The events which took place at Chesters' that adventurous night had a
remarkable effect on the young master of the place. After Ann Boyd had
left him he restlessly paced the floor of the long veranda. Blind fury
and unsatisfied passion held him in their clutch and drove him to and
fro like a caged and angry lion. The vials of his first wrath were
poured on the heads of his meddlesome guests, who had so unceremoniously
thrust themselves upon him at such an inopportune moment, and from them
his more poignant resentment was finally shifted to the woman whom for
years he, with the rest of the community, had contemptuously regarded as
the partner in his father's early indiscretions. That she--such a
character--should suddenly rise to remind him of his duty to his
manhood, and even enforce it under his own roof, was the most
humiliating happening of his whole life.
These hot reflections and secret plans for revenge finally died away and
were followed by a state of mind that, at its lowest ebb, amounted to a
racking despair he had never known. Something told him that Ann Boyd had
spoken grim truth when she had said that Virginia would never again fall
under his influence, and certainly no woman had ever before so
completely absorbed him. Up to this moment it had been chiefly her rare
beauty and sweetness of nature that had charmed him, but now he began to
realize the grandeur of her character and the depths to which her
troubles had stirred his sympathies. As he recalled, word by word, all
that had passed between them in regard to her nocturnal visit, he was
forced to acknowledge that it was only through her absorbing desire to
save her mother that she, abetted by her very purity of mind, had been
blindly led into danger. He flushed and shuddered under the lash of the
thought that he, himself, had constituted that danger.
He went to bed, but scarcely closed his eyes during the remainder of the
night, and the next morning was up before the cook had made the fires in
the kitchen range. He hardly knew what he would do, but he determined to
see Virginia at the earliest opportunity and make an honest and
respectful attempt to regain her confidence. He would give her the money
she so badly needed--give it to her without restrictions, and trust to
her gratitude to restore her faith in him. He spent all that morning,
after eating a hasty breakfast, on a near-by wooded hill-side, from
which elevation he had a fair view of Jane Hemingway's cottage. He saw
Virginia come from the house in search of the cow, and with his heart in
his mouth he was preparing to descend to meet her, when, to his
consternation, he saw that she had joined Ann Boyd at the barn-yard of
the latter, and then he saw the two go into Ann's house together. This
augured ill for him, his fears whispered, and he remained at his post
among the trees till the girl came out of the house and hastened
homeward. For the next two days he hung about Jane Hemingway's cottage
with no other thought in mind than seeing Virginia. Once from the
hill-side he saw her as she was returning from Wilson's store, and he
made all haste to descend, hoping to intercept her before she reached
home, but he was just a moment too late. She was on the road a hundred
yards ahead of him, and, seeing him, she quickened her step. He walked
faster, calling out to her appealingly to stop, but she did not pause or
look back again. Then he saw a wagon filled with men and women
approaching on the way to market, and, knowing that such unseemly haste
on his part and hers would excite comment, he paused at the roadside and
allowed her to pursue her way unmolested. The next day being Sunday, he
dressed himself with unusual care, keenly conscious, as he looked in the
mirror, that his visage presented a haggard, careworn aspect that was
anything but becoming. His eyes had the fixed, almost bloodshot stare of
an habitual drunkard in the last nervous stages of downward progress.
His usually pliant hair, as if surcharged with electricity, seemed to
defy comb and brush, and stood awry; his clothes hung awkwardly; his
quivering fingers refused to put the deft touch to his tie which had
been his pride. At the last moment he discovered that his boots had not
been blacked by the negro boy who waited on him every morning. He did
this himself very badly, and then started out to church, not riding, for
the reason that he hoped Virginia would be there, and that he might have
the excuse of being afoot to join her and walk homeward with her. But
she was not there, and he sat through Bazemore's long-winded discourse,
hardly conscious that the minister, flattered by his unwonted presence,
glanced at him proudly all through the service.
So it was that one thing and another happened to prevent his seeing
Virginia till one morning at Wilson's store he heard that Jane Hemingway
had, in some mysterious way, gotten the money she needed and had already
gone to Atlanta. He suffered a slight shock over the knowledge that
Virginia would now not need the funds he had been keeping for her, but
this was conquered by the thought that he could go straight to the
cottage, now that the girl's grim-faced guardian was away. So he
proceeded at once to do this. As he approached the gate, a thrill of
gratification passed over him, for he observed that Sam Hemingway was
out at the barn, some distance from the house. As he was entering the
gate and softly closing it after him, Virginia appeared in the doorway.
Their eyes met. He saw her turn pale and stand alert and undecided, her
head up like that of a young deer startled in a quiet forest. It flashed
upon him, to his satisfaction, that she would instinctively retreat into
the house, and that he could follow and there, unmolested even by a
chance passer-by, say all he wanted to say, and say it, too, in the old
fashion which had once so potently--if only temporarily--influenced her.
But with a flash of wisdom and precaution, for which he had not given
her credit, she seemed to realize the barriers beyond her and quickly
stepped out into the porch, where coldly and even sternly she waited for
him to speak.
"Virginia," he said, taking off his hat and humbly sweeping it towards
the ground, "I have been moving heaven and earth to get to see you
alone." He glanced furtively down the road, and then added: "Let's go
into the house. I've got something important to say to you."
Still staring straight at him, she moved forward till she leaned against
the railing of the porch. "I sha'n't do it," she said, firmly. "If I've
been silly once, that is no reason I'll be so always. There is nothing
you can say to me that can't be spoken here in the open sunlight."
Her words and tone struck him like a material missile well-aimed and
deliberately hurled. There was a dignity and firm finality in her
bearing which he felt could not be met with his old shallow suavity and
seductive flattery. From credulous childhood she seemed, in that brief
period, to have grown into wise maturity. If she had been beautiful in
his eyes before, she was now, in her frigid remoteness, in her thorough
detachment from their former intimacy, far more than that.
"Well, I meant no harm," he found himself articulating, almost in utter
bewilderment. "I only thought that somebody passing might--"
"Might see me with you?" she flashed out, with sudden anger. "What do I
care? I came out here just now and gave a tramp something to eat. If
they see you here, I suppose it won't be the first time a girl has been
seen talking to a man in front of her own home."
"I didn't mean to offend you," he stammered, at the end of his
resources; "but I've been utterly miserable, Virginia."
"Oh! is that so?" she sneered.
"Yes, I have. I feel awfully bad about what took place. I wanted to give
you that money for your mother, and that night when I finally got rid of
those meddlesome devils and--"
"In the name of Heaven, stop!" Virginia cried. "I simply will not stand
here and talk about that."
"But I have the money still," he said, feebly. "You kept your word in
coming for it, and I want to keep mine."
"I wouldn't touch a cent of it to save my life," she hurled at him. "If
my mother lay before my eyes dying in agony and your money would save
her, I wouldn't have it. I wouldn't take it to save my soul from
perdition."
"You are making it very hard for me," he said, desperately; and then,
with a frankness she could not have looked for even from his coarsest
side, he went on passionately: "I'm only a man, Virginia--a human being,
full of love, admiration, and--passion. Young as you are, I can't blame
you, and, still you _did_ encourage me. You know you did. I'm nearly
insane over it all. I want you, Virginia. These meetings with you, and
the things you have let me say to you, if you have said nothing
yourself, have lifted me to the very sky. I simply cannot bear up under
your present actions, knowing that that old woman has been talking
against me. I am willing to do anything on earth to set myself right. I
admire you more than I ever dreamed I could admire a woman, and my love
for you is like a torrent that nothing can dam. I must have you,
Virginia. The whole thing has gone too far. You ought to have thought of
this before you agreed to come to my house alone at night, when you knew
I was--when you knew I had every reason to expect that you--"
"Stop!" she cried, with white lips and eyes flashing. "You are a coward,
as well as a scoundrel! You are daring to threaten me. You have made me
hate myself. As for you, I despise you as I would a loathsome reptile. I
hate you! I detest you! I wake up in the night screaming in terror,
fancying that I'm again in that awful room, locked in like a slave, a
prisoner subject to your will--waiting for you to bid good-night to your
drunken friends--locked in by your hand to wait there in an agony of
death. Love you? I hate you! I hate the very low-browed emptiness of
your face. I hate my mother for the selfish fear of death which blinded
me to my own rights as a woman. Oh, God, I want to die and be done with
it!"
She suddenly covered her impassioned face with her hands and shook
convulsively from head to foot.
"Oh, Virginia, don't, don't make a mountain out of a molehill," he
began, with a leaning towards his old, seductive persuasiveness. "There
is nothing to feel so badly about. You know that Ann Boyd got there
before I--I--"
"That's all _you_ know about it," she said, uncovering eyes that flashed
like lightning. "When I went there, with no interest in you further than
a silly love of your honeyed words and _to get your money_, I did what
I'll never wipe from my memory."
"Virginia"--he tried to assume a light laugh--"this whole thing has
turned your head. You will feel differently about it later when your
mother comes back sound and well. Ann Boyd is not going to tell what
took place, and--"
"And you and I will have a secret of that nature between us!" she broke
in, furiously. "That's got to blacken my memory, and be always before
me! You are going to know _that_ of me when--when, yes, I'll say
it--when another man whose shoes you are unworthy to wipe believes me to
be as free from contact with evil as a new-born baby."
Chester drew his brows together in sudden suspicion.
"You are referring to Luke King!" he snapped out. "Look here, Virginia,
don't make this matter any more serious than it is. I will not have a
man like that held up to me as a paragon. I have heard that he used to
hang around you when you were little, before he went off and came back
so puffed up with his accomplishments, and I understand he has been to
see you recently, but I won't stand his meddling in my affairs."
"You needn't be afraid," Virginia said, with a bitterness he could not
fathom. "There is nothing between Luke King and myself--absolutely
nothing. You may rest sure that I'd never receive the attentions of a
man of his stamp after what has passed between me and a man of your--"
She paused.
He was now white with rage. His lower lip hung and twitched nervously.
"You are a little devil!" he cried. "You know you are driving me crazy.
But I will not be thrown over. Do you understand? I am not going to give
you up."
"I don't know how you will help yourself," she said, moving back towards
the door. "I certainly shall never, of my own free will, see you alone
again. What I've done, I've done, but I don't intend to have it thrown
into my face day after day."
"Look here, Virginia," he began, but she had walked erectly into the
house and abruptly closed the door. He stood undecided for a moment, and
then, crestfallen, he turned away.