WESTOVER OF
WANALAH
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
WESTOVER OF WANALAH
_A Story of Love and Life in Old Virginia_
[Illustration: Her rescuer knew not whether she lived.--_Page 8._]
WESTOVER OF
WANALAH
A STORY OF LOVE AND LIFE IN
OLD VIRGINIA
BY
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
_ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL POLLAK OTTENDORFF_
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, August, 1910
Copyright, 1910,
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
_All rights reserved_
WESTOVER OF WANALAH
Norwood Press
Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Peril and Passion 1
II. A Song without Words 14
III. The Best Laid Plans 31
IV. A Woman's Word 27
V. Pleasant Dreams and an Ugly Awakening 40
VI. Out of a Clear Sky 50
VII. In the Valley of the Shadow 63
VIII. The Shadows Fall 72
IX. The Courage of Womanhood 83
X. The Packet of Papers 88
XI. The Events of a Morning 99
XII. After the Storm 117
XIII. "Aunt Betsy" Takes the Helm 130
XIV. Westover at Wanalah 138
XV. Up at Judy's 152
XVI. Judy Peters's Diagnosis 161
XVII. Judy Informs Herself and Makes Plans 171
XVIII. Judy Plans a Campaign 184
XIX. The Beginning of a Campaign 199
XX. The Satisfaction of W. W. Webb 212
XXI. Flags Flying 227
XXII. An Unmistakable Cure 239
XXIII. Court Day 254
XXIV. A Perfect Woman--and a Man 266
XXV. The Great Renunciation 279
XXVI. Moonlight Resolutions 308
XXVII. The Philosophy of Jack Towns 316
XXVIII. The Events of a Day 330
XXIX. The Work of a Wild Wind 341
XXX. What Had Happened at The Oaks 359
XXXI. A Sunset Interview 372
XXXII. What Happened at Fighting Creek 388
XXXIII. Conspiracies 396
XXXIV. Judy's Plans of Campaign 413
XXXV. A Mountain Top Revelation 425
XXXVI. The Meeting at The Oaks 433
ILLUSTRATIONS
Her rescuer knew not whether she lived (Page 8) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"Now come out here, Boyd" 162
With the first onset of the wind 342
"It will be better, I think, to accept my decision as final" 366
He dismounted, and, with his bridle rein over his arm, joined her 374
"Margaret!" . . . "Boyd!" 436
Westover of Wanalah
I
PERIL AND PASSION
One midsummer morning in the late eighteen-fifties, Boyd Westover of
Wanalah was riding along a Virginia plantation road, accompanied by
half a dozen hounds, for whose discipline and restraint he carried a
long, flexible black-snake whip. The weapon played the part of sceptre
rather than that of sword. The young man had no intention of striking
the dogs with it, but whenever their exuberance broke bounds he cracked
the lash in air, making a report like that of a pistol shot, and the
reminder of his authority was quite sufficient for purposes of canine
discipline.
He was not hunting. He was merely riding to a distant part of the
plantation he controlled, to inspect the work of the negroes there and
to give directions for its proper doing. But he liked the company of
his dogs and enjoyed their mad relish of the morning.
The glory of it gladdened his own spirit in spite of the vexing
problems that were never quite absent from his mind.
Boyd Westover, a young man of not more than twenty-three or twenty-four
years, had never known a serious care until the spring of that year.
Then a burden of responsibility had fallen upon him that threatened to
bend even his broad shoulders beneath its weight.
His father had died suddenly in the early spring, leaving a widow and
this one son who in the ordinary course of affairs became administrator
of the estate and master of the plantation.
Then it was that the burden fell upon him. The plantation was an
unusually large one, and its late owner had been accounted the richest
man in all the region round about, just as his forbears for generations
past had been. Wanalah, the ancestral seat of the family, had been for
two hundred years the home of a hospitable, high living, high mettled
race of men and women, but during the reign of Boyd Westover's father
the hospitality of Wanalah had outdone itself in lavishness. There were
always guests in numbers there, and a multitude of servants were
withheld from profitable industry to minister to their comfort. There
were thoroughbred horses enough in the stables to mount half a company
of cavalry, and a like profusion was apparent in the case of every
other provision for enjoyment and the unstinted entertainment of
guests. In brief the late master of Wanalah had kept open house for all
gentlemanly comers.
But when Boyd Westover took his degree at the University in early June
and returned to Wanalah to assume his duties as administrator, he
learned for the first time that the plantation had not been earning the
cost of all this high living. There was not only the hereditary debt
upon the place--a debt that so great a plantation, wisely conducted,
might have borne comfortably--but added to it was a confused mass of
fresh debts accumulated during his father's lifetime and in consequence
of his extravagance.
The entertainment of pleasure-seeking guests was suspended now, of
course, during the period of mourning, and in view of the ill health
into which his mother had fallen since the shock of his father's sudden
death, the suspension seemed likely to endure for a long period to come.
In the meantime Boyd Westover was both perplexed and appalled by the
magnitude of the problem he was set to solve. For a time he doubted
even the solvency of the estate, but later reckonings had shown him
that this fear was not justified, though the fact brought small relief
to his mind, for peculiar reasons connected with the character of the
property itself. If he might have sold out everything, he could have
paid off all the debts, leaving a small but sufficient competency for
his mother's support. As for himself, he gave no thought for the
future. He was young, strong and fit to meet fate unarmed.
But he could not sell the property without unpardonable offence to his
own soul and to the sentiment of the community which was to him the
world. For by far the greater part of that property and altogether the
most salable part of it consisted of the negroes, every one of whom had
been born on Wanalah plantation as their parents and grandparents and
great-grandparents had been before them. Among the high class
Virginians--the class to which Boyd Westover belonged by immemorial
inheritance--it was held to be a shamefully impossible thing to sell a
negro except for incorrigible crime, or for the purpose of bringing a
man and wife together, on one plantation.
"I simply will not sell the servants," the young man said to himself
when matters seemed at their worst. "Rather than do that, I'll run them
all off north, set them free and let the estate fall into bankruptcy."
Since that time the young man's close study of the situation had
convinced him that neither of these courses was necessary. By cutting
down the force of house servants to the measure of his own and his
mother's modest needs, and putting every able-bodied negro at
profitable work in the crops, he was confident that he could make the
plantation carry its load of debt and slowly reduce it.
That was now his task, and in spite of the glory of the midsummer
morning his mind was busy planning ways and means, when suddenly a
combined baying from the hounds arrested his attention. Looking up he
saw a young woman on horseback in a pasture not far ahead--a young
woman in difficulty and sore danger.
Streamers of flaming red--the reason for which he could in no wise
guess--were flying from her shoulders and a maddened bull of huge bulk
was charging her with the fury of a bovine demon.
Instantly the young man plunged the rowels into the flanks of his
horse. An eight-rail fence lay in his way, but there was no time in
which to throw off even one of its rails. Without a thought of pause he
urged his horse toward it at the top of his speed, determined to force
him over it or through it as the case might be. The weight of the steed
and the speed at which he was moving would be sufficient, Boyd Westover
thought, to crush a way through the barrier. It was likely to cost the
beautiful animal his life, but what of that? There was another life at
stake, in rescue of which the young man was ready to sacrifice even his
own--for the life in peril was that of the woman he loved, the woman
who had awakened all the passion, all the tenderness, all the chivalry
of his brave young soul. To save her he would have doomed any and every
other living thing to cruel death.
The horse he rode seemed to realize the perilous choice his rider was
forcing upon him and to choose the safer but far more difficult course.
Putting forth all his superb strength in utmost endeavor, he cleared
the barrier at a flying leap.
As he did so his rider saw to his horror that the young woman's mount
had faltered in her frightened flight, and in the next instant the
beautiful mare was lifted bodily from the ground, impaled upon the
sharp horns of the bull and evidently done to death by the goring. As
the animal fell the young woman was hurled forward half a dozen yards,
and before the wrath-blinded bull could gather himself together for a
charge upon her prostrate form, Boyd Westover forced his own horse
between the bull and his victim and with three or four rapid swishes of
the cruel black-snake whip across the animal's face and eyes, sent him
staggering back.
The delay, as the young man knew, would be but for a few seconds, but
these proved sufficient for his purpose. Turning his horse toward the
unconscious girl, he hooked his left knee around the cantle of his
saddle and, hanging almost head downwards, seized her about the waist.
Recovering his position, he placed her across the horse's withers. The
bull was almost upon him now, but a sharp touch of the spurs caused the
horse to spring forward at a full run in time to save himself and his
riders, though the escape was so narrow that one of the bull's horns
tore an ugly gash in the calf of Boyd Westover's leg.
The body of the girl hung limp across the withers, so that her rescuer
knew not whether she lived or had been killed by her fall. Until his
horse cleared the fence again--this time scattering the upper rails as
he did so--there was no time for inquiry. But once out of the field,
the young man reined in the frantic creature, and lifting the girl's
head to his shoulder, felt her fluttering breath upon his cheek.
"Thank God she lives!" he exclaimed with reverent fervor, but his
efforts to rouse her to consciousness were unavailing.
"It may be only a faint," he thought, but such fainting as he had seen
among women had been far less enduring than this, and the memory of
that fact greatly alarmed him.
He reflected that in any case the shock produced by the dashing of
water into the face is desirable at such times, and turning his horse's
head he rode down a slope into a shaded, grass-carpeted dell, where a
bubbling spring arose. Gently laying the girl on the greensward, but
resting her head in his lap, he dashed handfuls of water into her face,
with the result of arousing her almost at once. When she opened her
eyes they were vacant and dreamy, like those of one only half awakened
from sleep, but a few moments later the light came back into them, and
she spoke.
"Is it you, Boyd? Then you're not dead, as I dreamed you were."
"Oh, no, I'm not hurt," he replied--ignoring his lacerated leg--"but
you mustn't talk yet. Lie still till you feel better." And with that he
gently passed his hand over her eyes, closing them.
She lay quiet for a minute or two seemingly asleep, and he, moved by a
sudden impulse--whether of passion or pity he knew not--bent over and
pressed his lips to hers--gently uttering her name--"Margaret."
Instantly he repented, as she opened her eyes and with a flushing face
tried to raise herself to a sitting posture, saying as she made the
effort.
"I reckon you mustn't do that."
But the effort to rise was futile. Sharp pain caused her to grow pale
again and she sank back as she had been.
"Where are you hurt, Margaret?" Boyd asked in sympathetic distress.
"I don't know; all over I reckon."
"Are any of your bones broken? Feel of them and see."
"I reckon not. I can't tell. The pains are all over me--mostly inside.
I reckon I'm going to faint."
Boyd Westover was now seriously alarmed. He vaguely remembered hearing
of persons dying of "internal injuries," though externally showing no
hurt. Instantly he lifted the girl again and, mounting with her in his
arms, set off at a gallop toward the great house at Wanalah.
The sharp prick of a pin, as he adjusted his burden on the withers,
attracted his attention to the two flaming red bandana kerchiefs,
pinned by their corners to Margaret's shoulders, and in the midst of
his apprehensions for her life he found time to wonder why she had
decorated herself in that extraordinary way. He was too full of anxious
concern to question her on so trivial a matter, but she, recovering
herself, volunteered an explanation, after asking him to reduce the
horse's gait to a walk.
"I reckon I was right foolish," she said, laughing in spite of her
pain. "You see this is one of old Aunt Sally's birthdays. She has one
every three or four months now, and she's rapidly adding to her ninety
years--a year at each birthday. She was my Mammy you know, and so I
always take her a present on her birthdays."
The girl paused in her speech as some sharp twinge of pain changed her
smile into a grimace. It was only for a moment, and she continued:
"On her last birthday, two or three months ago, she told me I would
some day be an angel with red wings, and so when I set out this morning
to take her these two turban kerchiefs, the foolish whim came to me to
pin them to my shoulders and make red wings of them."
Again an access of severe pain silenced speech and she closed her eyes
while her lips grew pale. Evidently the effort to chatter had been too
much for her, and Boyd rightly guessed that she had been forcing
herself to talk of her little prank by way of preventing him from
saying more serious things which she did not wish just then to hear.
He in his turn resolved to say those more serious things at the
earliest opportunity. He felt that in caressing her as he had done,
down there by the spring, he had placed himself under a binding
obligation to explain at the first possible opportunity, and the
explanation could take but one form--a full and free declaration of his
yet unspoken passion. This, he felt, he had no right to delay one
moment longer than he must, but as she lay still with closed eyes, her
head upon his shoulder and his arm about her, he realized that his
present and very pressing task was to place her as soon as possible in
the tender care of his mother and her maids.
The rest must wait.
II
A SONG WITHOUT WORDS
The physician for whom Boyd Westover sent a young negro at breakneck
speed, while his mother's maids were getting Margaret Conway to bed,
reported that she had "sustained painful contusions" and was
additionally "suffering from shock," but that no bones were broken and,
so far as he could determine, no serious internal injuries had
befallen. He directed that she should remain in bed for a few days, and
then stay quietly at Wanalah, without attempting a homeward journey
until he should himself give permission.
"Above all," he said to Boyd, "she must not be excited in any
way--pleasurably or the reverse--lest hysteria supervene."
Boyd smiled a little over the medical man's stilted diction, and
rejoiced in the assurance of Margaret's safety which the ponderous
phraseology gave him. But upon reflection he chafed a good deal over
the restraint the doctor's instructions required him to put upon
himself. He was impatient now to put into words the declaration of love
which his caresses had implied and promised. He was still more
impatient for her reply to that declaration, for, like the modest young
lover that he was, he gravely feared his fate and was annoyed by the
necessity of waiting before putting it to the test.
Her words, spoken half consciously when she had received or repelled
his embraces--for he could not determine in his own mind whether she
had meant to do the one or the other--in no wise encouraged his
self-confidence. He recalled those words:--"I reckon you mustn't do
that"--and questioned them closely as to their significance, but no
satisfactory answer came. The utterance might mean anything or nothing.
And what did the suddenly flushing face that accompanied it suggest?
Was it joy or sorrow, pleasure or resentment that had sent the blood to
her cheeks in that way, and prompted her attempt to escape him by
rising? Wonder as he might he could not tell, and as he paced the
colonnaded porch that night after all the house was asleep, he
succeeded only in working himself into a passionate fury of impatience
and maddening perplexity.
He tried to reason with himself, only to find himself utterly
unreasonable. Doubtless Margaret would be enjoying the air in the porch
within a few days, resting and perhaps interestingly helpless still.
The attentions he must lavish upon her in that case promised abundant
opportunity for a tenderness of care which would open the way for his
passionate declaration. At that point in his planning another and a
very annoying thought obtruded itself.
"Confound it!" he muttered, "Colonel Conway is a stickler for all the
conventions of our artificial social life. He will insist upon the
idiotic rule that a young man mustn't address a girl in his own house
or at any time when she is under his protection. What utter nonsense it
is, anyhow! But I suppose I must obey it or bring down Colonel Conway's
wrath upon my head. I must let all my opportunities slip away, and
restrain my impulses during all the time she's here, making myself seem
to her a cold-blooded brute who has taken advantage of her helplessness
to force caresses upon her and then doesn't think enough of her dignity
to explain himself."
Perhaps Boyd Westover's mood was playing tricks with his logical
faculties. It is certain that if he had been asked at any ordinary time
his opinion of the social requirement which he now scorned as an
idiotic convention, he would have answered that it was eminently right
and reasonable, that it was imperatively necessary indeed, for the
protection of the young woman in the case against the embarrassment of
having to accept hospitality or escort or favor of other kind from a
man whose proffer of love she has just rejected.
But who expects an impatient lover to be reasonable--who that has ever
been himself a lover? Reasonable or unreasonable, Boyd Westover felt
himself bound to observe the rule that imposed so annoying a restraint
upon him. He might fret and fume in revolt against it, but he must bend
to the custom. He resolved to wait with what grace he could until
Margaret's return to her own home. He worked out in his mind all the
situations that were likely to occur during her convalescence at
Wanalah, and framed all the conversations to fit the embarrassing
circumstances.
Of course the situations that actually arose were totally different
from those he had imagined, and the dialogues he had rehearsed proved
to be as unfit for use as the text of a Greek tragedy would be on a
modern comedy stage.
Colonel Conway, who happened to be in Richmond when his daughter's
mishap occurred, returned at once and, after learning the details,
delivered his thanks and commendations in a way that overwhelmed her
rescuer with embarrassment. It was in vain that Boyd protested,
disclaimed any right or title to the Colonel's extravagant eulogies of
his conduct, and declared that he had done no more than any other man
would have done under like circumstances. Colonel Conway would not have
it so.
"You gravely imperilled your own life, sir," he replied in his
peremptory way. "You went to the rescue of a damsel in distress as only
a gallant knight would do, with reckless disregard of all consequences
to yourself. That's what I call heroism, sir, heroism worthy of the
name you bear and the proud race from which you are sprung. Now don't
protest, don't contradict, don't argue, don't answer. It is only your
modesty that shrinks from the recognition of your gallantry"--and so on
with what Boyd felt to be "damnable iteration."
But when the old gentleman had gone back to Richmond, leaving his
daughter to the care of Boyd Westover's mother, the young man reflected
that the Colonel's enthusiasm would probably stand him in good stead if
ever Margaret should smile upon his suit and give him leave to ask her
father for her hand.
Thus in meditations sometimes hopeful and joyous, sometimes perplexed
and desponding, Boyd Westover worried through the days until the glad
morning came when Margaret Conway rebelled against her physician's
orders and made her appearance in the porch. She was still weak enough
and enough distressed by her bruises to be treated as a convalescent to
whom solicitous attention was due, and of course Boyd elected himself
her "gentleman in waiting."
These two, brought up on adjoining plantations, had known each other
from their earliest childhood, but in later years they had seen little
of each other. Boyd had been away, first at boarding-school and
afterwards at the University, while the motherless girl had been slowly
and awkwardly growing to womanhood, under care of her aunt and the
tutelage of an accomplished governess. It was only during vacations
that the two had met, and during the last two summers they had not met
at all, for the reason that Margaret, with her father, had been
travelling in the North and Canada and in what was then the great West
during both those seasons.
It was with surprise, therefore, not unmixed with the awe of
strangeness, that on his return from the University this year he had
found his little playmate grown into a beautiful and very dignified
womanhood. She presided now at The Oaks, her father's plantation, with
all the gracious ease that enabled Virginia women of that time to make
of plantation houses delightful centres of unruffled hospitality, where
the coming and going of guests was in no way a matter of previous
arrangement and where neither the coming nor the going created the
smallest ripple in the placid self-composure of the well-ordered life
of the mansion.
So great was the change in her, or so great did it seem to Boyd, that
at first he hesitated and faltered over the old familiar form of
address. It did not seem possible to him to call this dignified and
almost stately young woman "Margaret" as he had always called the
little girl that she had been. He could not address her as "Miss
Conway" but he thought he might compromise on the form "Miss Margaret."
The first time he addressed her in that fashion was the only time. She
looked at him in dignified surprise for a moment; then with a rippling
little laugh that seemed to him singularly charming, she said:
"If we have become such strangers, Boyd, that you must put a handle to
my name, I'll give you all your honors and address you as 'Boyd
Westover, Esq., M. A., University of Virginia.' You are to call me just
'Margaret,' please, as you've always done, if you wish to be just
'Boyd' to me."
As she spoke the words all the winsomeness he remembered in the girl
came back again, but it did not dissipate the stately dignity that had
grown upon her with her ripening womanhood. It was perhaps at that
moment that he fell in love with her. Of that he could never be sure,
but he knew now that his love for her was the one supreme passion of
his life. That knowledge had come to him at the moment when he first
realized her danger out there in the pasture. He recalled now the
impulse that had prompted him in his half mad determination to let no
obstacle stand in the way of his reaching her in time for rescue. He
remembered the horror that had rended his very soul as he saw the
maddened bull lift the mare and her rider and fling them from his gory
horns. He knew now that he had done and dared in those maddening
moments, not with the humane impulse to save an imperilled life that
must come to every man with blood in his veins, but actuated by his
passionate love's instinct of self-preservation.
As he ministered to her after her return to the porch, all these
memories were awakened in him by a certain change that had come over
her, a shyness that was not quite reserve, but yet resembled it. He was
too little acquainted with the ways of women to understand this or to
estimate it aright. It did not occur to him that the revelation he had
made to her by his passionate caress as she lay half conscious in his
arms might explain her impulse of reserve. He was too scantily versed
in the impulses of womanhood to understand that after such a
manifestation of his love womanly modesty must stand upon its defence
until such time as he should see fit to give more formal and definite
expression to his purpose.
Yet to that caress he attributed the change. It was only that he
misinterpreted its meaning. The thought came to him that he had
mortally offended her, that she resented his act in the only way
possible to her so long as she must remain a guest in his mother's
house, and that upon her release from that restraint she would banish
him forever from her presence and her acquaintance.
So severely did all this torture him that on the second day of her
convalescence the impulse to make an end of suspense overcame him,
banishing for the moment all considerations of prudence and all regard
for conventionalities. He had read to her for an hour, and when the
book was finished, he observed a certain restlessness on her part, for
which he suggested one or two remedies, only to have his suggestions
negatived. Presently she said:
"It is only that I need exercise, I reckon. I think I'll try to walk a
little, up and down the porch." She rose with some difficulty, he
taking her hand in assistance. But no sooner was she on her feet than
she relaxed her grasp upon his hand, and, as he did not relax his own
so readily, she seemed to shake it off. The act was not an impatient
one, but he mistook it for such. Instantly he faced her, asking:
"Why did you do that, Margaret? Why have you tried in every way to show
me that my presence is disagreeable to you? What have I done to offend
you? Tell me, and I'll quit the plantation at once and stay away so
long as you remain. I have a right to know. Tell me!"
For answer the young woman looked at him in silence but with tear drops
glistening in her eyes. At last she said:
"You have done nothing that you ought not, I reckon--nothing to offend
me. Oh, Boyd, I'm not angry with you--I can never feel that way. I owe
my life to you, but that isn't it. I don't know what it is. May be it's
just because I'm weak--or may be just because."
With that the tears released themselves and trickled down her cheeks.
She could not restrain them and she made no effort to hide them. She
simply stood there facing him and letting the honest tears flow
unrestrained.
There was no need of second sight to foretell the result. Nothing in
all the world so unseats a man's resolution as the vision of the woman
he loves in tears. Boyd Westover was a full-blooded young man and he
acted after his kind. He took the unresisting girl in his arms and
passionately embraced her. Words on either side were unnecessary. Love
is quick to understand. But the words came also, after a space--words
of love beyond recalling, words of the kind that make or mar human
lives and set Destiny its tasks.
III
A WOMAN'S WORD
Those were halcyon days that followed, while Margaret lingered at
Wanalah. The barriers were broken down now between these two; the
vexing suspense was over and the most precious certainty that human
kind can know had taken its place.
And there was not the embarrassment of others' knowing. No word of
their awakened love had been spoken, or could be spoken until
Margaret's return to The Oaks should impose upon her lover the duty of
announcing their understanding to her father and invoking his sanction
of their troth. Until that time should come they were not "engaged" and
might pass their days and nights under one roof without offending even
Virginian propriety. Convention had no claim to control over them in
those blissful intervening days.
But the shadow of it fell on the morning of the day when Margaret was
to journey homewards in company with her maid.
"I will visit Colonel Conway at The Oaks to-morrow," Boyd promised as
the pair strolled through the garden during the morning hours that
alone remained to them now.
"I wonder how he will receive the news--our news, Margaret?"
"How he will receive it? Why, of course he--"
"He's rather rigid, you know, in his views of propriety, and I've
sinned against light in that respect. You see I addressed you in my own
home, and not only so, but at a time when you were not able to run
away."
Margaret laughed half below her breath.
"That was very terrible of course," she said in an amused tone. "But I
see a way out of it, Boyd."
"Of course you do. That's feminine instinct. But tell me about it."
"Why, it's simple enough. If Father finds fault with that, you can take
it all back and say it all over again at The Oaks."
Boyd smiled over the conceit, but he was not reassured by it. The case
was one in which the least shadow of uncertainty seemed more than he
could endure.
"Oh I forgot," the girl went on, teasingly; "perhaps it wouldn't be
agreeable to you to rehearse the scene."
Boyd said not a word in reply, but he managed in another way to
convince her that her doubt on that point was unfounded. When she had
readjusted the "flat" that she wore as headgear--it had somehow become
disarranged--she put jest aside, saying:
"I think we needn't fear anything of that sort, Boyd. My father is apt
to make distinctions, just as other people are. If he disliked you or
disapproved of you, he would make trouble of course; but as it is I
reckon he will brush the thing aside and scold about the idiocy that
makes such silly rules."
She paused in her speech for a space. Then she added, in a tone which
the young man afterwards recalled in doubt and distress:
"At any rate it makes no difference. Nothing can make any
difference--now."
"Tell me, please," he said gently, "just what you mean by that."
"I am not a women to love lightly, or lightly to forget. Love seems to
me a holy thing and to trifle with it is blasphemy. I have given you my
love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me
take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do--even if
it were crime itself--could alter the fact that my love is all yours,
now and forever."
He drew her to him in a tender embrace, but spoke no word in reply.
Speech in such a case must be an impertinence. Presently she went on:
"That is what I meant, Boyd. I have promised to be your wife. I shall
keep that promise if the stars fall. I have no doubt my father will
cordially give his consent; but if it should be otherwise, it will make
no difference--I shall keep my promise."
How those words came back in after time to Boyd Westover! And how he
pondered them in amazement and bitterness of soul!
IV
THE BEST LAID PLANS
Margaret was right in her anticipations regarding Colonel Conway's
attitude. He highly approved of the young man upon whose gallantry in
rescue he had enthusiastically and incessantly descanted in all
companies. He was in no mood to find fault with the slight lapse of
Boyd Westover from conventional propriety. He liked the way in which
Boyd presented his case, neither justifying his conduct by argument nor
offering excuses for it, but treating it as a matter of manhood
necessity.
"I suppose I should not have addressed Margaret when I did," he said in
manly fashion; "I ought to have waited, but under the circumstances I
couldn't help myself. Hang it, Colonel, there are times when a man must
do things he ought not."
"Right, my boy, altogether right, absolutely right, eternally right,"
was the enthusiastic response. "It's blood that flows in your
veins--hot blood--and not tepid milk and water. Why, sir, I courted
Margaret's mother as we hung to the gunwale of a capsized sailboat, and
I've been proud of it all my life, sir. A mollycoddle would have waited
for her to comb her hair and put on dry clothes while he was making up
pretty speeches for the occasion. That's the mollycoddle's way. The
man's way is to tell the girl he loves her, whenever the right moment
comes, and leave the dry clothes and the pretty speeches for another
time. So don't apologize, don't fret, don't give the thing another
thought. You shall have Margaret's hand with her father's blessing
whenever you and she choose to fix upon the day. I'll pack The Oaks
with the best of good company; there shall be feasting and--oh, by the
way, there's one little formality I suppose you'll have to go through.
There's Margaret's aunt,--my sister Betsy, you know. It'll be best all
around if you treat her with distinguished consideration. She's apt to
stand upon her dignity, and I've always found it best to recognize the
fact, gracefully. It ministers to peace and comfort. I think you and
Margaret had better present yourselves to her together, and do the
thing up with all the formalities. It will not be necessary to mention
to her the little slip you've been confessing to me. She'd probably
take it seriously. It's a way she has. You can just let her think the
thing occurred here to-day. You and Margaret can go out into the garden
after dinner, and when you return present yourselves to Betsy and tell
her about it as if it had just happened."
With the reassurance of the solemn words Margaret had spoken the day
before, Boyd Westover had no great fear of anything "Aunt Betsy" might
say, but he was disposed to humor Colonel Conway, and besides he
foresaw that life at The Oaks might be pleasanter for Margaret with the
old lady's approval than without it. So the little diplomatic stratagem
was carried out so successfully that Aunt Betsy--always chary in the
bestowal of praise--said to Margaret that night:
"If you must marry,--and I suppose you must,--I'm glad you're to marry
a young gentleman who observes the courtesies of life and knows how to
treat his elders with proper respect. I rather approve of Mr. Boyd
Westover."
"Thank you, Aunt Betsy," Margaret answered, concealing a smile. "You
don't often say so much in praise of a young man."
"Of course not. In these days it's not easy to find young gentlemen who
deserve any praise at all. Manners are so dreadfully lax nowadays. Even
you shock and distress me frequently, in spite of the pains I've taken
to train you properly."
"Why, Aunt Betsy, what have I been doing now? Is it something dreadful?"
"From my point of view it is. You spoke of Mr. Boyd Westover just now,
by implication at least, as a 'young man.' A young lady doesn't
associate with 'young men'; those whom she recognizes are young
_gentlemen_."
"If you'd seen him encounter that bull and snatch me from under his
horns, Aunt Betsy, I reckon you'd have thought him a good deal of a
man."
"No--a good deal of a gentleman rather. The distinction is important,
my dear, though I can't make you see it. And besides he's so polite to
his elders, especially ladies. I was never more respectfully treated in
my life. He's just like the young gentlemen of my time. Of course when
he addressed you he sank upon his knees--"
"He certainly did nothing of the kind," Margaret answered hotly. "If he
had I should have spurned him with contempt. No man who respects
himself would bend his knee to any woman."
"I wish you would say 'gentleman' and 'lady'--and especially wouldn't
call yourself a 'woman,' Margaret. It's positively shocking. But it's
so with everybody in these degenerate days--even well-bred young girls,
and Heaven is my witness that I've tried hard, to raise you well. When
did he address you the first time?"
"There was only this one time," Margaret answered, dreamily, as she
recalled the scene on the porch.
"Do you mean, Margaret, that you accepted him the first time he asked
you?"
"Yes, Aunt Betsy, why not? I loved him."
"Margaret, you shock me; worse than that, your conduct grieves and
afflicts me. Haven't I told you a thousand times that no lady ever
forgets her dignity so far as that?"
"I haven't counted the times, Aunt Betsy, but probably your estimate of
a thousand isn't far wrong. It is more than five hundred at any rate."
"Margaret, you trifle, and I'm not accustomed to be trifled with."
"I beg your pardon, Aunt Betsy. I didn't mean to trifle. Listen to me
seriously now. I hold the love of a man and a woman to be the holiest
thing on earth. I regard all trifling with it as blasphemy, and I think
all your rules and conventionalities concerning it silly and sinful
nonsense. If there is ever a time when a woman should be honest and
truthful it is when the man she loves tells her of his love and asks
for hers in return. There, I have shocked you dreadfully, I know, but
you forced me to do it. I have spoken the truth as my soul sees it."
Without another word the high-strung girl quitted the room. It was the
first time in her life that she had "broken bounds" with her aunt, and
her self-assertion astonished even herself. But she did not and would
not repent of it. Love had brought to her a new dignity of womanhood,
that was all.
During the week that followed Boyd Westover found himself a busier man
than he had ever been before. He was up at dawn to set going the day's
work in the crops, and not long after sunrise he was apt to appear at
The Oaks where Margaret awaited his coming for their early morning
ride. After breakfast with her he returned to his fields, but by four
o'clock he was at The Oaks again for dinner. His evenings were spent in
his own chamber, where he toiled over papers until far into the night,
in an effort to master every detail of the financial condition of the
Wanalah estate.
When he had done so, he asked for a conference with Colonel Conway, to
whom he explained his plans.
"I find that the interest charged on nearly all the notes my father
gave is higher than it ought to be; on some it is positively
extortionate. My father was an optimist, I suppose, and he seems to
have fallen among thieves--money lenders, I should say."
"One and the same thing," said the elder man. "I know their kind. I'm
myself a victim. Go on."
"Well, as I figure it out, the excessive interest the estate is
paying--I mean the amount of interest in excess of a reasonable
rate--eats up about half the tobacco crop every year, and I've decided
to stop it, just as we stop the depredations of the worms and
grasshoppers."
"Good! But how?"
"Why, I'm going to Richmond, and perhaps to the North if necessary, to
find some one who will take a single mortgage loan for the whole amount
of the estate's debts, a loan carrying a reasonable rate of interest.
With the proceeds I'll cancel all the present debts, and thereafter the
estate will have but one creditor, pay a moderate interest and devote
every dollar of surplus earnings to a steady reduction of the
principal. I've figured the whole thing out, and with ordinarily fair
crops and a reasonable style of living, I can extinguish the entire
debt in ten years or less."
The two went together over the figures, and the older man, who was both
shrewd and experienced, pronounced the plan entirely sound and
feasible. It remained only to find the bank, insurance company, or
other financial institution that would make the loan.
In search of that, Boyd Westover set off almost at once for Richmond.
As he rode away after parting with Margaret he turned in his saddle and
gaily waved her a last adieu, quite as if the parting were expected to
be for months or years instead of for the brief tale of days the youth
assigned to it.
V
PLEASANT DREAMS AND AN UGLY AWAKENING
Boyd Westover sat in his hotel room about nine o'clock in the evening.
Papers, mostly memoranda, lay scattered about upon his table, while
some large sheets were spread out before him. On these he was making
calculations.
He was a thorough-going person by nature and habit, and he was making
careful estimates of the several offers he had secured for the making
of the desired loan on Wanalah plantation, in an effort to determine
which of them he might most wisely accept.
Finally he said to himself:
"The Milhauser offer is the best, or will be if I can persuade the
agent to accept a mortgage instead of the deed of trust he wants.
Perhaps I can. He didn't make the condition peremptory, and he clearly
wants to secure the loan as an investment. I'll see him in the morning.
No, by the way, he said I'd find him at home this evening if I should
want to see him. I'll walk out to his house now."
Turning to the table he took up one of the memorandum sheets and read
at top the number of the agent's house in far upper Broad Street.
"It's almost out of town," he muttered. "Must be out beyond Richmond
College. But the walk will do me good, and I'll sleep better if I can
get the thing settled to-night."
He put an extinguisher over the camphene lamp, and set out without
overcoat or wrap of any kind. It was a warm, cloudy summer night, and
the Virginians rarely wore overcoats even in winter. They were
horsemen, all of them, and even the lightest overcoat is a burden and a
nuisance to one riding on horseback.
As he walked up Grace Street beneath the spreading shade trees, it
began to rain, not heavily but steadily. Westover was too well
accustomed to the out of door life to think of turning back because of
a drizzle, but as the rain increased he turned up the collar of his
coat and drew his soft felt hat down over his eyes. Presently he
stopped under a street lamp and consulted a paper which he drew from
his pocket. Some detail of the negotiation had escaped his mind and he
stopped thus to refresh his memory.
As he stood there under the lamp with his back turned away from the
sidewalk Sam Anderson, an acquaintance of his own, passed, and
recognizing him called out:
"Hello, Boyd! Reading a love letter by the light of a street lamp in a
soaking rain? You'd better go indoors somewhere unless you want to
imagine tear drops punctuating the tender missive."
Boyd turned and made some careless reply. The two separated--Boyd going
on up Grace Street and turning north to Broad, while Anderson hurried
down town.
The incident was utterly trifling in itself, but it was destined to
exercise a baleful influence upon Boyd Westover's life.
It was nearly an hour after midnight when the young man presented
himself again at the hotel office and asked for his key. The night
clerk observed that he was soaked and dripping, for the rain was
falling in torrents now, and suggested the need of a little fire in
Boyd's room. The fire was ordered, as the night had grown chill in
spite of the season, and by the time he had got himself into dry
clothes, the blaze of the soft coal had made the room so cheerful that
the young man decided to write letters before going to bed. One of them
was addressed to Colonel Conway, and in it Boyd announced his success
in arranging the loan, setting forth the terms secured and going
minutely into detail. In the other, which was addressed to Colonel
Conway's daughter, he told again of his success, giving no details at
all, but setting forth his rosy anticipations of the coming time--now
not far away--when she should be "my lady of Wanalah."
The letter to Colonel Conway was a long one of necessity; that to
Margaret was much longer without any necessity at all. But even the
longest letter must come to an end sometime, and at last, about four
o'clock in the morning, Boyd Westover crept into bed, a man altogether
happy in the present and confidently hopeful of the future. And why
not? Fortune was bringing him its richest gifts. Love was already his
and the future held out to him an assured promise of happiness and
peace in the plantation life he loved. Now that he had succeeded in
arranging his financial affairs to his liking, he had no vexing
problems to wrestle with, no cause of anxiety of any kind. With
Margaret for his wife, with an ample sufficiency of this world's goods,
he had only to conduct his plantation affairs, to entertain his
friends, and to keep company with his books.
It was of all this he dreamed when he sank to sleep.
When he awoke a constable stood by his bedside, with two of his
assistants a few feet farther away.
"Sorry, sir," said the constable. "I don't like to wake a gentleman,
sir, and still less in a case like this. If it was only a common
criminal, sir, I shouldn't mind, but with a young gentleman, my duty
ain't no ways a pleasant job."
"What do you mean, you ruffian?" angrily asked Westover springing out
of bed. "Why do you presume to--"
"'Taint presumin' I reckon," answered the constable, "when I've got
this fer my authority. Read it, sir, and see."
Boyd hastily glanced at the paper. It was a warrant for his arrest on a
charge of burglary.
He laughed a little, as he proceeded to dress, saying:
"Of course this is a ludicrous mistake, but you are not to blame for
it. Those who are will have to answer for their blundering. I'm ready.
Take me to the magistrate."
"He don't git up this soon in the mornin', sir. He was woke up to 'tend
to this thing, an' he wa'n't in no pleasant frame o' mind 'bout it
nuther. I reckon he'll lay abed late this mornin' to make up his lost
sleep, like. I don't reckon he'll show hisself in court till 'long
'bout noon."
"Where will you take me, then?"
"I reckon it'll have to be the lock-up, sir."
"The lock-up? You mean a jail?"
"Well jail's the straightaway name fer it, but we mostly calls it
lock-up. Seems softer like."
"Now my man, listen to me. You have no right to put me in jail. Your
warrant merely directs you to arrest me and bring me to court. It says
nothing about locking me up in jail. I tell you there's some absurd
mistake about this thing, and when I'm brought before the magistrate it
will all be cleared up. You can detain me until then without putting a
jail indignity upon me. Stay here at the hotel with me. Go with me to
breakfast, leaving your men on guard outside. When the time comes take
me before the magistrate. In the meanwhile I'll send for my lawyer and
find out what's to be done."
The constable ran his eye over the muscular young man, and shook his
head.
"Can't be did," he replied. "You mout make up your mind to break away,
and I don't brag o' stren'th enough to handle a limber twig like you."
"Well then, you can bring your men with you into the dining room and
keep them with you."
"See here, Mr. Westover," interrupted the bailiff, "this here ain't
noways a pleasant job fer me, an' ef you'll give me your word of honor
as a gentleman that you won't git me into no trouble by givin' me the
slip or tryin' to break bounds, I'll take the chances on you. I won't
go to breakfast with you, 'cause it 'ud make talk ef folks saw a
gentleman like you a entertainin' a feller like me that a ways. I'll
jest set down furder down the table like, an' leave my men outside. Is
it a go?"
"Yes, and thank you for your consideration. I give you my word of honor
as a gentleman that I will make no attempt to escape, either during
breakfast or at any other time, and that when you wish me to go to the
court with you I'll go without a word. Is that sufficient?"
"Yes, sir, that's enough. A gentleman may do things that gits him into
trouble with the courts, but I ain't never knowed a gentleman to break
his word of honor."
The constable was by no means an over-confiding person, but the dictum
he announced was based upon the facts of a social system with which he
had been familiar all his life. It would have been accepted without
question by any other man of his class in the commonwealth. Thanks to
it, Boyd Westover was left free to go and come at will within the
precincts of the hotel. He hurriedly summoned his friend and attorney,
Jack Towns, and remained in conference with him throughout the morning.
Neither could frame any plausible conjecture as to the meaning of the
arrest. There was nothing in any of the morning newspapers to give even
a hint toward the solution of the mystery. It was not the practice of
the Richmond newspapers at that time to print news, except such as
related to politics. If by chance they recorded any local happening, it
was by mere mention, in small type in some out of the way corner of
columns which were mainly devoted to ponderous editorial essays on
affairs of state, and to a reprint of the proceedings of Congress on
the day before.