Roden was not able to leave the house for many days. During this time
Virginia waited upon him, sang to him, brought into service her every
power of amusement.
She coaxed her perverse “mammy” to teach her new darky songs by reading
endless chapters in the Bible. All her spare time was spent in setting
them to appropriate accompaniments. She would sit and recount absurd
anecdotes to him by the hour in her slow, sweet monotone, as unsuggestive
of anything humorous as can well be imagined. Sometimes she fetched her
spinning-wheel and spun as she talked. He felt vexed with himself that
he could not sketch her as she sat plying the dull blue thread with
her nimble fingers. Her homespun dress dropped naturally into those
broad, generous folds beloved of sculptors. She had a clear, placid
profile, which always found shadows sufficiently willing to serve as
background for its pale beauty. Her head was noble in its contours, and
as graceful in its startled, listening movements as that of a stag.
Roden did make several attempts to fix her upon paper, but ended always
with a contemptuous exclamation and a hurried, clever drawing of a
steeple-chase, or Bonnibel, or some other equally horsy subject.
One day he happened to mention that as a lad he had played tolerably well
on the violin. Virginia rose at once, saying that she thought there was
one in the attic.
She took a candle, and went up the little corkscrew staircase that led
into the roof of the house--a dark, dusty, cavernous place, smelling of
mould and old books. There were many hair-covered trunks studded with
brass nails, heaps of old saddles and harness, fire-dogs, brass and
iron, a disused loom.
The corners of the room were veiled in a thick and rustling obscurity,
suggestive of parchment and rats. Onions and red peppers adorned the
ceiling.
Virginia set down the candle on one of the moth-eaten trunks, and lifted
the lid of a second.
A fine cloud of little white particles flew out into her face, as
impalpable, as easy of escape, as impossible to recapture, as the
contents of Pandora’s box. The girl thrust in her long brown arm, and
drew out a bunch of white ostrich feathers.
They were shedding their delicate moth-nibbled filaments like snow upon
her dark gown and the bare floor of the attic. She drew them caressingly
through her fingers as though in pity; it seemed to her sad that things
so charming should have so common a fate. She then stooped, and after a
little searching drew out the violin.
She was about to shut down the lid of the trunk when something caught her
eye--a bunch of cherry-colored ribbon, which burst from beneath a mass of
moth-eaten gray fur, like a sudden flame from covering ashes.
She reached down and pulled it out; but lo! it was not only a knot of
ribbons; something more followed--a sleeve of heavy antique silk, stiffly
brocaded in red and gold flowers on a cream-hued ground. Then came more
ribbons, a mass of fine lace, a scarlet petticoat. The girl put down the
violin, held up this relic of the Old Dominion, and shook it out somewhat
contemptuously. A little parcel fell from the musty skirt--a pair of
slippers with high red heels and little red rosettes. As she looked, a
sudden change came over the girl’s face, a sudden flash of resolve, a
quick suffusion of bright color. She seized the little shoes, bundled
them again into the dress, and drew her own homespun skirt over the
whole. Then, tucking the violin under her arm and lifting the candle, she
ran at a perilously hurried pace down the contorted stair-way and into
her own room.
She closed and locked the door, laid the dress and violin on the bed,
and still standing up, pulled and tugged at one of her heavy shoes until
it came off in her hand, discovering one of her shapely feet in its blue
yarn stocking. But, alas! Virginia present could not get her foot into
the slipper of Virginia past. She sat down on the edge of the bed in
mortified vanquishment, and turned the pretty, absurd thing about in her
strong hand. Then once more she tried to put it on. She found that by
squeezing her toes into the toe of the slipper she could manage to walk,
as there was no restraint at the back of the foot. She then lifted and
put on the dress. It would not meet by several inches about her splendid
young bosom, and the waist gaped at her derisively from the little
mahogany-framed mirror. She was, however, determined. She hid these
defects as best she might, by snipping away bunches of the cherry-colored
ribbon here and there, and pinning them in reckless profusion above the
gap in the bodice. My lady of the time of George the Third must have
been shorter than this damsel of the first year of President Cleveland’s
administration. The stiff, flowered skirts stopped short at least three
inches above her instep. Virginia had fortunately very commendable
ankles, and peeping thus from the mass of mould-stained red and yellow
frillings, they looked as sleek and trim as the neck of a bluebird
peeping from autumnal foliage.
She tilted the little glass forward by means of one of her discarded
shoes thrust behind it, and darted a shamefaced glance at her transformed
self. Bravo! bravo! Miss Herrick! You are worthy of that famous name. So
hath Abbey oft drawn Julia, plenteous in her shining skirts and tresses,
beribboned, beautiful. Ah! what eyes! what lips! what an exquisite
expression, half of self-conceit, half of timid uncertainty! What a
throat for a dove to envy, supporting the face kissed brown by the sun,
like an orchid whose stem is fairer than its flower! Snood up that banner
of golden hair, my good Virginia; twist it about with the string of
little shells you yourself gathered last summer; make yourself as lovely
as possible, my little fawn, for the sacrifice. The gods have demanded
it from time immemorial--a band of fair maidens every year to appease
the Minotaur Despair. Good-by, Virginia; good-by; good-by. Never again
will that dim green glass reflect such looks from you. Do not forget the
violin. Was it not for him that you went to fetch it? Is it not for him
that you have forced your strong young body into the curveless dress of
1761? Is it not all for him? And even unto the end will it not be for
him?
Roden, conscious only of her presence by the unusual rustling of her
skirts, looked up questioningly. When he saw her, who she was, he started
to his feet, his lips parting in an expression of utter amaze. It was as
though one of the bepowdered Caryston dames had stepped from her massive
gilt frame in the hall without and confronted him. He could say nothing
but her name, in varied tones of astonishment, inquiry, and approval.
She stood before him on her high heels as uncertain as a child learning
to walk, smoothing out the much-creased folds of her gay attire with
restless, nervous fingers, the stringless violin in her other hand.
“I--I--I look a awful fool--don’t I?” she said, laughing not very
merrily. “I--feel ’s ’f I’d sorter got roots to my feet in these shoes.”
She thrust out one foot, in its incongruity of yarn stocking and Louis
Quinze slipper, tilted it to one side, and regarded it in apparent
absorption.
Roden was only thinking what a charming picture she made tricked out in
all this red and gold of other days. She stood there before him like a
beautiful present, clad in the garments of a past as beautiful. He felt
a strange sensation of having stepped back into the time of Henry Esmond
and the Virginians. He glanced down at his wrists, half expecting to see
lace ruffles spring to adorn them, under the magic of the hour.
“You pretty child!” he said at last, “what on earth made you think of
getting yourself up in this style?” But he knew that she was more than
pretty. He would have liked to tell her so, only he was always very
careful what he said to this little Virginian; and florid compliments,
though perfectly adapted to the period of her costume, would smack of the
familiar when considered under the lights of the nineteenth century.
He wondered at the radiance in her suddenly lifted face. How could he
know that at last the so often asked question nearest to her heart was
answered, and answered by him? He thought her pretty!
“I brought you the violin,” she said, turning away with an effort. “I
reckon I’d better go ’n’ take off these things. They cert’n’y do look
foolish--don’t they?”
“No, don’t,” said Roden. “You ought to humor an invalid, you know. You
are so awfully nice to look at in that queer old gown.”
Dimples that he had never before seen, just born of joy, stole in and
out about the corners of the girl’s red lips. She was more even than
beautiful; she was enchanting. How ever had she come by all those
old-time airs and movements? Had she perchance imbibed the spirit of the
past with the air of the old house where she had always lived? Did some
of those old _grandes dames_ lean from the walls at night to teach her
that subtle, upward carriage of the head?
He forgot all about the violin, and stood looking at her in wondering
absorption.
“I--I’ve got a new song for you,” she said, presently, in a low voice.
She seated herself sidewise at the piano, as though diffident of the
furbelows that composed the back of her novel attire, striking at the
same time noiseless chords with her left hand.
“You said you liked Scotch songs. I found this one in a old book that
b’longed to my mother. She was Scotch. Mus’ I sing it?”
“Please do,” said Roden.
Thus encouraged, she sang to him in the following words:
“I hae a curl, a bricht brown curl,
A bonny, bonny curl o’ hair,
An’ close to my heart it nestles warm,
But its brithers dinna ken it’s there.
“I stole my curl, my silk-saft curl,
My bonny, bonny curl o’ hair,
An’ a’ the nicht it sleeps upon my heart,
But its master doesna ken it’s there.
“O bricht, bricht curl! O luvely, luvely curl!
O curl o’ my bonny, bonny dear!
I wad that again ye waur shinin’ on his head,
But I wad that his head waur here!”
Now although Roden had often before heard her sing, he was conscious of
a sound in her voice to-night which was utterly new to him--a sound so
marvellous, so altogether exquisite, so melting sweet, that he was almost
afraid the beating of his heart would prevent some of its beauty from
reaching him. There was in it a divine fulness which he had never before
heard in a human voice. It was like the sea on summer nights. It was like
the distant wind in many leaves. It was like the eternal complaint of the
voices of the fields on April noons. It filled him with a sense of peace
and unrest at the same time. It thrilled him and possessed him utterly.
Blind that he was, however, no faintest inkling of what had produced this
divine result came to his mind. He was touched, but touched only as he
would have been by any other voice as perfect.
“My dear little girl,” he said, bending over and kissing her smooth brow
with one of his rash impulses, “we must see what can be done with that
voice. I am thinking that you will add to the honor of your name some
day, Miss Herrick.”
She started to her feet. It was as though her very heart’s blood had
risen to meet his lips. A delicate, vivid rose-color dyed all her brow
and temples. “How do you mean?--how do you mean?” she said, in a rough,
shaken whisper, holding both hands against her heart as though afraid it
would leap from her body.
“Never mind what I mean just now,” he said, with the smile of a wiseacre;
“and, Virginia, since you have sung that song so charmingly, I am sure
that you will be glad for me about something which I am going to tell
you.”
Glad? Was she not always glad for anything which gave him joy? Had she
not read her eyes almost sightless, night after night, in mastering that
strange horse lore which would enable her to help him in his enterprises?
She came nearer, in bright expectancy; lifted her face to meet his looks
and words.
“Yes,” she said; “please tell me. I know I’ll be glad--I cert’n’y will.”
“I am engaged to be married,” he told her. “I am engaged to be married
to Miss Mary Erroll, and--I want you to be the first to congratulate me,
Virginia.”
He could recall nothing afterwards but the swift withdrawing of her hands
from his. He could not even remember how she had left the room. She
seemed to vanish as though in reality she had been but a wraith summoned
up by fancy from days long fled.
But Virginia? Ah, Virginia! Out, out, out into the night she sped on
supple, unshod feet. She had torn off those queer little parodies of
shoes at the hall door, and held them now mechanically to her breast as
she ran.
The air, redolent with peach-blossoms and hyacinths just born, rushed to
meet her from the dark jaws of the east, as though some leviathan should
breathe with a sweet breath upon the night May earth. There was no moon
in the lustrous blue-gray of the heavens, but the stars seemed trying to
atone for her absence by their multitudinous shining.
As Virginia dashed on past a clump of box-bushes, her skirts brushing the
stiff leaves set them rattling, and woke the nested birds to querulous
complaints. Her feet were wet with the night grasses, and bruised with
the pebbles of the carriage-drive. She reached the lawn gate, opened it,
and rushed through. On, on, across a field of grass, close-cropped by
the not fastidious sheep, who, warmly folded on a neighboring hill-side,
still nibbled drowsily between their slumbers such luscious blades as
were within their reach.
She came at last to a little enclosure set about with evergreens and
almost knee-deep in withered grass. Her eyes, grown accustomed to the
wan light, could make out two little hillocks, as it were, formed within
by heaped-up earth, and clasped by the tangled herbage. Underneath their
sometime verdant rises slept the first twain who in Virginia bore the
name of Caryston. Side by side, so had they lain, in death together
as in life they had been. Virginia knew well this their self-chosen
resting-place. Here on summer afternoons would she come to knit. Here she
always brought the first spring flowers, and here she had always placed
boughs of white and purple lilacs every day while they lasted. She had
dreamed and wondered and enjoyed here, and here she came to suffer, as
from some subtle instinct a man turns to his childhood’s home to die.
Just outside the wicket gate the daffodils were all in plenteous blossom,
as though day, for once relenting, had dropped an armful of gold into
the lap of night. On a locust-tree near by a mocking-bird trilled and
warbled. She cast herself face down upon one of the graves, clasping
it about with her bare arms, as one clasps a proven friend in time of
trouble. She had spoken no word as yet. She suffered as keenly, as
dumbly, as any creature, wild or tame, to whom there is no soul. But all
at once a cry broke from her, then over and over again, “O my God! O my
God! O my God!”
The sobbing piteousness of this desolate prayer as it tore its way from
the depths of her wild heart--who shall write of it? Not I--not I--even
if I could. She was a savage; she suffered like a savage. Will any say
there was no justice in it? It is something, is it not, to be capable of
passion such as that? She suffered beyond most people, men and women, it
is true; but was she not in that much blessed above them?
She lay there until the dawn looked whitely above the eastern hills upon
the waking earth. In her quaint old dress one might have thought her the
tortured ghost of the woman who had so long slept in peace below the
grass-hidden mound. She staggered, when at last she rose to her feet,
and fell for a moment upon her knees. There was a sense of vagueness
that possessed her. She did not seem to care now, somehow. She wondered
if they would be married at the little church in the neighborhood, and
if they would let her come. She thought _he_ would. She thought that she
would not mind much seeing it. Of course they would live here. She would
see them together every day. Well, what of that? She was surprised in a
dull way that it did not affect her more. Then she remembered that she
had not made any bread for him, such as he liked, the night before.
Well, it was a pity; but it was too late; it wouldn’t have time to rise
now. She must think of something else. Morning came on apace, clad all
in translucent beryl-colored robes, and brow-bound with gold and with
scarlet.
The birds were waking and chattering, as women chatter over their morning
toilets. Some more hyacinths had bloomed in the night, and there was a
great clump of iris, that she had not noticed the day before, on the
hill-top. A cardinal-bird, sweeping downward like a flame fallen from
some celestial fire, made his morning bath in the hollow of a tulip-tree
leaf--a relic of vanished winter filled by kindly spring with fragrant
rain.
As she neared the lawn gate she saw some one leaning over it. A swart,
red-kerchiefed figure, clad in a dress whose stripes of blue and white
circled her large body as its hoops a barrel. It was Aunt Tishy. She
pushed upon the gate, jamming her stout proportions uncomfortably in her
haste to reach the girl.
“Gord! Miss Faginia, whar _is_ you ben? An’ gret day in de mawnin! what
dat you got on, anyhow? Gord! Gord! ef de chile ain’ jes ez wet ’s ’f
she’d ben caught in de Red Sea wid Phario. Honey, whar _is_ you ben, in
the name o’ Gord? Tell yo’ mammy. Is you been see a harnt? What de matter
wid my baby? Gord! Gord! dem eyes sutney _is_ ben look on suppn dradeful.
Po’ lamb! po’ lamb! Look at dem little foots, an’ de stockin’s all war
offen ’em same as de rats dun neaw ’em. Ain’ yo’ gwine tell yo’ mammy, my
lady-bug? Come ’long so. Mammy kin ’mos’ kyar yo’ ter de house.”
Virginia submitted listlessly to the old black’s blandishments. She was
not sorry to have Aunt Tishy’s massive arm about her. Her feet ached and
smarted; there was a sharp pain in her side when she drew her breath, and
that dreadful feeling of being a thing just born, a creature who had no
past, still held her in its numbing grasp.
Aunt Tishy took her into the big kitchen--an out-house consisting of
one room, and a fireplace in which one might have roasted a whole ox.
It was lined on two sides with great smoke-darkened pine presses. The
other walls and the ceiling had once been white, but were now stained the
color of a half-seasoned meerschaum pipe. The two windows had casements
with diamond-shaped panes of dingy glass set in lead. Enormous deal
tables stood here and there. From the surrounding gloom came the glimmer
of brightly polished tin, as brilliant in its effect as the glint of a
negro’s teeth from the dusk of his face.
[Illustration: “I GWINE TAKE DAT DAR OUTLANDISH THING OFFEN YO’, HONEY.”]
Aunt Tishy, having seated her nursling in an old wooden rocking-chair,
dragged a basket of chips and shavings from the capacious ingle-nook, and
set about making the fire. She first scooped away the yet warm ashes of
yesterday with her shapely yellow-palmed hands. Negroes generally have
well-formed hands and remarkably pretty finger-nails. Then she began
laying a little foundation of shavings and lightwood splinters; here and
there she stuck a broad locust-chip. When these preparations were all
completed she went out to “fotch a light,” she said, assuring Virginia of
her speedy return.
In a few moments she was back, carrying a handful of live coals in her
naked palm, having first sprinkled a few ashes over it for protection.
With these she kindled the fire, which soon made a busy clamor in the
hollow throat of the old chimney.
Once more she disappeared, returning with a bundle of things in her arms:
a big shawl, Virginia’s shoes and stockings, and her homespun dress.
“I gwine take dat dar outlandish thing offen yo’, honey,” she announced,
seating herself on the pine floor in front of the girl, and beginning
to draw off her torn stockings. “I gwine mek yo’ put on yo’ own frawk
’fo’ dey sees yo’ in d’ house. Marse Gawge he ain’ knowin’ nuttin’ ’bout
yo’ bein’ out all night. I ’mos’ skeered to deaf ’bout yo’, but I ain’
seh nuttin’ to _naw_body, ’case I didn’t think my honey gwine g’way fur
good.” She took the little cold bare feet into her cushiony palms and
rubbed them softly. Every now and then she bent down her gayly turbaned
head and blew with warm breath upon them after the negro fashion of
ministering to any frozen thing, from a bit of bread to a young “squawb.”
“Yo’ barf’s all rade-y in de house,” Aunt Tishy continued, as she knelt
up and began unfastening the ribbons from the front of the old-time
garment the girl had donned in a mood so different.
“Gord! honey,” she said, as the pins accumulated in her capacious mouth,
“in de name o’ sense what dun persess yo’ tuh put on dis hyah thing?
Name o’ Gord! _who_ ever see sich a thing _aney_how?” She held it up
with much of the contempt with which Virginia had at first regarded it,
tossing it finally into the chip-basket.
Virginia said nothing from first to last. She was almost sure that she
was dreaming, and would soon awake.
“My sakes ’live!” chuckled Aunt Tishy, as she hooked the homespun dress
about the girl’s waist, “wouldn’ I ’a’ thanked Gord-amighty ef yo’d ’a’
ben dis good when yo’ wuz leetle, honey? Mk, mh-_mph_!”
(This final ejaculation I find impossible to describe with pen and ink.)
When she had completely altered her charge’s appearance, replaiting her
dishevelled hair, and unwinding from its tangled meshes the little chain
of white and red sea-shells, Aunt Tishy took her by the hand and led her
across the side lawn to the house.
“Now yo’ kin dress comfbul,” she told her, “an’ jess mek’ yo’se’f easy,
my lamb. Tishy she ain’ gwine seh nuttin’ tuh _naw_-bode-y.”
Virginia tried to smile upon her. Something stiff at the corners of her
mouth seemed to prevent her. She turned, lifting one hand to her cheek,
and went into the yet quiet house.