you wouldn't have believed it then. Now that you've exhausted your
literary capacity and most of the Wanalah stationery in a futile effort
to do the impossible, it may be worth my while to say to you that in a
case of this kind there is nothing you can do except await events with
due respect for your own dignity. Shut up your desk and send for some
horses. Let's have a gallop before dinner time. And by the way, I'd
like to ride that young iron gray mare you've got in your stables. She
impresses me so favorably that I should buy her if she belonged to
anybody who would sell."
"Why, when did you inspect her, Jack? I hadn't a thought--"
"I know you hadn't, but while you've been busy at your desk, trying to
accomplish the impossible, I've been down to the stables and had the
mare out for inspection. She's a beauty and, so far as I know the
points of a horse, she has all of them that are worth while. She's a
Red Eye of course?"
"Yes--Red Eye and Nina. She's Nina's own colt. I'll tell you what I'll
do, Jack. If you'll stay with me, making Wanalah your home till this
confounded election is over,--just to keep me sane, you know,--the mare
shall be yours, as a souvenir of your safe return from the Rocky
Mountains."
"Done!" exclaimed Jack. "But if I have to club you by way of keeping
you sane, you won't too greatly mind, will you?"
"Not in the least. It's the clubbing I want. Really, Jack, I often
think I haven't quite grown up and never shall. I have my full
complement of inches, of course, and I can be dignified upon occasion,
but when it comes to emotional things, somehow--"
"Somehow you're nothing but a romantic, sentimental boy. I've heard you
quote Keats and Shelley when an arithmetic or a geography would have
been much more to the purpose. I was born that way myself, and so you
see I understand your malady and sympathize with you, but as for myself
I've worked a complete cure."
"How did you manage it, Jack?" asked Westover in amused anticipation.
"Oh, easily enough. I have cultivated catholicity of taste in the
matter of girls. You know all sentimentality in men has its ultimate
origin in their attitude toward women. Now in sentiment, as in
everything else, moderation is desirable and excess is destructive.
Realizing that fact I have cultivated moderation, by falling madly in
love with every pretty young woman I have met, and with some pretty old
ones also. But as one encounters a rapid succession of pretty young
women, the habit of falling in love with each of them is a securely
protective agency. You see I never have time to become idiotically in
love with one young woman before meeting another who knocks all that
out of my head. To-day's girl rescues me from yesterday's. It's a case
of one nail driving out another."
"You are the worst cynic I ever knew, Jack."
"Perhaps I am. But I see the boys are here with the horses. Let's be
off and away, forgetting philosophy and girls and pessimism and
moonlight and molasses candy for a time at least. Is that a quarter of
shoat Cilla is toting from the ice-house? In verity it is, and a decent
respect for its succulent attractiveness should prompt us to arm
ourselves and meet it with an appetite. So here goes for a good hard
gallop, with stiff fences by the way."
XXVIII
THE EVENTS OF A DAY
Only once had Westover been interrupted during his hours of laborious
and futile effort to write his letter to Colonel Conway. Jack Towns,
being an ideal guest, had occupied himself with books, strolls, and
other silent means of passing the time, so that his host had been in no
way reminded of his existence. But the weather had not been so
unobtrusive a guest. Considerably before noon there came a squall which
for ten or fifteen minutes threatened destruction to everything movable
about the place. It unroofed a cellar door at the back of the house. It
carried away the shed of a tobacco barn, and curiously enough one of
the cook's pigs, which she was bringing up luxuriously on "pot liquor
and kitchen stuff," disappeared during the brief hurricane. Whether the
obese porker was really blown away, as most of the house servants
stoutly contended, or whether it was that some colored person with an
appetite had simultaneously seized the opportunity and the pig and got
away with both, was a point never accurately determined.
Boyd Westover cared nothing for damages that might be repaired, but he
was sorely distressed by the wreckage of a favorite mimosa tree that
flourished near one corner of the porch. He even quitted his writing,
when the little squall had passed away, and with Jack Towns's very
inexpert assistance, attempted some repairs. But when there arose the
question of sawing off a broken limb, he abandoned the undertaking,
saying:
"We'll leave that till Carley Farnsworth comes. He's due here to-day to
see some of my people who are ill. He's a much better horticulturist
than either of us, Jack, and besides he's a surgeon and will know
better how to give the poor tree a chance to grow into symmetry again."
Then, as he sorrowfully contemplated the torn and broken mimosa, he
muttered:
"I shouldn't have cared half so much if the squall had blown away every
barn I've got. The ruin of that tree is all that it means to me."
He little dreamed what other and immeasurably greater consequences were
to come to him as the result of that brief atmospheric disturbance, but
he was destined, after a time, to find out.
When the two friends returned from their ride of a dozen miles or so,
bringing with them a pair of wild turkey gobblers shot upon the flush,
they found Carley Farnsworth in the hall, as the broad passageway
through a Virginia house was called, very busily writing upon small
slips of paper, of which he had prepared a considerable number before
beginning to write. He was too busy to give more than a scant greeting
to his friends, but in lieu of greater cordiality he handed one of his
written slips to each, saying:
"Read that, and don't interrupt me, please. I'm expecting a messenger
every moment."
On each of the slips was written:
"I am authorized by Colonel Robert Conway to add his name to the list
of those who urge Mr. Boyd Westover's election.
"(Signed) Don Carlos Farnsworth."
As Westover and Towns looked wonderingly at each other, after reading
the slips, Carley Farnsworth threw down his pen, exclaiming:
"There! that's fifty. Talk will do the rest."
Then, filling and lighting a long-stemmed pipe, he said to the others:
"Something has happened. Don't ask me what it is, for I don't know.
Yonder comes Dick Ventress, and the slips are ready for him. He has a
pot of gum stick'em in his pocket and he's going to paste those slips
to all the nominating placards within twenty miles between now and
to-morrow morning. They'll set everybody talking, and talk will do the
rest."
When Dick Ventress had received the papers and galloped away, Carley
vouchsafed some small and exceedingly unsatisfying explanation.
"Something has happened at The Oaks," he said. "I don't know what it
is, but when I got there to-day to attend Miss Margaret's sick people,
I found everybody agitated, Miss Betsy in something like collapse, and
Colonel Conway littering up the house with the torn fragments of
letters he'd been trying to write but couldn't. I gave him something to
quiet his nerves, and suggested that in his state of mind perhaps
literary endeavors were unadvisable. Presently he exclaimed: 'I'll
arrange the whole thing. I'll write a letter to you.'
"With that he set to work and wrote this."
He offered a sheet of paper on which was written:
"Dr. D. C. Farnsworth.
"_My dear Sir_:--
"When you asked me to join you and others in nominating Mr. Boyd
Westover for Senator, I felt bound to decline, for reasons which I did
not, because I could not, offer. Through very distressing and to me
embarrassing circumstances, I now discover that I have been acting
under a misapprehension. There are peculiar circumstances which forbid
me to explain myself further. I cannot do so without injustice to
others. But so far as Mr. Boyd Westover is concerned I earnestly desire
to make such atonement as is still possible. To that end I hereby
authorize you to add my name to the list of those who urge Mr. Boyd
Westover's election. You are free to make this public in any and every
way that may seem to you desirable. If it were possible, I should
myself announce it from the platform at Fighting Creek to-morrow. As it
is I authorize you to do so in my absence. I beg you to use all the
influence you can command to spare me the necessity of explanation in
this case. I cannot explain. The situation is the most distressing one
possible to me. I place it and myself in your hands, and I am always,
my dear Dr. Farnsworth,
"Your sincere friend,
"Robert Conway."
"There you have the whole story, so far as I know anything about it,"
said the Doctor.
"I must say," said Jack Towns, "it is a very manly effort to make
reparation under difficulties."
"Yes," answered Westover, "and that is characteristic of Colonel
Conway. I'd gladly sacrifice the election in exchange for the privilege
of reading that note. He is altogether a man, and I must meet his
manliness as a man. I'll write to him at once."
"He does not invite that," said Jack Towns.
"On the contrary he forbids it," added Carley Farnsworth, "and I forbid
it in his name. Your impulse is manly and generous, Boyd, but you see
he has asked me to use all the influence I can to spare him the
necessity of explaining. A note from you would simply compel an
explanation at his hands. It was to avoid that that he tore up all the
letters he tried to write to you to-day. It is to avoid that that he
doesn't mount his horse and ride over here to shake hands with you and
tell you about this thing, whatever it is. It is to avoid that that he
is going to absent himself from the meeting at Fighting Creek
to-morrow, leaving me to announce his change of mind in his stead. What
do you think, Jack?"
"Oh, there's only one thing to think. Until Colonel Conway shall see
fit to open direct communication with Westover of Wanalah, it will be
an extreme and unpardonable impertinence for Westover of Wanalah to
address any personal communication to him. Circumstances forbid it.
Courtesy forbids it. Consideration, conscience, common sense,
convenience, convention, custom,--everything that begins with a 'c' or
with any other letter of the alphabet,--forbids it."
"I suppose you two are right," answered Westover, "but to a man of my
temperament it seems an ungracious thing not to recognize in some
personal way the courtesy Colonel Conway has shown me. My impulse is to
write to him and thank him."
"Well, under the circumstances you mustn't," said Carley Farnsworth,
"and you're lucky, Boyd, to have sane friends to advise and control
you."
"I reckon I am. But really, Carley, what do you suppose has happened
over at The Oaks?"
"I am doing no supposing. It may be anything or nothing. We
Virginians--all but Jack Towns and me--are so emotional, so
sentimental, so chivalric if you prefer the term, that I long ago
ceased my efforts to make a diagnosis of things of that sort. I only
know that the Colonel is wrought up to a pitch that requires the remedy
of going to bed, and that everybody else at The Oaks is correspondingly
wrought up. Everybody except that thoroughly admirable Boston girl,
Miss Danvers. She has a head, and she keeps it poised above her
shoulders. If I hadn't an entirely satisfactory wife of my own in
prospect, though not yet in possession, I should be strongly tempted to
persuade that girl to stay south of Mason and Dixon's line. As it is, I
really think some other fellow ought to do that as a service to
Virginia society. Miss Danvers is a true blue, a thoroughbred. She has
character, manners, breeding, beauty, simplicity, honesty, sincerity,
loyalty, good sense, and all the other qualities that go to make a
woman admirable. She is the only person who knows what the ruction over
at The Oaks was, and she's the only one there capable of handling the
situation sanely. She seems to have everybody there well in hand, and
to be controlling all of them wisely. She has a persuasive gift that
astonished me when she actually got Colonel Conway to go to bed in the
middle of the afternoon, and induced Margaret to do the same thing as a
precaution against a nervous breakdown that was clearly threatened. I
had ordered both those goings to bed, with all the authority of a
medical adviser, but to no purpose. When I spoke to that Boston girl
about it, she answered gently but confidently: 'If you think that
advisable, Doctor, I will see that it is done,' and by Jove she did the
trick so promptly that before I left I saw them both in bed, and gave
each of them a sleeping potion that will keep them quiet for many hours
to come."
Under ordinary circumstances, Jack Towns would have declared his
purpose to go over to The Oaks at once and make love to the Boston
girl. For some reason, on this occasion, he shrank from all jesting. He
had talked for an hour with Millicent Danvers on the evening before. He
wanted now to talk with her for another hour, but, contrary to his
custom, he said nothing of his purpose. He went to dinner with the
other two, and after the dinner was done he slipped away to the
stables, mounted the superb mare that was now his, and rode away to The
Oaks.
XXIX
THE WORK OF A WILD WIND
This is the story of what the wind-storm did at The Oaks, to disturb
the usual placidity of life there.
It was Aunt Betsy's custom, as it was that of many or most other women
in Virginia, to write a multitude of "notes" each day, some of them
filling six or eight sheets of paper, with criss-crossings to make them
seem undecipherably interesting, and to despatch them by young negroes
on bare-backed horses to their more or less neighborly destination. A
statistical economist once made a careful reckoning by which he
convinced himself that this practice cost the planter families of
Virginia about seven and one-half times the amount they contributed in
stamps to the postal revenues of the nation.
It was the practice of the young women of the plantations to write all
these letters before breakfast. It was Aunt Betsy's more leisurely
practice to write them whenever she pleased, and she usually pleased to
write them between ten o'clock in the morning and the one o'clock hour
that was sacred to the luncheon known in Virginia as "snack."
On the morning of the happening at The Oaks, the day being sufficiently
warm, Aunt Betsy brought out her desk--an oblong box which when opened
offered a slanting writing surface, with spaces below its lids for
letter paper, envelopes, and papers of every kind. Women usually laid
these so-called "desks" upon their laps and managed somehow to write
there, as no man ever could have done. But it was Aunt Betsy's habit
also to retire into the house now and then upon occasions of real or
imagined necessity, and in anticipation of such interruptions she
always had a slender-legged stand at hand--a thing "drunkenly
artistic," as Boyd Westover had once said--upon which to place her desk
whenever she was minded to suspend her writing for a while.
On the morning in question she had a gown in course of construction by
her seamstresses, who were working in the back porch with a room
opening off it which her modesty used for purposes of "fitting" and
"trying on."
She had therefore frequent occasion to suspend her writing.
It was during one of her most exigent fits of trying on that the squall
struck the place. As a good deal of thunder and lightning accompanied
the weather disturbance, and as Aunt Betsy was possessed of that sort
of cowardice concerning thunder and lightning which persons so
afflicted call "nervousness," she promptly shut herself up in a dark
closet and remained there until the squall had passed away.
[Illustration: With the first onset of the wind.--_Page 343._]
But with the first onset of the wind the frail table on which she had
left her open desk toppled over; the desk was whirled out into the
grounds and dashed against a tree with a force that instantly reduced
it to splinters, while its contents--correspondence and curl papers
alike--were scattered, if not to the four winds, at least to the one
wind which was blowing with demoniacal fury.
Margaret and Millicent who had just returned from a morning stroll
rushed frantically, picturesquely and, in an unconscious way,
gracefully, to the rescue. The desk was in fragments and far past
praying for; but by a deal of scurrying the two girls and some of the
house servants managed to collect the scattered papers and place them
upon a table within, while Aunt Betsy was still ensconced in her dark
closet, waiting for the last rumble of the thunder to cease. As
Millicent deposited her share of the spoils upon the table, she looked
at Margaret with frightened eyes and said:
"Please send everybody out of the room but you and me."
For Millicent had not yet accustomed herself to talk freely in the
presence of servants as if they were deaf, dumb, and blind, incapable
of understanding what might be said in their presence and therefore
incapable of repeating it. That habit of the Virginians had its origin
probably in two facts: they never said anything that they were afraid
to stand by; and the negro was not, in law or in fact, permitted to
testify against a white person. In the courts his testimony was barred
by statute; in social life it was even more absolutely barred by
convention. No negro ventured to report anything he had heard white
people say, and if he had done so, no white person would for one moment
have listened to him. To have done that would have been to invite and
incur absolute and eternal ostracism.
But Millicent, brought up in a totally different atmosphere, could
never accustom herself to this, and so she asked to have the servants
dismissed from the room before saying what she had to say about the
papers in her hand. Margaret smiled at the request, but after the
revelation was made she rejoiced that it had been preferred and acted
upon.
When the servants had left the room, Millicent held out a handful of
letters that she had picked up in the wild scramble of rescue.
"There is something wrong here, Margaret," she said in her open, honest
way. "Some of these are unopened letters addressed to you--letters that
bear stamps and post marks, letters that have come through the mail.
These others are sealed letters addressed in your handwriting to Mr.
Boyd Westover. They are stamped, but they bear no postmarks. They have
never been mailed."
She stood silent for a moment, rigid with an indignation that she knew
not how to express in words.
Meanwhile Margaret stood looking at the letters, dazed, pale to the
lips, paralyzed. Then she looked from the letters to Millicent and the
girl thought she was dying or already dead, so white was her face at
first and so livid a moment later.
With the womanly instinct of ministry, reinforced by a passionate
impulse of friendship, Millicent passed around the table, threw her arm
about the stricken girl and gently forced her to lie upon one of the
broad lounges or settees, or whatever else they should be called, that
in those days invited repose in every dining room and every hallway of
the plantation houses.
With that ready appreciation of necessity which is characteristic of
womanhood, she went to the sideboard, poured a thimble glass of sherry
and compelled Margaret to drink it. Then she tinkled a bell and when
the servant appeared gave quick, concise orders for the summoning of
Margaret's maid and other strong-armed servitors.
"You must get your mistress to bed at once," she commanded, "and send
some one to summon Dr. Farnsworth quickly. He's at the lower quarters."
But Margaret, rising to a sitting position, promptly negatived all
this. Sustained by wrath, indignation, resentment of insult, and by
outraged pride, she forced upon herself the calm control that for the
moment she had lost, though only for the moment. With that instinct of
race, that courage, that self-mastery that had been always a precious
possession of the Conways, she dismissed the superfluous servants who
had hastened to her upon hearing that she was in trouble, and assumed
control of the situation.
"Thank you, Millicent, dear, for bringing those letters to me. They are
mine, and I will dispose of them. Diana, bring me my desk, please."
When the desk was placed before her she selected a sheet of paper and
an envelope as calmly as if she had meant to send a note to Hallie
Harvey or any other girl friend, asking her for the proper count of
stitches in a piece of fancy knitting work.
Then she wrote upon the sheet of paper, this note:
"Aunt Betsy:--Your desk was blown out into the grounds and wrecked,
during the squall. We have gathered up the fragments of the desk and
rescued all the widely scattered papers. I am sending you all of them
that in any way belong to you. Those that belong to me I am keeping. I
send you this note, instead of seeing you in person, because your maid
tells me you have gone to bed.
"Margaret."
She sent the note, sealed, by the hand of a maid, and she sent with it
the entire paper contents of the wrecked desk, except the unopened
letters of Boyd Westover to herself and her own unopened letters to
him. These she gathered together into a bundle which she thrust into
her corsage.
Then she turned to a servant and gave the order:
"Send to the stables for saddle horses for your Miss Millicent and me.
We are going for a ride."
To Millicent she said under her breath: "You must go with me, dear. I
must control myself or I shall not be able to carry this thing through
to the end with dignity. I must have a dash on horseback. You don't
mind, do you, dear?"
"Mind? _I mind_, Margaret? Why, you know that I would ride to the ends
of the earth with you and for you, even under ordinary circumstances.
Now that you're in trouble, of course I am ready. I don't know the
facts--though I guess some of them--and I don't understand all that
these things mean, but I know you have been wronged, outraged, placed
in a false position, humiliated by some trespass upon your privacy or
your personality, and I am here to stand by you till the wrong is
righted, the outrage undone, and the humiliation lifted from your
spirit. I'll do anything, everything--oh, Margaret, you don't know how
I love you or how eager I am to help you!"
Margaret looked at her with loving and teary eyes. Presently she said:
"I know it all, dear. And yet you Yankees are supposed to be cold and
calculating and hard. How utterly mistaken people are in their
judgments! But here are the horses. We'll have a spin, and then--"
She paused as if in doubt and apprehension. Presently she added:
"And then I must confront my father. He is the proper person and he
must set this thing right."
After a brisk gallop of half a mile, Margaret reined her horse down to
a walk, and entered into conversation with her friend.
"I feel, Millicent," she began, "that I ought to take you completely
into my confidence, and tell you all that this thing means. Your
loyalty and your affection deserve that. But there are reasons which I
cannot explain that forbid so full a confidence. I am going to tell you
all I can, and I want you to believe and know that whatever reserves I
practise are practised solely for your sake."
"But how can that be, Margaret? Of course you are to tell me as much or
as little as you please, but--"
"I see. I can't explain. I can only say that if I practise reserve at
all, it is only because of my tender affection for you. Can you believe
that blindly, without explanation? And will you?"
"I believe whatever you tell me, Margaret, and I do not wish to hear
anything that for any reason you do not wish me to hear."
"Thank you, dear," said the agitated girl as she again pressed her
horse to his paces; "God help me if I'm wrong!"
There was so strong a suggestion of tragedy in the girl's tone that
Millicent felt herself called upon to interfere with Margaret's
purpose, which she instinctively understood and which seemed to her
scarcely less than suicidal. She said nothing so long as the horses
were moving swiftly. When they resumed the walk, she turned to her
companion and asked:
"Do you believe in my friendship, Margaret, and do you trust its
loyalty so far as to forgive an impertinence in its behalf?"
"I certainly do, Millicent. I could never--"