Roden was the younger son of an Englishman of title. He was also what
is sometimes graphically described as being _sans le sou_. It was his
intention to try stud-farming in Virginia. No better horseman than Roden
ever put boot in stirrup. He had, as an old pad-groom once remarked, “a
genus for osses.” It was a mania, a fad of the most pronounced type, with
him. No woman’s eye had ever possessed for him half the charm that did
the full orbs of his favorite mare, Bonnibel, as she gazed lustrously
upon him over her well-filled manger. No sheen of woman’s hair had ever
vied, in his opinion, with the satin flanks of Bonnibel. What was it to
love a woman? Was it half the zest, the delight, of feeling a good horse
between one’s knees, what time the welcome cry of “Gone away!” makes
glad delirium in one’s veins, while the music of the spotted darlings
thrills air and soul? Roden would bluntly and unpoetically have informed
you that you were a “duffer” had you attempted to argue the point. He had
never cared much for women, either collectively or as individuals. They
had perhaps played too small a part in his life. “Egad, sir!” his father
had cried to him one day in a fit of anger, “you’ll grow up with a pair
of legs like pot-hooks!”
Mr. Herrick informed him, on the second day after his arrival, that “the
beauty of the question were, he cert’n’y did have a mighty good foothold
on a hawse.”
It was on that day also that most of the horses arrived from New
York--Bonnibel among them. She was as beautiful a daughter as Norseman
ever sired. Deep of girth, clean of limb, broad of loin, with splendid
oblique shoulders, bossed with sinew and muscle which quivered with
restrained power beneath the silky, supple hide; a small compact head
with ample front, over which the sensitive leaf-like ears kept restless
guard; great limpid eyes, a crest like a rainbow, and quarters to have
lifted Leander clean over the Hellespont. In color she was a rich brown,
touched with tan on muzzle and flanks, while the slight floss of mane and
tail had also flecks of gold towards the ends, like those in the locks of
some dark-haired women. Like her great-granddam, Fleur-de-Lis, she stood
full sixteen hands, but was neither leggy nor light of bone.
“May I give her an apple?” said Virginia, as she turned her slow, dark
look from Bonnibel to her master. That sagacious damosel was already
reaching after the coveted golden ball in the girl’s hand, with cajoling
little movements of her soft nose. Having obtained permission, Miss
Herrick threw one arm over the mare’s graceful crest and presented her
with the apple--one of those renowned Albemarle pippins on which no duty
is demanded by England’s gracious queen.
Bonnibel ate it with evident participation in her sovereign’s good taste,
rubbing her handsome head against the girl’s arm with an almost cat-like
softness of caress.
“I don’ s’pose any one ever rides her but you?” said Virginia, with a
suggestion of wistfulness in her low voice.
“Well, no,” said Roden; “only the lad who gives her her gallops. She is
as kind as a kitten, but rather hot-headed and excitable. Why do you ask?
Would you like to ride her?”
“Yes, of co’se I would,” said the girl, calmly; “but you needn’t bother;
I know how Englishmen are ’bout their horses. Some time, if the boy as
rides her gets sick, if you’ll let me I’ll show you whether I kin ride or
no.”
“Your father says you ride like an Indian,” said Roden.
She moved her shoulders beneath her loose gray jacket with something very
like a shrug. “I don’t bleeve father ever saw a Injun in his life,” she
remarked. “You wait; I’ll show you.”
“I don’t doubt you have a good seat,” said Roden, pleasantly; he took
particular pains to speak pleasantly always to Herrick and his daughter.
“But the chief thing with a horse like Bonnibel is the hands. How are you
about that?”
“How do you mean?” she said, puzzled.
“Why, have you nice light hands? Are you gentle in handling your mount?”
“Oh,” she said, with the comprehensive indrawing of the breath which he
was beginning to recognize as one of her chief characteristics. “You mean
am I kind about yerkin’ ’em. Well, I’ll tell you: I never pulled any
rougher on a horse’s mouth in my life than I’d like anybody to pull on
mine.”
“I wish some of my friends would take that for their motto,” said Roden.
“I’m thinking I’ll let you ride Bonnibel some time, if _she_ will.” He
ended with a smile.
It was not more than a week afterwards that he had occasion to require
Virginia’s services. One of the other horses, a rank, irritable brute,
called Usurper, had jammed Roden’s shoulder quite severely against the
side of the box, and Bonnibel’s own especial groom had been sent back to
New York to bring on two new-comers but just arrived from England.
“I don’t think she’ll stand a riding-skirt,” he said, rather doubtfully,
as the beautiful beast was led out, reaching after the reins with her
supple neck.
“I ain’t goin’ to ride her with one,” said Virginia.
He then saw that Bonnibel was saddled with a man’s saddle, and the next
moment the girl was astride of the mare, the reins gathered skilfully
into her long brown fingers, head erect, and hands well down--lithe,
beautiful with the beauty of some sunburnt, mountain-bred boy.
As Bonnibel felt the strange touch upon her mouth she wheeled, rearing a
little, and the girl’s soft hat was shaken from her head. Roden wondered
if he had ever seen anything prettier than the sunlight on the young
Virginian’s sun-like curls, and the glossy hide of Bonnibel.
The mare was going quieter now, mincing along and picking up her feet
after a fashion much in vogue among equine coquettes. She was beginning
to like the feel of the light, firm hands, and to be sensible of the
masterly pressure of the strong young knees upon her mighty shoulders.
“By Jove! what a graceful seat the little witch has got!” Roden said
to himself with sufficient admiration. “And hands as steady as an old
stager!--Gad!” This exclamation, breaking forth at first from an impulse
of terror, ended in the relieved announcement, “That was fine; as I live
it was!”
Bonnibel had bolted, going straight for a snake-fence at the bottom of
the hill on which the stables were builded. To stop her was, he knew,
impossible; to turn her aside on the slippery turf, more unreliable than
usual with the spring rains, would have been culpably perilous. The fence
just here was fortunately not very high, but Bonnibel had one serious
fault. When excited, she had a way of going at her fences head down,
after a fashion calculated to break her own neck, and certainly that of
the person who rode her. He saw the girl sit well down in the saddle, run
the bit through the mare’s mouth, and bring her head up, showing her the
leap in front with a skill he could not himself have rivalled; and Roden
was no tyro. Bonnibel cleared the rails in gallant form, and Virginia
then took her for a canter around the field beyond.
She came up to Roden, ten minutes later, with flushed cheeks and her
great eyes brilliant.
“If she had a-hurt herself then,” she said, flinging herself
tempestuously to the ground, “I’d ’a’ got one o’ th’ grooms to kill me.”
She turned and showered the mare’s sleek crest with kisses, then tossed
the reins to Roden, and ran swiftly out of sight towards the house. He
thought her the strangest creature he had ever seen.
In the mean time the days wore on. Roden was more than pleased with his
Virginian venture. He had three excellent stables building, his gees were
all in first-rate condition, and his prospect for the provincial races
more than fair.
Virginia now rode Bonnibel every day. There sprung up between the two,
mare and woman, one of those mutual attachments as rare in reality as
they are common in fiction. Virginia could catch the nervous beast when
it meant danger to others to come within reach of her iron-shod heels.
Virginia seemed to murmur a strange language into her slender ears, as
certain in its effects as the whisper of the Roumanians to their horses.
For Virginia would Bonnibel become as a spring lamb for meekness, or one
of her own mountain-streams for impetuosity. It afforded Roden a strange
pleasure to watch the relations which existed between this beautiful
savage maiden and his beautiful savage mare.
On the other hand, he found the girl more than useful to him. She knew
all the owners of good horse-flesh in the surrounding counties. She
explored strange woods with him, while it came to be an understood thing
that every day she should go with him on his long tramps. She marched
sturdily at his side through brake and brier. She had no skirts to tear,
no under-draperies of lace to draggle. She was always good-tempered and
never tired.
It was one day about the middle of March that they stood together on a
windblown hill-side. A dark-blue sky gleamed overhead, set thickly with
clouds of a vivid, opaque white, like the figures on antique Etruscan
ware. The chain of distant hills clasped the tawny winter earth, as a
violet ribbon might clasp the dusky body of an Eastern slave. So like was
the pale horizon to a sunlit sea that the white gleam of a wood-dove’s
wing across it suggested instantly to them both the idea of a sail.
There was a sound, now far, now near, vague, intermittent, made by the
rushing of the wind through the dry grass in the fields. The forlorn
discord of the voices of spring lambs reached their ears, together with
the reassuring monotone of the ewes. A sudden commotion among the flock
caused Virginia to run suddenly forward, shading her eyes with her hand.
“It’s that narsty Erroll dorg again!” she said, wrathfully. “He’ll jess
run those sheep to death.”
“What dog?” said Roden, coming up beside her. “By Jove! it’s a German
sleuth-hound,” he added. “I’m afraid he’ll play the deuce with your
father’s sheep, Miss Virginia.”
“He will so, ef he ain’t stopped,” she said, gloomily. “I didn’t know the
Errolls had come back to Windemere. Plague gone him! Look there, now!”
Just here came the shrill sound of a dog-whistle, then a clear voice
calling, “Laurin! Laurin! Laurin, I say!”
They saw a girl on a chestnut horse, galloping towards the terrified,
bleating sheep. She gained upon the great hound, came up with him, swung
from her saddle, and caught him by the collar. After a moment or two she
began to walk towards them through the weeds and brambles which overgrew
the hill-side. As she came nearer they could see that she held a lamb
beneath one arm. A tall, slight girl in a dark habit, with dark curls
escaping about her forehead from her very correct pot hat. The hound
followed meekly. “I am so very, very sorry,” she called out, while yet
some distance off. “I am afraid my dog has hurt this poor little thing.”
As she came closer Roden saw that there was blood on the lamb, and on the
dog’s dripping jaws.
“Please look at it,” the girl said, wofully. “I’m afraid nothing will
ever break him. He will have to be sent away. They are your father’s
sheep, aren’t they, Miss Herrick--you are Miss Herrick?”
Virginia lifted her full look to the stranger’s face. “Yes, that’s my
name,” she answered. “Why don’t you muzzle him, or keep him chained?
He’ll get shot some day.”
The girl looked sadly down at her huge pet. “I’m afraid he will,” she
said, gently. “I wish he wouldn’t do it. I can’t feel the same to him.
Ah, you beast!”--this last to the recreant Laurin, in a tone of wrath. In
the mean time Roden had finished his examination of the lamb.
“I don’t think it’s serious,” he said, kindly; “but it will have to be
looked after a bit. Miss Herrick here will doctor it successfully, I’ve
no doubt.”
“Oh, couldn’t I have it?” said the girl, eagerly. “I’m such a good hand
at curing things. Do let me have it, Miss Herrick.”
“Take it if you want it,” said Virginia.
“But cannot you have it sent?” said Roden, as the girl held out her
hand for the lamb. “I am afraid you will get blood all over your habit,
Miss--” He had not meant to fish for her name, and stopped abruptly.
She looked at him with a soft smiling of lips and eyes. “My name is
Erroll--Mary Erroll,” she said. “And thank you, I would rather take it.
Laurin will follow me now. _Ah_, you beast!”
“You will have to put it down until you mount,” said Roden, laughing a
little in spite of himself, as the old lines about Mary and her little
lamb crossed his mind.
“Oh no, I wouldn’t put it down,” she said, hastily. “Miss Herrick will
hold it for me, won’t you?--and if you would be so kind as to mount me,
Mr. Roden.”
“You know my name?” said Roden, as he took the slight foot, arched like
Bonnibel’s crest, into his hand.
“Why, who in the neighborhood does not?” she said, settling herself in
the saddle. “Not to know you would be to argue one’s self very much
unknown in this neighborhood. Now give me the lamb. Thank you so much.
Come, Laurin. Good-by, Miss Herrick.” She placed the lamb carefully
against her side, whistled to the hound, and started off at a round trot.
Her figure, in its trim Quorn-cloth habit, came into bold relief against
the vivid sky. He watched admiringly the long supple waist as it swayed
to the motion of the horse, the bold graceful sweep of the shoulders,
and high carriage of the small head. He had read so much concerning the
gathers and gilt braid of the Virginian horsewoman that it struck him
as something entirely strange, the fact that Miss Mary Erroll should
wear a neat, well-cut habit, and a chimney-pot hat. He also recalled
that her saddle was all that it should be, and that instead of the
gold-and-ivory-handled cutting whip which he had been led to expect, she
carried a light but sturdy crop.
“By Jove! how she rides!” he said to himself.
“Don’t I ride as well?” came the soft monotone of Virginia at his ear.
He answered her, still with his eyes on the vanishing figure of the girl
in the Quorn-cloth habit. “You ride like an Arab,” he said. “She rides
like--like--like an Englishwoman.”
“You don’t think I ride as well,” said Virginia, in an indescribable
voice, turning away. She was filled with an unreasoning, unchristian,
wholly uncivilized desire to mount Bonnibel, overtake, and spatter
Miss Mary Erroll with as much mud as possible. Suddenly she turned and
came back to Roden. “I--I--I s’pose you think a gyrl oughtn’ to ride
straddle?” she said, with an unusual hint of timidity in her rich tones.
“Oh, I don’t know that there’s any harm in it,” he said, carelessly.
Again she stood away from him. A feeling of utterly unreasonable anger
and rebellion was swelling in her heart and straining her throat. Was it
against Miss Mary Erroll or against Roden? She could not herself have
told. One fact was entirely apparent to her: he did not deem what she did
or did not do things worthy his consideration.
“I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel!” she said, passionately, between her
locked teeth, as she went blindly on through the furze and briers. “I
bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel--straddle or no straddle!”
It was not until three days later that she found out from her father the
fact of Roden’s having been to call (nominally) upon the lamb of Miss
Mary Erroll.
“The beauty of the question air,” ended that modern Solomon, as he filled
his white clay pipe--“The beauty of the question air, that thar gyrl
cert’n’y is goin’ to lead that young fellar a darnce. They say she’s got
it down ter a fine p’int.”
“What?” said Virginia, curtly.
“Why, coquettin’--hyah! hyah! _That’s_ the darnce she’ll lead _him_. ’N’
they sez, moresomever, as how th’ English fellars takes to her like the
partridges ter th’ woods--plague ’em!--’count o’ her w’arin’ boots like
a man, an’ skirts at harf-marst when she goes out on hawseback. Lawd! I
cert’n’y do ’spise ter see a woman hitched onter th’ side uv er hawse
like a pecker-wood a-stickin’ ter rer tree-trunk!”
Virginia came and leaned on the back of his chair, picking some bits of
straw from his many-hued waistcoat. “You don’t think it’s any harm for a
girl to ride straddle, do you, father?” she said, slowly.
“Harm!” said old Herrick, twisting about in his chair to look up at
her--“_harm!_” He set his pipe firmly between his teeth, and pushed out
his underlip with an expression of entire scorn. “Is there any harm in
a hoppergrass hoppin’?” he questioned. “G’long! don’ talk none o’ yo’
nonsense ter me!”
This, however, did not entirely satisfy her on the question in point.
Roden was not a little astonished to meet her, as she returned from
giving Bonnibel her morning gallop, in a very fair imitation of Miss Mary
Erroll’s habit, and an old pot hat that had evidently belonged to some
one of the previous Englishmen.
“Why, what a swell you are!” he said, pleasantly, joining her. “But how
does Bonnibel like the change?”
“It don’t make any diff’r’nce how she likes it,” said Miss Herrick,
curtly, adding hastily, with a swift change of manner, “She r’ared once
or twice at first, but that’s all.” Then she stopped suddenly, and
stepped around in front of him. “How--how does it look--really?” she
said, with a shamefaced and comprehensive downward glance at her skirt.
“It looks awfully well,” Roden assured her--“awfully well. How tall and
strong you are, Miss Virginia!”
“I’ve got a right good mustle,” she said, showing her handsome teeth in
one of her rare and vivid smiles. “Mornin’: I’ve got a heap to do.”
Roden watched her as she stalked away with her splendid swinging stride,
thinking vaguely of her beauty and its absolute waste in her position.
“She’ll marry some ‘po’ white’ who talks as much like a nigger as her own
father,” he thought, half regretfully; “have a lot of children, and end
by smoking a pipe--ugh!” He then went to call, for the third time that
week, upon Mary Erroll. The visit ended by their going for a ride, and
just as they neared the gates of Caryston a smart shower came pelting
down the eastern slope of Peter’s Mountain.
“Do come in and wait until this is over,” he said, urgently, bending from
his horse to open the long gray gate, which was now proudly supported on
strong hinges. “Miss Herrick will chaperon us.”
“Why, of course I’ll come,” she said, amazed, in her Southern freedom,
that he should pause to question the propriety of her so doing. At one
o’clock in the day, and with her little darky henchman mounting guard,
what possible objection could any one find? She ran up the stone steps
with a pretty clattering of her boots, and Roden threw wide the doors
of the great hall. She was delighted with everything; got on a chair to
examine the great moose-head; struck some chords on an old harp that she
discovered in a dark corner; made friends with the collie and one of the
Persian cats, who came purring up from the recess of a distant window;
looked over his collection of curious weapons; and on finding that he
had spent some years of his life in Mexico, questioned him about his
experiences there with a pretty assumption of almost motherly interest.
“Can’t you say some--some Mexican?” she said. “I should so like to hear
it.”
“I love you, most beautiful of maidens,” said Roden, lazily, in the
Mexican patois.
“What does that mean? It sounds enchanting.”
“It means enchantment.”
She leaned suddenly forward and looked at him with her bright, soft,
childishly chaste eyes. “Mr. Roden,” she said, sweetly, “if I were not
very sure you were only laughing, I should accuse you of trying to
ensnare my simple country soul with a spurious sentimentality.”
Roden roused himself from his lounging position in one of the big hall
chairs with a jerk. An expression half of amusement, half of guilt,
crossed his handsome sunburnt face. “You are very unjust,” he said. “I am
certainly not laughing, and I couldn’t be sentimental if I tried.”
“Oh! oh!” she said, with her pretty Southern accent. “How very, how
rudely unflattering!”
“I meant I would not have to try to be so--with you,” said Roden,
dexterously mendacious.
“How very, how rudely untruthful!”
They were here told by Popocatepetl that “lunch dun rade-y.”
Roden’s meals were generally presided over by Virginia, and she came
forward to meet him now with a little silver dish of apples in one hand,
evidently utterly ignorant of the presence of Mary Erroll. She stopped
short, half-way across the room. A shadow as definite and sombre as the
shadow from a brilliant cloud upon a laughing grass-field in May settled
over her face.
“I’ll have to fix another place,” she said, curtly, and turned her back
upon them in order to do so.
Miss Erroll expressed herself charmed with her luncheon. She ate bread
and honey with all the gusto of the queen of nursery lore, taking off her
riding-gloves and showing long, flower-like hands, that were reflected as
whitely in the polished mahogany of the round table as the pale primroses
which adorned its centre.
Virginia moved about noiselessly. All at once she stopped beside Roden,
and put one hand heavily on the back of his chair. He looked up in some
surprise. Her eyes were flashing under her bent brows, like the “brush
fires” of her native State under a night horizon.
“I’ll wait on _you_,” she said, in a smothered voice--“I say I’ll wait on
_you_, _but I won’t wait on her_.” She dashed down his napkin, which she
had lifted from the floor, and strode with her swift, noiseless movements
to the door.
“Virginia!” said Roden, aghast--“Virginia!”
“I don’t care!” cried the girl, passionately, swinging open the heavy
door--“I don’t care! I ain’t anybody’s nigger!”
She rushed out tempestuously, dragging from one or two rings the heavy
portière, which with a native incongruity hung before the door itself.
“How vulgarity will crop out!” said Roden, rising to shut the door. “That
poor little girl has behaved so well until to-day!”
That evening, as he sat writing in a little room opening into the
dining-room, Virginia entered, and came and stood beside him. He did not
look up. She had annoyed him a good deal, and he was not prepared to
yield the forgiveness for which he felt she had come to plead. She stood
there some moments quite silent, then reached over his shoulder and
dropped something on the table before him.
“You said th’ other day you wanted one for the silver. There ’tis,” she
said. She turned before he could speak, and left the room.
Lifting the crimson mass from the table, he saw that it was an
old-fashioned purse of netted silk, secured by little steel rings. He
recalled a speech which he had made a day or two ago concerning the
inconvenience of modern purses as regarded silver currency. He started up
and opened the door, calling the girl by name two or three times. No one
answered, and he went down the hall and into Herrick’s room.
The overseer was there, whittling something by the light of a smoking
kerosene lamp. Aunt Tishy was there, grumbling to herself about “folks
cuttin’ trash all over de flo’ fur her ter break her pore ole back over.”
The raccoon was very much there, as he seemed to be having a fit just as
Roden entered. But there was no Virginia. Her spinning-wheel stood idle
in its corner; her heavy boots were drying in front of the wood fire;
there was a book, face down, upon the deal table--a book which she must
have been reading, as no one else at Caryston besides Roden ever glanced
between the covers of one.
He lifted it, expecting to find some Dora-Thornesque romance of high
life. It was a condensed copy of “Youatt on the Horse,” and beneath it
was a racing calendar for ’79. Alas! alas! even this discovery told
nothing else to this otherwise discerning young man. He smiled as he put
down the volumes, thinking that the little Virginian was bent on making
him acknowledge her a superior horsewoman in all respects.
He then inquired of Herrick as to the whereabouts of Virginia. Neither
the girl’s father nor Aunt Tishy could tell him.
“If you’ll lend me a pencil I’ll just leave a note for her,” he said,
feeling instinctively that she would not care to have a message in
regard to her little gift left with her father or the old negress.
He scribbled a few words on one of the fly-leaves of the racing calendar,
tore it out, folded it securely, and handed it to Herrick.
“Please give that to your daughter when she comes back,” he said.
“Good-night,” and left the room.
Old Herrick waited until he heard the distant clang of the dining-room
door; then he settled his spectacles very carefully upon his large nose,
pushed out his underlip, and unfolding the little note, thrust it almost
into the flame of the lamp while reading it.
“‘DEAR MISS FAGINIA’ (Humph!),--Many thanks fur yo’ beeyeutiful
purse. I will alluz keep hit. Very truly yours,
“‘J. RODEN.’”
“Humph!” ejaculated Herrick again--“humph!”
He set one long, knotty hand back down against his side, and turned the
bit of paper about scornfully between the thumb and forefinger of his
other hand, regarding it the while over his spectacles. “Humph!” he said
for the fourth time.