridin' over to your mother or to me some day
with a mouthful of complaints 'gainst Mandy. And some of 'em 'll be
just. There's a soft streak in Mandy and there's a hard streak, and I'm
afeard you'll find the hard one."
"Why, mother!" said Amanda, astonished and a little alarmed at her
jolly mother's grave discourse. The words meant nothing to her then.
She turned a laughing glance upon her lover, who had listened with
equal lack of comprehension. Now they with one accord drew closer
together. Certainly, any advice which does not harmonize with the
wishes of those matrimonially inclined is as the voice of one crying in
the wilderness.
"We always meant to be married, Aunt Nellie," answered Vivian after a
short pause. "No other girl would suit me, and she is satisfied with
me. Arnt you, Mandy?"
"Yes," said Amanda without hesitation.
"Nellie," cried Mrs. Thomas, unable to contain herself any longer,
"don't you make 'em feel you don't believe they'll be happy together.
They ain't children now, and because they've always been sparrin' is
all the more reason they'll settle down tame enough."
"I should just hate a man I couldn't have a good quarrel with, once in
a while," the girl made a pretense of whispering to her mother, and
giving Vivian a look which meant that he was to understand they were to
have things as they wanted them.
"I've got no call to say any more," said Mrs. Powell, to whom this
slight opposition had been an extraordinary effort. She felt that
conscience could demand no more of her. So she kissed Amanda and then
kissed Vivian, and Jane Thomas kissed them both and cried over them,
as sentimental women cry when they get their heart's desire, and they
all stood on the porch together for a few minutes, talking eagerly,
perhaps to cover a little feeling that had been stirred up by the
discussion; a foreboding that could not quite be laid to rest, whether,
after all, this marriage was a wise one, a prudent one, and one from
which good was to come.
Did Amanda feel this doubt? Perhaps the odd little shiver that came
over her and that she shook off so lightly was a premonition she would
have done well to heed, instead of turning, as she did, to lay her
beautiful head on her lover's shoulder in a manner that was rather too
deliberate to be altogether fond.
Did Vivian experience any fear of the future in this instant of
promised fulfilment of his hopes? Not he. The time was as yet far
distant when that buoyant glance which seemed to challenge fate was
to be turned downward in melancholy resignation, and the impetuous
outleaping of suggestion and comment that was natural to his
enthusiastic temperament become hesitating appeal to one he feared to
displease.
And the two mothers, watching this adored son and daughter and
rejoicing in their joy, sympathizing and admiring with that admiration
which is most perfectly free from envy, did their knowledge of human
nature and their past experience not suggest that which must make them
tremble in regarding these two heedless young creatures, both children
of one haughty race, bent upon gratifying that impulse of mutual
attraction which was more than likely to have its source in animal
obstinacy than in reasonable, human affection?
But how limited is the outlook of elderly women in these little
southern villages, where the history of a few lives constitutes their
entire equipment in sociology, and to whom the idea of essential
differences between sets of conditions superficially alike, can never
present itself strongly. Mrs. Powell's motherly instinct had had its
spasm of alarm, but had been quieted by the soothing reflection that
marriage tames high spirits, and that the Rubicon of matrimony once
passed, adjustment to circumstances _must_ follow. Nothing else was
conceivable. As for Jane Thomas, any picture of a future into which
trouble might come to her son even from the "curse of a granted prayer"
was beyond her imagination. All she had asked in life since Vivian was
born was that he might have whatever was necessary to make him happy,
and that spirited youth had succeeded in convincing her that happiness
lay in having what he wanted. He wanted Amanda, and now he had got her.
Mrs. Thomas rejoiced as far as her melancholy temperament permitted,
and trusted the future to Providence. And in a month Amanda Powell had
become "young Mrs. Thomas." A month is a short engagement in Virginia,
but Vivian was impatient to open up his closed homestead, and start the
farm going according to some new theories of farming, which chiefly
took shape in patent fertilizer and an improved kind of harrow; also,
the introduction of white labor to supersede the "lazy darkies."
And to Amanda marriage meant the pretty pearl ring her lover had placed
upon her finger, the rustling white silk gown her mother had made for
her in Ryburg, and--the wedding journey. Our wildest dreams are only
re-combinations of what we have experienced or read of, and how could
this girl of eighteen, for all her rich and varied nature, dream of
the coming of responsibilities that would shake her frail fancies of
married life like an earthquake, or of mental development that would
awaken critical faculties to the extent of making her rebel against
what she now accepted as matters of course; nothing better having
presented itself to her mind?
She was satisfied that the wedding was conventionally correct,
according to Fauquier County standards; that the day was bright;
that she looked her best, and that Vivian was devoted without being
uncomfortably demonstrative. For without at all understanding why it
was so, the young girl, so full of ardor in all her attachments, had
a virginal coldness toward her young lover that made her shrink with
distaste from caresses and put aside any suggestion of an intimacy
other than had always existed between them, and of which she foresaw
merely an extension, not a transformation into anything more exacting.
Reared by an old-fashioned southern mother, watched and shielded as
maidens once were when maternal ideas of duty included an anxious
supervision over a daughter's reading, amusements, and associations,
Amanda was in all essentials still a child, with only her natural
dignity and womanly instinct to protect her amid the various
perplexities and temptations the future might hold for her.
New York burst upon her eager senses as the first deafening crash of
a full orchestra might salute the ears of a music-mad boy who had
never heard anything more stimulating than the wheezy strains of a
second-rate melodeon. Stunned but delighted, she gazed from the
carriage windows upon the crowds, the stores, and the elevated railway,
and thought that now she was seeing the world.
Vivian went to the Windsor, and as the youthful pair descended to
the dining-room about seven o'clock and told a servant at the door
that they wanted "supper," the lofty head waiter in condescending
admiration, swooped down and led them to the extreme rear of the room,
where, ranged in close proximity, were four other bridal couples as
newly made as themselves.