and very naturally our neighbor, Mr. Skipwith, fell in love with her.
He came over here to see her every day for more than a year. He sent
her flowers from his garden, and when the frosts put an end to that he
built a green house, in order that he might keep on sending her
flowers. But somehow he never could get up courage enough to ask for
her hand, until one day Harriet Middleton brought about a crisis.
Harriet was an English girl of peculiarly good family whose father had
migrated to Virginia in search of health. Harriet was almost an old
maid, though not quite. She was blunt and aggressive in manner, though
as gentle and good as anybody could be when you came really to know
her. She was quick and shrewd of observation, and it did not take her
long to find out how matters stood between Mr. Skipwith and Miss Jane.
But the days and weeks went on and still there were no results. One
evening when the moon shone dreamily through a soft haze, Mr. Skipwith
and Miss Jane sat here in the porch, while Harriet and I walked away
through the orchard, by way of leaving them alone, and picking up some
good apples. When we returned, the pair were sitting precisely as we
had left them, at a respectful distance from each other, and both their
attitude and their manner bore convincing witness that even the hazy
moonlight had failed to bring about a crisis.
"Harriet's patience gave way. She stalked into the porch, with that
horse-like tread that Englishwomen use for a walk, and, taking her
stand between the two, said:
"'You two people love each other. You want to tell each other about it
but you don't dare; so I'm telling you instead. Now that I've
introduced the subject, perhaps you'll talk it out.'
"With that she passed on into the house, and a few weeks later Mr.
Skipwith and Miss Jane were married."
"And have they lived happily ever afterwards?"
"Indeed they have. They are well to do and very hospitable, and a
pleasanter place to visit than the Skipwith plantation doesn't exist in
Virginia."
"And Miss Middleton?"
"She's enjoying herself, bossing an insane asylum. She's only a patient
there, but she believes she's the superintendent, and they let her give
all the orders she thinks fit. Matilda," addressing a maid who at that
moment appeared with some lemonade, "send for the carriage please, and
send word that I want old Michael to drive me. Johnny is apt to go to
sleep."
"But where on earth are you going to drive at eleven o'clock at night?"
asked Millicent in wonder.
"Why, you know I have some fever patients out at the far quarters."
She was at pains not to say that she was going to visit them, though
she half intended to do so. Her desire--imperative and passionate--was
to separate herself from human companionship and think out the problems
that beset her soul.
"But mayn't I go with you?"
"No, no, no. You might get the fever, and besides, you must get your
beauty sleep. After you are married to--to some Virginia gentleman, and
become the mistress of a plantation, you will of course look after your
sick servants. Just now it is your duty to go to bed. There's an old
novel 'Dunallan' on the dressing case in my room. Go in there and get
it. It's the very sleepiest thing I ever saw in my life. Read half a
dozen pages of it and you'll be sound asleep. Good night. I won't speak
to you when I come back, lest I disturb your slumbers. Oh, by the way,
tell Diana to put three candles on my candle stand and place it close
to my bed. And tell her please to go to bed as soon as she gets things
ready in our rooms. I shall not want her to-night, and she has had a
hard day."
As she finished speaking the carriage drove up, with the white-haired
old coachman Michael on the box. He had long ago ceased to have active
duties of any kind to do, but when his "young missus" asked for him to
drive her anywhere, at any time and under any circumstances, the loyal
old servitor was ready and eager in response. He had driven Margaret's
mother on her wedding journey to the mountain resorts. He had driven
Margaret herself to her christening. He had grown old but never lax in
the service, and now in his old age, when he was excused from all
service, it was his chief joy to drive his "young missus" whenever she
honored him by asking that he should do so.
On this occasion he saw clearly enough that Margaret was distraught,
and when she entered the carriage he forbore to distress her with
questions. He simply picked out the best roads and followed them. After
awhile she spoke to him.
"I reckon you'd better drive to the far quarters, Uncle Michael. I
ought to see the sick ones."
"Dey ain't sick, Miss Margaret. Leastways dey ain't sick enough for you
to go botherin' 'bout 'em. Dey's jes' a sufferin' dere own calamities.
Dey stole a shoat night before last an' gorged on it all night. 'Course
dey had a fever yestiddy an' to-day. Don't you go a botherin' 'bout dem
no 'count niggas, Miss Margaret. Jes' you let ole Michael pick out de
roads fer you and drive you 'bout, comfortable like."
With this reassuring release from obligation, the girl sank back among
the cushions as the late rising, gibbous moon came up from the horizon,
and abandoned herself to thought.
She was a woman, young, strong, passionate; she cherished still that
dream of love which had so recently inspired and illumined her life.
She could not understand why or how it had been snatched away by
circumstance. It was hard for her to believe that all she had hoped for
and held dear had been banished from her life by a final, arbitrary,
inexplicable decree of fate.
"And yet," she reflected, "it is so. Between Boyd and me there is a
great gulf fixed, and nothing can furnish a bridge across it."
Then another thought occurred to her.
"Suppose I should write to Boyd and ask him for an explanation?
"No, I could not do that without sacrificing that pride of womanhood
without which a woman is nothing and worse than nothing. No, that can
never be. I wonder why he does not himself offer an explanation and
seek a restoration of old relations? No, that can never be. It would
involve such a sacrifice of manhood as is inconceivable. There is never
any explanation possible, never any solution to this riddle, never
anything."
She sat still for awhile, not thinking at all. Suddenly she reflected:
"After all it is his happiness that I care for. My own is of no
consequence. He is a man, and it will be easy for him to transfer his
affections. Men are not like women in that way. Millicent will make a
fitter wife for him than I ever could. He will be happy with her, and
as for me--well, it doesn't matter. I have my duties and my
occupations. The rest is of no consequence. He shall love Millicent and
marry her, and may be, when I'm an old, old woman, he and I will come
to understand each other again, at least so far that neither shall
accuse the other of treachery."
With a mind attuned to the great renunciation, she called to Michael
and bade him drive back to The Oaks.
XXVI
MOONLIGHT RESOLUTIONS
Millicent Danvers was a frank, open-minded young woman, almost
childlike in her simplicity of soul in every case where candor was met
with equal candor. But her childlikeness included a child's subtle
instinct as to the moods and motives of others, and where affection
prompted her scrutiny she was not often at fault in her judgments of
human conduct.
When Margaret, refusing her company, drove away that night Millicent
knew perfectly that her friend's spirit was disturbed in some unusual
way, for until then these two had been comrades in every such
expedition, and Margaret had been the one most insistent that they
should be so.
"I want you to see every phase of our Virginia life," she had many
times said, "so that when you go back to Boston you may know what there
is in it to approve, what to admire, what to condemn, and what merely
to laugh at. For I'm sure there is much in it that must strike Northern
people as ludicrous. Anyhow I want you to see it all and understand all
of it. Then I'm not afraid to trust our life and our ways and our
impulses to your hands for explanation and exposition to people who are
ignorant of them or know them only by prejudiced hearsay."
The events of this day, and especially Margaret's own conduct had been
so different from all this as to awaken curiosity and compel attention.
Both the curiosity and the attention had a deep and sincere affection
for their prompting.
When Margaret drove away and the late rising, gibbous moon appeared
above the tree tops and shone softly through the windows of Millicent's
southeast room, the girl sat down there by a casement to wonder, to
conjecture, to "guess," and, better still, to "think this thing out to
the end."
"There is something wrong with Margaret," was her first thought. "She
is disturbed and distressed, and she isn't the kind of person to be
disturbed and distressed without adequate reason. Why didn't she go
over to the Court House with me this morning and dine at the
Magisters'? She intended to do so. She and I had planned it all out,
and she had accepted Mrs. Magister's invitation. It was only at the
last moment that she decided to stay and nurse her father's purely
mythical gout. It was only five minutes before that that a note had
come from Mrs. Magister, saying that Mr. Boyd Westover had come down
out of the mountains and that she should 'compel' him to be one of her
dinner guests. I wonder if that news brought on the attack of gout, and
decided Margaret to stay at the Oaks and nurse it?
"Then again it is clear that Margaret does not expect Mr. Westover to
visit her in the near future. I wonder why? His plantation adjoins
this, and everybody says the two families have been intimate for
generations. There must be some special reason. In fact there is.
Somebody told me to-day that Colonel Conway had refused to join in the
nomination of Mr. Westover, and that the fact is injuring Mr.
Westover's canvass. I wonder what it means? Naturally Mr. Westover and
Margaret should be sweethearts, and after a while they should marry
each other. I wonder why things haven't gone that way? May be they have
been too intimate in their childhood. No, that isn't the solution. It
doesn't explain Margaret's care to avoid Mr. Westover. It doesn't
explain her plan to send me to Fighting Creek without her. It doesn't
explain her drive to-night. It doesn't explain anything. If they were
mere intimates, too intimate to think of love, Mr. Westover would be a
frequent guest at The Oaks and the relations of the two would be
comradely."
She paused for a while in the formulation of her thinking into orderly
phrases. Then she reflected:
"When I mentioned Margaret to him at dinner to-day he distinctly
winced. Every time I have mentioned him to her to-night, she has turned
the conversation to other subjects."
There was another long pause in the formulation of her thought. At last
her common sense asserted itself and she said to herself:
"Millicent Danvers, you are treading upon dangerous ground, and you
must get off it as quickly as possible. There has been a love affair
between Margaret and Westover. You can't shut your eyes to that fact or
pretend not to see it. Some break has come, but such breaks may be
repaired, and it is your function to repair this one."
A wave of melancholy swept over her soul as she thought of this. She
mightily admired Boyd Westover, and she had even dreamed a little dream
with regard to him. She was a proud maiden in her way and as she
searched her heart there in the moonlight, she decided that she had not
suffered herself to fall in love with Westover.
"How could I?" she challenged herself to answer. "I have met him but
once. The thing is absurd. Besides, no self-respecting young woman
gives her love to any man until he asks for it. No, of course I'm not
in love with Mr. Westover. It is nothing but admiration that I feel for
him."
Then, as she looked out into the tree-studded house grounds, where all
nature seemed to sleep in the soft haze of the moonlight, she added to
her thought:
"But it would be easy for such a man to change a woman's admiration
into love by a phrase, a word, a look into her eyes. Thank God he has
not yet looked into my eyes in that way, and, God being my helper, he
never shall. After all,--well, after all there are only a few men in
the world that--well, anyhow, it isn't so terrible a thing to be an old
maid, and I'll do my duty in this case if the stars start from their
courses, as a consequence." Then she laughed under her breath, and
jeered in mocking fashion at the absurdity of her thought:
"Of course the stars will do nothing of the kind. That was a bit of
heroics, and I'm not a heroine of romance. I'm only a simple, honest,
Boston girl. I love Margaret dearly, and I'm resolved to do all I can
to bring about a reconciliation between her and Mr. Westover, for I'm
satisfied there is need for something of the sort. That's sane and
sensible at any rate, and the stars have nothing to do with it."
She had been reading an essay entitled, "The Great Renunciation," and
she was full of its spirit, almost a devotee to the impulses it sought
to inspire. But as she recalled it she laughed.
"That had to do with the great religions of the world. It didn't refer
to the case of a sensible girl who finds herself particularly attracted
by a young man at a first meeting and decides that she will not let him
fall in love with her because she realizes that the best loved friend
of her life is, or has been or ought to be his affianced wife.
Millicent, I'm ashamed of you. After all the instruction you've had as
to the conduct of life and the behavior of young women, this thing is
ridiculous."
Nevertheless there was sadness in that inexperienced heart of hers, as
she saw the carriage reënter the house grounds, and herself hastened
to bed lest her friend should discover her vigil. But if hers had not
been the great renunciation, at least it had been a resolution of
loyalty and good faith, and perhaps in the eyes of the angels the two
things are very nearly the same. Her exacting New England conscience at
any rate was satisfied, so that it let her sleep, just as Margaret's
Virginia conscience--different in kind but equally exigent in its
demands--permitted slumber, sweet and refreshing, to come to her.
When the morning came these two met, each intently resolved to render
to the other the supreme service of sacrifice, and neither dreaming of
the other's thought. But in all human affairs circumstance has its part
to play, and while it cannot alter purposes it often plays havoc with
results. It was so in this case. Things happened, and the happening was
more decisive than the moonlight meditations of a pair of maidens could
possibly be.
XXVII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JACK TOWNS
Boyd Westover had the excellent mental habit of attending carefully to
more than one thing at a time.
Just now he had the election on his hands, and with it some problems of
personal dignity and repute that required his closest attention. But he
also had Wanalah plantation to look after, and in view of his long
absence he felt that home affairs were pressing.
Accordingly he was up before the dawn, on the morning after his
arrival, and for half an hour after dawn he waited, not at all
patiently, for the coming of his overseer, to whom he had sent a
summons over night to be with him "at the crack of day." Then instead
of waiting longer, he mounted his horse and rode away on a tour of
inspection.
It was well after sunrise when he returned to find the overseer
hitching his horse to the rack.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wilkinson," he said; "I had hoped to see you this
morning."
"I'm sorry, sir, but Î was very tired last night."
"So was I. I had walked all through the night before. Never mind that
now. I wanted to see you at dawn. The sun is now half an hour high.
That means that you have wasted an hour and a half of my time, and my
time is just now precious."
"I'm very sorry, sir--"
"Don't bother to apologize. I can't waste any further time listening to
excuses. Why are you seeding the Gaston field in wheat? I directed
otherwise, you know."
"Well, sir, the fall has given us good weather, and we can get in that
two hundred acres as well as not."
"But how about harvesting it?"
"Oh, I'll manage that."
"Yes, by making the negroes work by moonlight, as you did last summer
to the everlasting shame of Wanalah plantation, and just as you made
too many hogsheads of tobacco and too many barrels of corn to the hand.
I have told you before and I tell you now that I will not have the
hands over-worked. Is the Gaston field seeded?"
"No, sir. We begin on that to-day."
"Don't seed it. Let it lie fallow."
"But my gracious, Mr. Westover,--"
"Never mind about your gracious. I tell you not to seed that field. And
another thing: You planted seven hundred thousand hills of tobacco last
year. I want you to write it up in your hat that four hundred thousand
is Wanalah's limit. I want you to understand that this plantation is
not run for money. If it supports itself, giving a decent living to the
whites and blacks on it, I shall be satisfied. If it doesn't quite do
that, I'll find a way in which to make up the deficiency. Now I want
you to give all the negroes on the plantation a whole holiday
to-morrow. I understand there's to be a big picnic with all-day
preaching over at Mount Moriah church, and I want everybody on the
plantation to attend it. By the way, Bob!" calling to a passing negro,
"go at once and tell old Joe I want him to kill two sheep--good fat
ones--three shoats and four turkeys this morning; tell him to hang 'em
in the ice house as soon as they're dressed, and send them over to
Mount Moriah early to-morrow morning. Do you hear?"
"Yassir!" responded Bob, his mouth already watering for the share he
expected to eat of the good things thus promised.
"And, Bob, tell Uncle Joe to take them over there himself and say that
Mas' Boyd Westover hopes the folks will have a good time and get as
much religion as they need."
"But, Boyd," said Jack Towns, who had sleepily strolled into the porch,
"don't you think--"
"No, decidedly not, Jack. You see Wanalah is the plantation nearest to
Mount Moriah, and it's the natural base of supplies for a meeting
there. If I don't furnish the provender they'll steal it out of my
pasture, my pig pen and my turkey yard. I very much prefer that they
should get the things honestly, and it costs me no more."
Then, returning to business, he said to the overseer:
"You understand the general spirit of my instructions, Mr. Wilkinson,
and I beg you to bear it in mind. I'll give more specific orders from
time to time, as they are needed."
"But what about me?" answered the overseer. "I've got a reputation for
makin' more tobacco to the hand an' more wheat to the acre an' more
corn on top o' that than any other man as oversees a plantation
anywheres for forty mile around here."
"Well, what of it?"
"Well, it's this a ways. I ain't a-goin' to lose a reputation I prides
myself on. Ef you don't want your niggers worked fer all they's worth,
perhaps you'd better look out fer another overseer."
Westover flushed angrily, more at the tone than at the words, and
answered instantly:
"Perhaps I had. At any rate I will. I shall not renew my contract with
you for another year."
The Virginians were very tolerant of insolence on the part of a negro.
Usually they treated it as badinage, quite harmlessly and humorously
meant. But insolence on the part of an overseer was always taken
seriously and instantly resented. The overseers constituted a pariah
class, for whom there was tolerance only so long as they "minded their
manners."
As the overseer lingered in hope of some modification of the sentence
he had brought upon himself, Westover impatiently turned upon him,
saying:
"I think I have nothing more to say to you, Mr. Wilkinson, and I wish
to talk with Mr. Towns. You may go now."
As the man walked down the road that led to the outer gates, he
muttered:
"I'll git back at him for that. He's a sneak-in' abolitionist. I'll be
over at Fighting Creek to-morrow, seein's he's made it a holiday here."
"Now I want to talk with you, Jack," said Westover when the man was
well out of earshot.
"So I understood you to say to Mr. Wilkinson; and you may go on and
talk to me till the cows come home, if it amuses you to do so, but if
you expect me to talk back in any rational way, you've simply got to
wait till after breakfast. When I've had two cups of coffee, the best
part of a roe herring, three or four slices of cold ham, a wedge or two
of hot light bread, some beaten biscuit, and one of your belated
cantaloupes, I shall begin to appreciate the fact that I have a brain.
Till then I decline to consider myself a rational being. Go on and
talk, if you want to."
"I will," answered Westover, passing into the house. To one of the
dining-room servants he said:
"Serve a pot of coffee to Mr. Towns immediately, do you hear? Is it
ready?"
Half a minute later Cilla appeared in the porch bearing a tray with
coffee and its accessories daintily arranged upon a napkin. The
servants at Wanalah had not yet lost their memory of the training they
had received in youth.
"There," said Westover, "saturate your soul and stimulate your system
with coffee. And by the way, there's a frost-bitten tomato sliced up to
deceive your eyes and your appetite. How long before breakfast, Cilla?"
"It's a-bein' brung in now," answered the serving girl, "all but the
hot buckwheat cakes, an' them'll come a little later."
It was the custom of the Virginians to talk freely at table, paying no
heed whatever to the presence of their servitors. Accordingly, as soon
as Jack Towns began to discover his brains again, under the influence
of a breakfast that might have made a chatterer of the Sphinx itself,
the two talked of plans.
"My first endeavor," said Westover, "will be to compel Colonel Conway
to declare himself. To that end, as soon as breakfast is done, I shall
send him a letter that will require a response of some sort. You see,
Jack, his attitude is far more hurtful to me than the most aggressive
antagonism on his part could be. Everybody knows that the Westovers and
the Conways have been the most intimate friends possible throughout
generations past. If he and I had had a quarrel, everybody would
understand. But we have had no quarrel, and so nobody understands and
everybody wonders. If he believes I was guilty down there in Richmond--"
"He can't think that, unless he's an idiot of extraordinary capacity
for the lunatic misinterpretation of facts," interrupted Towns.
"Perhaps not. Still, I remember hearing a 'Pennsylvania Dutch'
magistrate declare from the bench that 'Nodings is possible mit Gott,'
and so it may be that, he believes that. If so he has a perfect right
to express his belief. All I ask is that he shall say what it is he has
against me."
"Stuff and nonsense! Rot and rubbish! Scammony and gamboge! Moonlight,
music, love and flowers! Transcendentalism and green cheese!" exclaimed
Jack Towns, multiplying words as a man of oratorical habit is apt to
do. "You know perfectly well that he believes nothing of the sort.
Recall our conversation of last night."
"I remember it perfectly, and that is why I'm going to write to Colonel
Conway this morning. It may open the way to an explanation."
"It may, of course. But if I were in your place I'd write to Margaret
instead."
"How can I? I have written to her again and again, and she has not
answered. Self-respect forbids me--"
"I quite understand. It was self-respect that caused a cat to lose an
eye in a scrimmage rather than explain to the other cat that the fence
he was sitting on was the personal property of his own master. Never
mind. If you won't write to Margaret, write to her father by all means.
It may provoke a crisis of some sort, and that is the one thing to be
desired just now."
But Boyd Westover was not destined to send that letter. He toiled over
it half the day and more. He wrote it in forty different forms. He used
up more letter paper than had been consumed at Wanalah during a year or
more past, but he could not get the thing into a shape that would do.
Finally he threw down his pen and turning to Jack Towns said:
"The trouble is, Jack, that when I try to formulate my complaint there
isn't a thing to challenge or question. Colonel Conway has not been
here to call upon me, but I cannot decently complain of that. He has
refused to join with others in nominating me, but that too was his
right and I cannot question it. The whole thing is so negative that
really there isn't a point I can mention as a ground of complaint."
"Yes? Well--"
"Yes, well, what? Why don't you say something?"
"I will. I'll say that you're irritable to-day. You showed it your
confab with your overseer, who is a very worthy man with an exaggerated
notion of the work a field hand ought to do in a day. You showed it at
breakfast, when you complained because the buckwheat cakes didn't make
their appearance precisely on time. Is there anything else you'd like
me to say?"
"Yes. What am I to do in this matter, by way of bringing about a
tolerable situation?"