Colonel Preston Chester and his son Langdon were at breakfast two days
after this. The dining-room of the old mansion was a long, narrow
chamber on the first floor, connected with the brick kitchen outside by
a wooden passage, roofed, latticed at both sides, and vine-grown. The
dining-room had several wide windows which opened on a level with the
floor of the side veranda. Strong coffee, hot biscuits, and birds
delicately browned were brought in by a turbaned black woman, who had
once been a slave in the family, and then she discreetly retired.
The old gentleman, white-haired, pink and clear of complexion, and
wearing a flowing mustache and an imperial, which he nervously clutched
and twisted in his soft fingers, was not in a good humor.
"Here I am ready to go to Savannah, as I promised, to pay a visit and
bring your mother back," he fumed, "and now find that you have taxed my
credit at the bank so heavily with your blasted idleness and poker debts
that they actually gave me a lecture about my financial condition. But
I've certainly headed you off, sir. I left positive orders that no check
of yours is to be honored during my absence."
"You did that, father? Why--"
"Of course I did it. I can't put up with your extravagance and damnable
habits, and I don't intend to."
"But, father, I've heard you say you cost your parents on an average of
four thousand dollars a year before you got married, and--"
"Don't begin that twaddle over again," roared the Colonel in his
coffee-cup. "What my father did for me in those easy times has nothing
to do with our condition in the present day. Besides, it was the custom
of the times to live high, while now it's coming to be a disgrace to be
idle or to have luxuries. We've got to work like the rest at something
or other. Here's that Luke King back from the West with enough money to
install his whole gang of white trash in one of the best places in the
entire river valley, and is conducting a paper in Atlanta that everybody
is talking about. Why, blast it all, I heard Governor Crawford say at
the Capital City Club the other day that if he--mind you, the governor
of the State--if he could get King's influence he would be re-elected
sure. Think of that, when I put a fortune into your education. You are
doing nothing for your name, while he's climbing like that on the poor
chances he had."
"Oh, he had education, such as he needed," Langdon replied, with a
retaliatory glance at his father. "Ann Boyd sent him to school, you
know."
The old man's eyes wavered; he drank from his cup silently, and then
carefully wiped his mustache on his napkin. It was not the first time
Langdon had dared to pronounce the woman's name in his presence, and it
looked as if the Colonel dreaded further allusions.
"Well, I've got to make the trip to Savannah," he said, still avoiding
his son's glance, and trying to keep up his attitude of cold reproof. He
was becoming convinced that Langdon was acquiring a most disagreeable
habit of justifying his own wild conduct by what he had heard of his
father's past, and this was decidedly irritating to the planter, who
found enough to reproach himself with in reflecting upon what he had
gone through without being held accountable for another career which
looked quite as bad in the bud and might bear even worse fruit.
"Yes, I think myself, all jokes aside, that you ought to go," Langdon
said. "I'll do the best I can to keep things straight here. The hunting
will be good, and I can manage to kill time. You'll want to take along
some spending money, father. Those old chums of yours down there will
draw you into a poker game sure."
"I'll cut that out, I reckon"--the Colonel smiled in spite of himself.
Langdon was such a copy of what he had been at the same age that it
seemed, under stress of certain memories, almost wrong to reprove him.
"No, I've sworn off from cards, and that's one thing I want you to let
alone. I don't want to hear of your having any more of those all-night
carouses here, leaving bullet-holes in your grandfather's portrait, as
you and your dissolute gang did the last time I was away. It's a wonder
to me you and those fellows didn't burn the house down."
At this juncture Langdon was glad to see the overseer of the plantation
on the veranda, and the Colonel went out to give him some instructions.
Two nights later, when he had seen his father off at the door and turned
back into the great, partly lighted house, Langdon set about thinking
how he could spend the evening and rid himself of the abiding sense of
loneliness that had beset him. He might stroll over to Wilson's store,
but the farmers he met there would be far from congenial, for he was not
popular with many of them, and unless he could meet, which was unlikely
at night, some drummer who would play poker freely with the funds of the
house he represented against Langdon's ready promises to pay, his walk
would be fruitless. No, he would not go to the store, he decided; and
still he was in no mood, at so early an hour, for the solitude of his
room or the antiquated library, from the shelves of which frowned the
puritanical books of his Presbyterian ancestors. Irresolute, he had
wandered to the front veranda again, and as he stood looking eastward he
espied, through the trees across the fields and meadows, a light. It was
Jane Hemingway's kitchen candle, and the young man's pulse beat more
rapidly as he gazed at it. He had occasionally seen Virginia outside the
house of evenings, and had stolen chats with her. Perhaps he might have
such luck again. In any case, nothing would be lost in trying, and the
walk would kill time. Besides, he was sure the girl was beginning to
like him; she now trusted him more, and seemed always willing to talk to
him. She believed he loved her; who could doubt it when he himself had
been surprised at his tenderness and flights of eloquence when inspired
by her rare beauty and sweetness? Sometimes he believed that his feeling
for the beautiful, trustful girl was a love that would endure, but when
he reflected on the difference in their stations in life he had grave
and unmanly doubts. As he walked along the road, the light of Jane's
candle, like the glow of a fire-fly, intermittently appearing and
disappearing ahead of him through the interstices of the trees and
foliage, the memory of the gossip about his father and Ann Boyd flashed
unpleasantly upon him. Was he, after all, following his parent's early
bent? Was family history repeating itself? But when the worst was said
about that affair, who had been seriously injured? Certainly not the
easy-going Colonel, surely not the sturdy pariah herself, who had,
somehow, turned her enforced isolation to such purpose that she was rich
in the world's goods and to all appearances cared not a rap for public
opinion.
----
That day had been the gloomiest in Virginia's life. Early in the morning
Jane had gone to Darley for the twentieth time to try to borrow the
money with which to defray her expenses to Atlanta. She had failed
again, and came home at dusk absolutely dejected.
"It's all up with me!" she groaned, as she sank heavily into a chair in
front of the cheerful fire Virginia had in readiness, and pushed her
worn shoes out to the flames. "I went from one old friend to another,
telling them my condition, but they seemed actually afraid of me,
treating me almost like a stranger. They all told tales of need,
although they seemed to have plenty of everything. Judge Crane met me in
Main Street and told me I could appeal to the county fund and get on the
pauper list, but without offering to help me; he said he knew I'd almost
rather die than fall so low. No, I'll not do that, Virginia. That's what
would tickle Ann Boyd and some others powerfully."
With lagging steps and a heart like lead, Virginia went about preparing
the simple meal. Her mother ate only hot buttered toast with boiled milk
on it to soften it for her toothless gums, but the fair cook scarcely
touched food at all. Her mother's grewsome affliction was in the
sensitive girl's mind all through each successive day, and even at night
her sleep was broken by intermittent dreams of this or that opportunity
to raise the coveted money. Sometimes it was the jovial face of a crude,
penniless neighbor who laughed carelessly as he handed her a cumbersome
roll of bank-bills; again she would find a great heap of gold glittering
in the sun, only to wake with her delicate fingers tightly clasped on
nothing at all--to wake that she might lie and listen to Jane's sighs
and moans as the old woman crouched over the ash-buried coals to light a
tallow-dip to look, for the thousandth time, at the angry threat of fate
upon her withered breast.
To-night, greatly wearied by her long ride and being on her feet so
long, Jane went to bed early, and, when she was alone, Virginia, with a
mental depression that had become almost physical pain, went out and sat
on the front door-step in the moonlight. That very day a plan of her own
in regard to the raising of the money had fallen to earth. She had heard
of the munificent gift Luke King had made to his mother, and she
determined that she would go to him, lay the case before him, and pledge
herself to toil for him in any capacity till he was repaid; but when she
had gone as far in the direction of the newly purchased farm as the
Hincock Spring, she met Mary Bruce in a new dress and hat, and
indirectly discovered that King had given up his last dollar of ready
money to secure the property for his people. No, she would not take her
own filial troubles to a young man who was so nobly battling with his
own. At any other moment she might have had time to admire King's
sacrifice, but her mind was too full of her own depressing problem to
give thought to that of another. Her sharp reproof to him for his
neglect of his mother during his absence in the West flitted through her
memory, and at a less troubled moment she would have seen how
ridiculously unjust her childish words must have sounded.
As she sat, weighted down with these things, she heard a step down the
road. It was slow and leisured, if not deliberately cautious. It was
accompanied by a persistent spark of fire which flitted always on a
straight line, in view and out, among the low bushes growing close to
the fence along the roadside. A moment later a handsome face in the
flare of a burning cigar appeared, smiling confidently at the gate. It
was Langdon Chester.
"Come out here," he said, in a soft, guarded voice. "I want to see you."
Virginia rose, listened to ascertain if her mother was still asleep, and
then, drawing her light shawl about her shoulders, she went to the
fence. He reached over the gate and took her hand and pressed it warmly.
"I was awfully afraid I'd not see you," he said. "I've failed so many
times. My father left to-day, and I am very lonely in that big house
with not a soul nearer than the negro-quarter."
"It must be lonely," Virginia said, trying to be pleasant and to throw
off her despondency.
"Your mother went to town to-day, didn't she?" Chester pursued, still
holding the hand which showed an indifferent inclination to quit his
clasp. "I think I saw her coming back. Did she get what she went for?"
"No, she failed utterly," Virginia sighed. "I don't know what to do.
She's suffering awfully--not in bodily pain, you know, for there is none
at all, but in the constant and morbid fear of death. It is an awful
thing to be face to face, day after day, night after night, with a
mother who is in such agony. I never dreamed such a fate could be in
store for any young girl. It is actually driving me crazy."
"Yes, yes," Langdon said, hesitatingly. "I want to tell you something. I
had a talk with my father about her just before he left. I've worried
over it, too, little girl. Folks may run me down, you know, but I've got
real feelings; and so, as a last resort, as I say, I told him about it.
He's hard up himself, as you may know, along with our heavy family
expenses, and interest on debts, and taxes, but I managed to put it in
such a way as to get him interested, and he's promised to let me have
the money provided he can make a certain deal down at Savannah. But he
says it must be kept absolutely quiet, you understand. If he sends me
this money, you must not speak of it to any one--the old man is very
peculiar."
Virginia's heart bounded, the hot blood of a dazzling new hope pulsed
madly in her veins. The tensity of her hand in his warm clasp relaxed;
her eyes, into which his own passionate ones were melting, held kindling
fires of gratitude and trust.
"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, "if he only _would_!"
"Well, there is a splendid chance of his doing it," Langdon said. "I was
awfully afraid to mention the subject to him, you know, for fear that he
would suspect my interest was wholly due to you, but it happens that he
has never seen us together, and so he thought it was simply my sympathy
for one of our neighbors. I had to do something, Virginia. I couldn't
stay idle when my beautiful little sweetheart was in such downright
trouble."
With a furtive glance towards the house and up and down the road,
Langdon drew her towards him. Just one instant she resisted, and then,
for the first time in her life, she allowed him to kiss her without open
protest. She remained thus close to him, permitting him to stroke her
soft, rounded cheeks gently. Never before were two persons impelled by
diverse forces so closely united.
"When do you--you think your father will write?" she asked, her voice
low, her soul almost shrieking in joy.
"That depends," said Chester. "You see, he may not get at the matter
_the very day_ he arrives in Savannah, for he is a great old codger to
let matters slide in the background while he is meeting old friends.
But, little girl, I don't intend to let it slip out of his mind. I'll
drop him a line and urge him to fix it up if possible. That, I think,
will bring him around. Your mother is sound asleep," he added,
seductively; "let's walk a little way down the road. I sha'n't keep you
long. I feel awfully happy with you all to myself."
She raised no objection as he unfastened the latch of the gate with
deft, noiseless fingers and, smiling playfully, drew her after him and
silently closed the opening.
"Now, this is more like it," he said. "Lovers should have the starry
skies above them and open fields about. Forget your mother a little
while, Virginia. It will all come out right, and you and I will be the
happiest people in the world. Great Heavens! how perfectly lovely you
are in the moonlight! You look like a statue of Venus waking to life."
They had reached the brook which rippled on brown stones across the road
at the foot of the slight rise on which the cottage stood, when they saw
some one approaching. It was Ann Boyd driving her cow home, her heavy
skirts pinned up half-way to her stout knees. With one sharp, steady
stare at them, Ann, without greeting of any kind, lowered her bare,
dew-damp head and trudged on.
"It's that miserly old hag, Ann Boyd," Langdon said, lightly. "I don't
like her any more than she does me. I reckon that old woman has
circulated more lies about me than all the rest of the country put
together."
At the first sight of Ann, Virginia had withdrawn her hand from
Langdon's arm and passionate clasp of fingers, but the action had not
escaped Ann's lynx eyes.
"It's coming, thank God, it's coming as fast as a dog can trot!" she
chuckled as she plodded along after her waddling cow. "Now, Jane
Hemingway, you'll have something else to bother about besides your
blasted cancer--something that will cut your pride as deep as that does
your selfish flesh. It won't fail to come, either. Don't I know the
Chester method? Huh, if I don't, it isn't known. With his head bent that
way, and holding her hand with hand and arm both at once, he might have
been his father over again. Huh, I felt like tearing his eyes out, just
now--the young beast! I felt like she was me, and the old brink was
yawning again right at my feet. Huh, I felt that way about Jane
Hemingway's daughter--that's the oddest thing of all! But she _is_
beautiful; she's the prettiest thing I ever saw in all my life. No
wonder he is after her; she's the greatest prize for a Chester in
Georgia. Jane's asleep right now, but she'll wake before long and she'll
wonder with all her wounded pride how God ever let her close her eyes.
Yes, my revenge is on the way. I see the light its blaze has cast on
ahead. It may be Old Nick's torch--what do I care? He can wave it, wave
it, wave it!"
She increased her step till she overtook her cow. Laying her hand on the
animal's back, she gently patted it. "Go on home to your calf, you
hussy," she laughed. "The young of even _your_ sort is safer, according
to the plan that guides the world, than Jane Hemingway's. She's felt so
safe, too, that she's made it her prime object in life to devil a person
for exactly what's coming under her own roof--_exactly to a gnat's
heel_!"